IS LUPE FIASCO THE ANSWER TO HIP HOP'S ILLS?

When the nerdy-looking native Chicago released his first single, Kick Push, hip hop heads took notice immediately. The resultant buzz positioned his debut Food & Liquor as a highly anticipated affair. As good as the album is, is it fair to put the livelihood of the genre in his hands? Kwanele Sosibo finds out.

Is Lupe Fiasco the saviour of hip-hop? That question is troublesome because it immediately assumes that hip-hop, a genre that is so dear to many is in need of saving. It doesn’t. Hip-hop is doing better than ever, growing from strength to strength.

Ever since DJ Kool Herc manually looped a section of a record at a block party in the Bronx some 30 or so years ago to create a break beat, what some dismissed as a passing fad has become the most influential and mimicked culture on this earth, making billions for exploitative record labels, and turning thousands of ghetto and uptown children the world over into independent cultural producers and millionaire entrepreneurs.

Lupe Fiasco, raised in a ghetto on the west side of Chicago by a well-traveled gourmet chef mother and a percussionist father who found Islam in the military, is just one of those entrepreneurs.

His record label 1st and 15th Entertainment, which he started a half a dozen or so years ago at the tender age of 19, basically helmed his entire debut album Food & Liquor, releasing it through a joint venture with Atlantic Records last year.

Calling Lupe the saviour of hip-hop would be tantamount to buying into the often-bandied about theory that all or most hip-hop music is obsessed with materialism, endorsing the status quo and denigrating women. It isn’t. There is no such thing as “your average rapper”. That is patronizing to the culture.

But if your only access to the music is commercial radio, satellite television and the SABC’s three channels, you can be forgiven for thinking rap music is generally shallow, grotesque, misogynistic or my favourite, “dead”. You can be forgiven for thinking that b-boys sell Chappies bubblegum for a living.

Okay some might, and Too $hort did invent the term “beeyatch”, but the point is that beyond the apparent sea of sameness, hip-hop is propelled forward by stylistic innovations, which, I concede, have been lacking in the mainstream for some time.

Record labels need to survive and that “commercial” style that we might disdain is what brings in the dollars. In the wider hip-hop terrain, however, Lupe with his bookish and nerdish approach, and “dressed up” social commentary, is not an anomaly and therefore not a saviour.

And since mainstream, by definition, means “the ideas, actions and values that are most widely accepted by a group or society”, then the 24 year-old is one of those who have obviously chosen to swim against the current.

Usually, decisions like that are not made out of a need to extend benevolence, but because a said individual truly feels comfortable doing things his way.

I’m purely speculating here, but my guess is Lupe couldn’t make his music any darker or sweeter than it already is. There is earnestness about him. The fact that his is a lucrative formula is purely happenstance.

Make no mistake about it, Lupe is purely mainstream. Pushing 80 000 copies on the first week of release validates this claim.

But if you’re not convinced, here is further proof of his ubiquity: The day before the writing of this article, I went to visit a black skater friend of mine who raved about having heard the metaphoric, deck-referencing Kick, Push on Glenzito’s Metro FM drive time show earlier that Friday afternoon.

When the song was over, he flipped to YFM only to be confronted with the waning strains of the loosely penned manifesto Real. Two weeks before, I had woken up, somewhat hung-over on a sunny Saturday noon, to Jill Scott’s luxurious pipes on Daydreamin’, the album’s satire about hip-hop’s penchant for excess. The dial this time was on 5FM.

While writing this very sentence two Saturdays later, Lupe Fiasco suddenly appeared on MTV Base with his ode “to rebels looking for a place to be”, sandwiched between Prokid’s threats of sorcery on Storm and E-40’s attempts to get to “you and that booty” ( on U & Dat).

The legendary Twista, who should’ve known better, appeared next, his first lines being something about his “gold teeth, gold chain…”

Okay, fine. Hip-hop is slightly out of balance, with its elders knowing no better, shaming them with his youth; Lupe is offering a different voice, telling a different story. But he once told hip-hop magazine Elemental that “I don’t truly believe I’m the Great Reviver, prophesied to come back and save hip-hop.”

So why do the critics keep insisting? Because rarely have the personal and political met in such a nuanced, non-threatening and ready-to-be-sold manner.

Because he’s a Muslim - not just any Muslim in hip-hop’s long-standing fascination with Five Percenters and such - but an orthodox one who believes that “terrorism is condemned in Islam”; A record label existing in paranoid post 9/11 America needs “a nigger” to say that.

Quite importantly as well, he actually writes beautiful lyrics that to the untrained ear pass off for harmless fodder. He is also incredibly shrewd. Lupe was lectured on brand building by none other than Jay-Z, who besides appearing on a verse, is one of Food & Liquor’s executive producers.

In nobodysmiling.com, Lupe proffers that the game is “10% music and 90% everything else”, explaining the calculation that all-round “mathematics” droppers like Ras Kass, Canibus and Chino XL forgot to do, hence their fall into obscurity.

Hence the calculated side deals: the Reebok sneaker gig that preceded his debut album, the clothing and design company Righteous Kung Fu, the series of Farenheit 1/15 mixtapes, the weekly FNF Radio college radio show hosted from the Illinois Institute of Technology and the careful alignment with Grammy-winning friends (Jay, Kanye, Pharrell).

It is little wonder that the bespectacled one was nominated for a few Grammys himself, namely Best Solo Performance (Kick, Push), Best Rap Song (Kick, Push) and Best Rap Album. As a clearly shrewd businessman he probably doesn’t even care, but appreciates what it will mean for him and his 1st and 15th partners in the long run.

In an interview with internet station Breakdown FM about his experiences in the industry, Lupe says, “I know what the music business has to offer and I know how to circumvent it and get what I need out of it.”

While Lupe is definitely good for the wider acceptance of hip-hop and the restoration of its conscience, he is, in his own words, merely “an interesting addition to the rap audience”.

I’m not quite sure whether his arrival was scripted in the Qur’an, so to speak.
Still, his largely cameo-free album was refreshingly in-house produced, with sweeping, operatic beats and catchy if not slightly weak hooks. I could argue that Lupe could have upped the ante on the flows but then dizzying patterns can actually be more gimmicky (Bone Thugs anybody?).

But in closing I’ll just say, Lupe is not the Alpha and Omega of hip-hop, he’s just an important soldier to have in the mainstream. We’re thankful he’s not preaching to the converted!


Side note: Lupe Fiasco’s critically acclaimed debut album, Food & Liquor, was released in October 2006 and has sold more than 380 000 copies. His follow up album, tentatively titled The Cool, is scheduled to be released in October 2007. Word from the grapevine also suggests that a new super group, comprising of Lupe, Kanye and Pharrell, is in the works and is set to release a full collaborative effort in early 2008.