Lupe Fiasco Sounds Off on 'Yeezus,' New Album, & 'Control' Response
Whether it’s his “Control” response or his controversial tweets, Lupe Fiasco knows how to get people talking. During the L.A. stop on his “Tetsuo and Youth Preview Tour,” the Chicago MC stopped by Power 106 to chat with Rikki Martinez.
He discussed Kanye West’s Yeezus (Lupe worked on “Black Skinhead”), his upcoming album Tetsuo and Youth, the message behind his Chris Brown-assisted song “Crack,” his “Control” response “SLR 2,” and “falling off.”
Read highlights and watch the full interview below.
On Yeezus: “I still don’t know what ‘Black Skinhead’ is about. It’s a lot of emotional, a lot of this, a lot of cliché, a lot of kinda stuff balled in together, and it’s just supposed to be presented as a package and you digest it.”
On his album: “Tetsuo and Youth is definitely more straightforward. I’ve always been conceptually progressive, but at the same time too, making it simple enough for you to understand exactly what I’m talking about from the first time that you hear it.”
On his Chris Brown collaboration “Crack”: “It’s about smoking crack, and that’s what the song is about. … People smoke crack, it’s a problem. It’s not a problem. Some people love it, some people hate it. I’m just gonna present it to you in a format where, ‘Hey, this song is about smoking crack,’ and how you deal with that is how you deal with it. Does it make you wanna go fight an anti-drug campaign, does it make you wanna go smoke some crack, does it build you up as a crack dealer, does it tear you down as a crack dealer? I don’t know.”
On dressing up as a KKK member in the “#1234” video: “I think it’s the same thing as Kanye wearing a confederate flag. I’m not saying I endorse that in any capacity, but it’s the same idea of embodying what destroyed us. … I’m gonna wear something that to me destroyed my people and hurt my people, but now it’s meaningless.”
On his “Control” response “SLR 2”: “It wasn’t more directed at the response for ‘Control.’ It was directed at the wave that ‘Control’ made, where it tried to make everybody else obsolete. … There was no ill will in it, but let’s establish dominance. If you finna be nice and you finna say that you finna be nicest, then you have to be the nicest and you have to be the nicest in everything that you do from now on.”
On “falling off”: “I don’t really know what falling off is. Did I fall off at radio? Did I fall of as an MC? You mean I’m not just as popular as I was six months ago or because you let this new dude come in who you think is nice because you’re 17 and he’s relating to your high school experience the same way Nas did for me.”