Gym Class Heroes and Lupe Fiasco

Born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco to a mother who was a gourmet chef and a father who was an engineer, Lupe Fiasco has a background equally as interesting and unique as the music that he creates today. He grew up in Chicago’s Madison Terrace housing project, a dangerous neighbourhood at the best of times but Lupe’s parents, despite the fact that they split when their son was five, made a concerted effort to educate their son and bring him up the best way that they could.

After they split Lupe lived with his mother by day, who kept him as well read as he could possibly be, but his father was a very large part of his life even then. By sixth grade Lupe was living with his father and getting into music in a big way, but strangely enough it wasn’t hip-hop he was absorbing. In something that would allude to just how unique rapper he would become in his later years, the young Lupe hated hip-hop for its misogyny and vulgarity. He was hooked on jazz instead and was never going to be a passive listener but try as he might, he could never get the hang of an instrument.

This lead Lupe to try his hand at writing poems instead and that coincided with him discovering Nas’ 1996 album “It Was Written”, which captivated him and by 8th grade, he was taking his poems and performing them as raps. By high school he met a school-mate and gang member by the name of Bishop G, the two connected over a shared taste in music and began making mixtapes in Lupe’s father’s basement. Even from the start Lupe’s music was eclectic, to the extent that Lupe and Bishop’s first performance went disastrously as their local hip-hop community wasn’t as accepting as Lupe and Bishop were hoping it would be.

Undeterred, Lupe was still dead set on making music and at the age of 17, he decided to try out for a career in hip-hop, although his parents weren’t impressed. Taking an extended version of his nickname, Lu, and referencing The Firm’s song “Firm Fiasco”, he adopted the stage name Lupe Fiasco, and by 19, he was in a group called Da Pak. His group released one single on Epic Records before splitting up, and Lupe was highly critical of the song afterwards, which was a pretty standard guns and cocaine anthem and nothing that the more thoughtful Lupe wanted to put his name on.

It still made his name in a big way, and Lupe continued making music without a group, continuing to take his music down more interesting and esoteric avenues than hip-hop was used to going down. His song “Could Have Been” was discovered by MTV and led to a record deal with Arista Records, but was dropped when the label’s president and CEO L.A Reid was fired. It was still a vital time for Lupe, however, as during his time on the label he met Def Jam Recordings president and one of Lupe’s all time biggest influences Jay-Z, who took a shine to the young rapper almost immediately.

Hova was so impressed with Lupe’s work that he got the young rapper a record deal with Atlantic Records, and while working on his debut album, he released a series of massively acclaimed mixtapes onto the internet to build his reputation. Big things were afoot from the start, but Lupe’s career was given a jumpstart after featuring on the hit Kanye West single “Touch The Sky”, and the release of “Kick, Push”, Lupe’s debut single, was brought forward as a result of “Touch The Sky’s” success.

By September 2006, Lupe’s debut album “Lupe Fiasco’s Food And Liquor” was released. Ever since then, his work has been feted for his lyrical dexterity and eclectic choice of samples and production work. On some occasions he’s even managed to take such left-field music and make legitimate smash hit singles out of it, with “Superstar” and “The Show Goes On” hitting the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100. Clearly, there are very few artists around with the vision, talent and work ethic of Lupe Fiasco, and every hip-hop fan should be proud of the fact that he’s in his prime right now, and he’ll remain there for a very long time.