Lupe Fiasco

Source: Randy Shropshire / Getty

Don’t call Lupe Fiasco an OG. At a youthful 43 years old, the “Kick Push” rapper is still keeping busy like a neophyte, on this night in Los Angeles headlining the announcement of Activision’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 (THPS), the genre-defining skateboarding game coming to your (latest) gaming system of choice on July 11.

Lupe Fiasco’s impact on skate culture has been discussed ad nauseam already, and that is only trumped by his impact on Hip-Hop culture as a whole. It’s a byproduct of having several, at least, classic albums in your discography, and a number of eclectic interests (martial arts, anime, etc.) that only expand his fanbase organically. There’s also the uncanny thirst for knowledge that has been channeled into the halls of academia, as he’s been a professor at MIT for several years, and this fall will begin teaching at Johns Hopkins University.

All that to say, Lupe Fiasco, born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, has encompassed the adage that if you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. But that’s another thing. Don’t tell the Chicago native that his career isn’t work. “It’s like, yeah, I love rapping. That sh*t is hard,” Lupe told Hip-Hop Wired a couple of hours before his set at the El Rey Theatre for the THPS Festival. “Getting on a flight every week to fly back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast, and here and there to teach for a few hours, then fly all the way back. That sh*t is tough on your body when you’re 43 now. But I love it, I wouldn’t give it up for the world. So I mean, I don’t need it to be easy, you know, I just need it to be right.”Right now, Lupe Fiasco’s business is moving like a well-oiled skateboard wheel. Sorry.

But in all seriousness, his 1st & 15th Entertainment label is independent with major label muscle thanks to distribution from The Orchard. He’s enlightening the world’s best minds and he’s still managing to drop dope music.

Hip-Hop Wired: What does Tony Hawk Pro Skater mean to skate culture?

Lupe Fiaso: For skate culture, it’s undeniable, anything that come out that promotes the culture, like, does it in an authentic way for any culture, I think the participants of the culture vibe with it heavy. Tony [Hawk] being who he is, he’s respected on all levels; from X-Games to the streets to whatever, right? And he can skate anything. He’s looked at as being one of the OGs, one of the godfathers of it all. Anything that he touches or makes, he is the stamp of approval to a certain kind of degree. The game is just an extension of that. Tony Hawk Pro Skater been around forever. It’s been a staple in the gaming side of things, and I think it represents skating very well in the gaming space.

How does this event compare to, say, one of your own shows?

I mean, it depends on what city you in. It’s LA, you’re going to get a mix of everything here. The skate community is super heavy, large here anyway, so you’re going to get a lot of representation from that. I think if you did it in New York, it’d be the same vibe, I think if you did it in Miami, it’d be the same vibe. Just like respectful folks, but I mean, it’s Hollywood, it’s LA. So you got to have that energy too. It’s the announcement of the [Tony Hawk Pro Skater] so you got to do it in the City of Angels, the City of Big Lights.

Is 1st & 15th fully independent?

Nobody’s fully independent. I’ve never met an artist that’s fully independent. But, but we’re not signed to a major. We got major distribution though, we’re with Thirty Tigers, Sony Orchard is doing the distribution. We still handle all our production, we still handle all our backend, stuff like that. The music. But we’ve been in this space since 2014. So our last kind of industry level project with a major recording company behinds it was Tetsuo & Youth. We still got a major publicist, we still signed to UTA, so we got a major agency. We still on Universal Publishing.

That’s why I said I’ve never met a completely [independent]…the artist who publishes themselves with their own publishing admins. Are we signed to a major record label? No. We’re self-signed, I been that way since 2014. But, you know, it’s still a vibe, it’s a new challenge, we rocking.

Has being indie expanded your creativity?

I’m a mercenary. I came up in the industry, so when I say that I have no qualms about doing radio records or club records or pop records. I make them on my own. I make any type of record, because that’s my job. It’s funny ‘cause Tetsuo & Youth would have tons of radio records on it, right? But it’s like radio records for a specific type of backing. It has to have like a specific setup behind it. If the label’s not willing to put that set up behind you, those records are basically meaningless ’cause they’re never going to get to radio. They’re never going to get into the club, et cetera, so why make ‘em?So when I say I’m a mercenary, once we kind of went indie—maybe the first real indie record was Drogas Wave. Drogas Light was right after Tetsuo and right before Drogas Wave. Drogas Light was just to get the last few pieces of responsibility off our back with Atlantic. So Drogas Wave is the first time that you see me without a label, and I can just do what I want—no label, fully kind of free to explore. And it wasn’t like some deep super over the top lyrical backpack mindf*ck, we still had records on there that were meant to touch and speak to different things. So for me as an artist, I came up in the industry. I can make whatever I need to make. I don’t have no problems with it as long as everybody’s honest about what we’re gonna do with it, then I’m cool.We love what you’re doing with education, you’re starting at Johns Hopkins in the fall, been at MIT, what are you trying to accomplish?I’ve already accomplished it. My piece was to take Hip-Hop, take Rap specifically, so excuse me, take Rap specifically, and put it in academia in a meaningful way. In the upper echelons of academia.There was folks who done work, taught rap classes for years prior to me—Mia X was down in Louisiana. Actually, the first person that invited me out to a class was Play from Kid ‘N Play. He was in North Carolina teaching [years] ago.So for me, it was just like, Alright, I’m fittin’ to put it at MIT. I’m going to put it at Harvard. I’m going to put it at Ivy League or Ivy League plus-level classes and approach it in a certain way. I always had that energy to overexplain rapping, over-technicalize it, but that’s what it kind of needs to be in those spaces, ‘cause I’m competing with quantum physics and applied math and all types of other Lagrangian specialty metamorphic, metal, blah, blah, blah, right?So it fits. It fits perfectly.

