Episode 1: Lupe Fiasco
The unexpected polymath.
When I first encountered Lupe, I received him the way most people probably have - over the airwaves. The second time he surfaced in my life, it was in a surprise podcast appearance with a mutual friend. The third time the universe brought him my way it was in an open chat about Martial Arts.
And I was like, “Is this serious? Is Lupe Fiasco the hip hop artist intellectualizing with others about martial arts?”
Can’t be.
So I stopped and listened in and it turned out he really was. And to my ignorance, I discovered he was very well educated and practiced in a variety of disciplines; far more than myself. Then I learned he had many more interests that the world knew little about. The intrigue began there and you can see where we ended up.
Don’t let the man fool you into thinking he’s just a rapper.
Full Transcript:
Emily Kwok:
Hi, this is Emily Kwok. We're recording here for the Master and the Apprentice where we explore the path from apprenticeship to mastery. Today, my guest is Lupe Fiasco, who is a Grammy Award-winning singer, record producer, entrepreneur, and community advocate. He is best known probably to most of our listeners as being on our radio waves and having a brilliant presence there, but I've also had the pleasure and capacity of knowing him in other realms, which is through the lens of martial arts and art.
Emily Kwok:
So today, what we wanted to cover with Lupe was how he has entered into all of these various disciplines and what his journey has been like, from being a student and onwards achieving a certain level of mastery or depth within all of these different fields. So Lupe, welcome. Thanks so much for being on board.
Lupe Fiasco:
How are you doing, Sensei Emily?
Emily Kwok:
Very, very good. So if we want to just dive right into it, I have to say that one of the ways that I had first gotten to know you outside of listening to you over the radio was through some social chats. In those social chats, learning a lot more about these 360 view of all these other things that you're quite interested in doing and you've dedicated some time to within the realm of martial arts and also the fine arts, which was new for me.
Emily Kwok:
So if you wouldn't mind taking a moment to describe where you started your path in terms of being an apprentice or a student in all of these different disciplines, because I'm going to imagine that they didn't all start at the same time. I'm really curious to know how you came upon your interests in the martial arts, in music, and also in fine arts.
Lupe Fiasco:
Ah, cool. Yeah, so the martial arts experience maybe first is via my father. Martial arts was our family business. So my dad started doing martial arts when he was a teenager, or so the legend goes, and kind of just through the years picked up different skillsets, studied in different disciplines. So he was kind of a polymath in that space and studied Japanese martial arts, Chinese martial arts, blends, created his own styles, referencing modern things, etc, etc.
Lupe Fiasco:
So there was a lot of input from different traditions in his work in the martial arts, and it turned into somewhat of a semi-business, because I don't know if he ever got rich off the martial arts. He had a regular job as an engineer, and martial arts was on the side. But if you looked at it, his whole life was martial arts. He opened up some karate schools, some martial arts schools, because I hesitate, it's more than karate, but martial arts schools. Karate was a big part. Kendo, judo, aikido, all these different flavors.
Lupe Fiasco:
That's when I come into the scene in the '80s. 1982 is when I step into the scene as a baby. So I was born into it. By that time, he'd been doing it, again, since he was in his teenage years. He passed in '07, and he had been doing it for 40 years, 40 years of martial arts piece. So when I come into the field, he's already steeped in it. We were training since we were children. So training since we were babies. I remember one of the first things that my dad gave to me was a wakizashi, which is the small samurai sword. So you have the two. Had a long, the daito and you have the shoto. So he gave me a shoto, and he gave me an African drum, because he was also this African drummer. He played African drums on the side, and a myriad of other things. I won't dive too deep into my dad, because we'll be here all day.
Emily Kwok:
That's another podcast?
Lupe Fiasco:
Yeah, that's a whole nother podcast, like dads, super dads, I guess. So I had no choice. It's a similar kind of I think approach to you think of heredity or royalty or that really strong tradition of taking over the family business because you don't have a choice type thing. That's why these businesses and traditions will be like a royalty, like a dynasty. It's kind of like a dynastic approach. But you don't have a choice. That's what you do. You're doing the martial arts.
