Veteran Chicago emcee, Lupe Fiasco has been in the news a lot recently following the media blitz for his upcoming album Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album Pt. I, some of his headlines have been positive and some have been negative. Now while in Australia, Lupe talked about his album and seemed at ease delivering candid answers on topics of why he chose the title, the album cover, and what message he hopes to convey in his work.
The title is a mouthful, and when asked what led him to chose to make a Food & Liquor 2, Lupe was honest saying there wasn’t much meaning behind it as it “[was] almost a market ploy.” He then explained The Great American Rap Album suffix as it’s “less about the album being great, and more about ‘the greatness of America’, and what that means.”
His upcoming album is Part I, but his initial plan was to release it as a double CD so Part II will be coming out around the new year, “As soon as we kinda feel Part I is peaking...we’re gonna start rolling out records for the next one .”
Lupe released the cover art for his forthcoming album which is all black, and he says that actually the entire contents of the album will be black, “The entire album is black, there’s no pictures or words in the album. It was more of like “can I get the label to do that?” He added, “wasn’t as easy as I thought with putting nothing in there.”
Some people felt the Chi-town native had been targeting certain people with his words, much like when he addressed Chief Keef, but Lupe says “I’m not dissing people, it’s more you’re commenting on culture.” When asked why he has taken a stance against certain words/phrases in hip hop, Lupe was frank, saying, “You have to start giving a shit at some point, about something.”
;Lupe's new album Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album Pt. I drops next Tuesday September 25th.
