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Welcome to my new monthly column, coming straight from the Rapnews headquarters. Here I’ll be reviewing some of the freshest new rap releases, as they come through the post.
This week I was pleasantly surprised to see that the lovely folks over at Atlantic records hadn’t forgotten about me and had in fact sent over a couple of preview tracks from Lupe Fiasco’s long awaited sophomore album, “Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool”, a follow up to last year’s debut “Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor”.
This album had qualities reminiscent to the styles of Common and Kanye, and clearly went on to shape forthcoming releases by other artists, such as Kidz in the Hall’s debut “School Was My Hustle”, released early in 2007.
This goes to show the impact that Lupe, real name Wasalu Muhammed Jaco, has had already. Described as “the observer, a thinking man brave enough to dictate the acute thoughts that his peers ignore”, Lupe has gone a long way during his short time in the notoriously cut-throat rap industry, succeeding where many have failed, “keeping it real” where many have sold out.
If we skip way back to 2004, Lupe Fiasco was first introduced over on these shores by the one and only A&R Supremo Suzy Zenouzi of Mojona Ltd.
A devote Muslim, Lupe is known to shun the excesses of the industry, avoiding all the usual London nightspots when he’s in town, unlike fellow party goers such as his promising rivals Kidz in the Hall, who partied it up at Yoyo’s in Notting Hill after their gig there earlier this year.
Lupe told me during our interview; “The music business is so dodgy. It’s crazy what people are capable of to get ahead. Sometimes I can’t believe the levels people fall to in the pursuit of success, and to know that that’s how it works. You get people who are like, ‘I’m gonna sleep with him, to get next to someone else, so that I can get that deal’, or ‘I’m gonna mess up his project, lie to him, then I’m gonna come in and save it, so it looks like I’m the hero’. There’s a lot of calculated mischief going on”.
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