Recent Lupe Fiasco Interview

[complexity]

Lupe Fiasco says he's not finished kicking and pushing by any means. A remix of his buzz record "Kick Push" with Pharrell Williams is already on mixtapes and the 'net, and Fiasco says he's trying to make a trilogy.

"There's a remix for 'Kick Push,' but then there's a 'Kick Push 2' as well," he said last week in New York. "We're not done wit the 'Kick Push' franchise yet. 'Kick Push' is poppin', but it's not over yet."

Lupe, who has been playing shows overseas, was in NYC last week, performing at Central Park and recording tracks for his upcoming Food & Liquor. A rough version of the record was leaked weeks ago, and Lupe was heated. The debut was originally slated for a June 27 release but has been pushed back to later this summer. When the final version comes out, Lupe says only about six of the songs off the bootleg will be included. He's since made several new songs with the likes of Pharrell, Kanye West, Jill Scott and Jay-Z.

"When I first heard it got bootlegged, I was upset," Fiasco explained. "It's like your work of art getting unveiled before it's finished. Somebody snatched the veil off, so that threw me into a little tizzy. The feedback from it was good, though. It's just weird to see people reviewing the album in a public format and you know they downloaded it illegally. They don't have the song titles right. You see that in a major publication, you're like, 'Wow. We didn't give nobody that song.' Then I'll be walking through the airport and people will be like 'Number six!' What is number six?' I don't even know what that is.

"But going back [to record] was excellent," he added. "It wasn't even a serious going-back-in thing. The songs we had scheduled to record — if the leak happened or not — we just went and did them. Like the song with Pharrell, the song with Jill Scott, the song with Kanye, the song with Jay-Z. We were still going to do them songs regardless."

Lupe says his song with Hov is more or less the two of them dueling lyrically, and the song with Skateboard P has a real throwback vibe.

"It's weird," he said, "when I talk to people, producers, [they] have their idea of what they think I am. I've heard, 'You're that new Tribe Called Quest, the new Q-Tip/ De La Soul.' Then others are like, 'No, he's the new Jay-Z, Nas.' Then some be like, 'He's in his own lane. He's this skateboarder.' Pharrell sees me as this new Q-Tip rapper, conscious, MF Doom-type, left rapper. So he gave me this real jazzy old-school joint. But [producers like] Needlez think something else. Three 6 Mafia think something else. Mike Shinoda thinks something else. Pharrell's vision was this old school, take-it-back jump off. It's fresh, though." ...