But my semester’s over, so we start back at MIT in the spring, I start at Johns Hopkins in the fall. So that was the mission. That was the goal. I’ve been at this my third year at MIT. But I’ve been going there for years, as an artist, resident in different capacities. And there are more opportunities on the horizon; growing things at MIT, starting a Rap club up there, hopefully opening up a Rap department as long as I’m there, I’ll be there for another two to three years. So that mission’s done, you know? It’s just stabilizing it, and then moving out the way for somebody else to come in and take it so I can go pursue the next.Kind of build an infrastructure so that know no one can come in and f*ck it up?Indeed. Or f*ck it up. As long as the foundation is there and laid, it be harder to f*ck it up. Or maybe f*cking it up in five years is what it needs.Obviously, you’re still creating music, so what’s next?I mean, I do music, stepping back into the fashion in a certain way with the Nishigawa brand. Making jewelry with my brother Rick The Jeweler. Focusing on other artists like Billy Blue, who just signed to 1st & 15th. Growing that stable; again, building things up so I can step out the way to do the other things and put more focus on it. Traveling, just chilling, more of the school stuff. My plate is full. I got a lot of things I need to do accomplish, and I think we’ve achieved a lot thus far, so more to come.Next year is the 20 year anniversary of Food & Liquor? Has anything surprised you about the album?  I mean, just the way that it still has an impact. When you kind of see artists who came out now who are kind of in the space I was in 10 years ago…or people who were kids when Food & Liquor came out, they’re getting interviewed and revealing what are their motivations, and it’s Food & Liquor, or The Cool, which is right next to it. It’s great to see that it still has affected so many people, so many rappers [and] their craft. They’re using it as a blueprint the same way I used Black On Both Sides, It Was Written, Reasonable Doubt, as blueprints for Food & Liquor.To see that that tradition that an artist, or a person who doesn’t even know they want to be an artist, an album can capture them in a certain way where it inspires them or gives instructions to life, but then also becomes a template for them to create once they get that creative “I want to do this, and I’m gonna do it for real,” that Food & Liquor is in their cannon. It’s in their kind of like workbook. The sh*t’s great man.And hopefully it’ll just continue the same way we’re coming up on 30 years of Illmatic, Reasonable Doubt, already. Hopefully, it’ll live in that same space. And then I’m good, that’s my legacy.Were you thinking of your albums having such an indelible impact while you were creating them?Absolutely, absolutely. When you’re building off classics, you want to make a classic. My pressure was not to have a sophomore jinx. My pressure was, You gotta do an Illmatic and a [It Was Written], you gotta do a Ready To Die and A Life After Death. Even with Mos Def, you gotta do a [Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Blackstar] then follow it up with a Black On Both Sides. So for me, it was always having that one-two punch. After that, and maybe that’s a myth, or maybe it’s a standard that needs to be set in stone, after that I coasted. You get Lasers and me playing around f*cking with sh*t. For me, it was that first two.That’s coasting?! [insert gratuitous “Kick Push” reference here]

For me, it was that first two. I was done. I was like I’m gonna do this, I’ma do that, then I just want to get the f*ck up off this label and go do something else. So, I’m happy that I was able to accomplish. Intentionally, though, that’s your question. Intentional absolutely. I set out for it to be classic. I wasn’t just trying to make some whatever sh*t. My whatever sh*t was my mixtape that came before that. That’s me practicing and playing around. But when it came to them albums, we gotta have classics off the top, I’m glad we were able to do that.You have managed to age well in Hip-Hop but a lot of artists don’t. They might try to act like teens or chase what they had. How have you become an OG, not in the old man sense, but as rapper comfortable in his wave?I’m not an OG. I don’t, I don’t really think that’s a bad thing for people to try to recapture their greatness. Why is that a bad thing? In rap, that’s n*gga sh*t, to keep it a buck. Like other industries, other groups, other cultures, like reclaiming your past or trying to achieve what you did when you was younger is the whole goal. You build one company when you was 20, build another one when you 60.Right? That’s like Warrant Buffet, who just retired, we gonna get down on him for not trying to be like what he did 10 years, or 20 years. You getting to the bag and doing what you need to do, then do what you need to do.

I don’t think that’s a big deal, especially when the reverse is happening. You got young kids trying to be older. They’re trying to capture things that they should be looking forward to when they’re older. But we want that. We want you to be thinking about when you’re 20, when you’re 25, when you’re 30, when you’re 40. What happens when you are 40? Do you want me to think about being 60? Or do you want to think about “I want that same type of energy. I want to have that same type of drive that I had when I was 20. I want to be operating and cooking off of the same level that I was.” So I don’t see nothing wrong with that, to each their own.

But, I’m not an OG. Maybe I’ll be an OG one day, but that’s not for me to decide. That’s for me to have proof that I got a bunch of YGs who are under me that will follow my lead.That kind of goes full circle back to your “blueprint” albums, setting that standard for everything forward.I’ll give you an example, full circle, which is crazy. They just had them boxing matches in New York, right? They had Rolly Romero versus Ryan Garcia. So Ryan Garcia walked out to “Superstar.” Rolly Romero walked out to “Marty McFly,” which was a mixtape record that I did. So you got these two fighters fighting each other in the primes of their career in one of the biggest, most hyped boxing matches in the world, and they both coming out the Lupe records from completely different eras.So I’m good.