Lupe Fiasco:
Because it was so immersed in our lives, there was no difference or slight difference between the dojo and home. So when you're going home, the same weapons that are at the dojo are at home, the same energy that's at the dojo is at home. He would hold class at home.
Emily Kwok: Wow.
Lupe Fiasco:
So his students would be scattered around the yard or something like that, or scattered around the house. Even in his I guess "hobbies", he would go to the lake in Chicago and play the drums, there would be class there. So we're getting drug out to do class at the beach for the beach holidays like, "We're also going to do some karate out here," which was fine, because you don't know anything else, right? That's what you know. You come into the world knowing that your dad is a martial arts master. You do martial arts. There's other things around, but you don't have any other hobbies yet. I wasn't of age to even know what was out there in the world for me to want to do. So a lot of the stuff I was doing was just different spinoffs of my dad.
Lupe Fiasco:
That lasts up until today. To understand me or to understand my father is to understand me. Martial arts, music, art. Art in a weird space. So we had these martial arts schools, and he would have basically brands within the school itself. So the school was called Tornado School of Martial Arts. Prior to that, he had a school called Black Dragon Slayers, but Tornado School of Martial Arts was where I come into the scene. Within that, he'd have an aikido club, or a kendo club, or you would come to the school, and it would be like kanji on the wall, or it would be painted. It was my dad painting this stuff, so the legend goes.
Lupe Fiasco:
So it's like, "Hey, we need to identify this particular dojo or part of the dojo as the kendo room." So you go in there, and there's a giant picture or painting of a kendo mask on the wall. Or for the aikido club, there's a banner kind of, like a big wooden banner or symbol for the aikido club. Then on our early t- shirts for the school, it was a picture of him stylized, like him with a sword and some ninjas next to him, really '80s era kind of graphics on the tees, but there was always art there. There was always something being painted. There was that, right?
Lupe Fiasco:
So in one way or another, even though my dad was more of a musician than me working with words, it's still the same kind of thing. I found my space, because I was a failure at playing music, playing actual instruments. So it's like, "Okay, I'm going to do rap." Then it was like I can't really paint, but I'm going to at least start approaching some type of artistic element. So it started out as photography. Then when I wanted to paint something, it was like, "Oh, I got to learn how to paint so I can paint that one thing I wanted to paint." It was like I learned how to paint, so now let me paint some more stuff to make use of this skillset.
Lupe Fiasco:
So there's like underneath that though is this... Again, stemming from the training with my dad, so when we're training in martial arts at the level that we're training at, there's a lot of philosophy. There's some of the history, but a lot of that really deep philosophical narrative, ethics, morality, all of that stuff woven in so it wasn't just forms and techniques. It was a lot of do, a lot of Budō in it. So there's traditions where it's like if you want to be a complete person, so to speak, even a complete samurai, you had your martial training, but then you also had your artistic training. Like you were a person of letters. You had to do calligraphy. You had to do be a master of a certain game or chess or something like that. It was already kind of pitched for me to be a polymath, because that was one of the underlying meta- narratives of being in the martial arts that we were in that deeply, being connected into Asian culture and Asian society in that depth, but of a specific age, like the warrior age, the bushido period or something like that.
Lupe Fiasco:
So that's that one. That's part one, I guess, of the answer. It's like it's my dad, it's martial arts in a deep way, it's his music in a deep way, instruments all over the house, sitars and drums and xylophones and all this other stuff, just filled like a music studio, but just instruments. Then there's a little peak of, yeah, my dad's an artist. He arranges things. He puts on performances and demonstrations. So the first time that I was on a stage performing had to be a demonstration with my dad, or at a parade walking down the street doing karate moves as a little kid. So there's a direct connection to me performing on stages now for a living in front of people, etc. so there's a lot of parallels, if not all the parallels come directly from my dad, and my mom as well layered in there in different capacities intellectually, things like that. But if you look at the totality of me and the big macros that I do, there's pictures of my dad, in one way or another, doing the same thing.
Emily Kwok:
Wow, that sounds like an incredibly beautiful and rich relationship that you have with your father, and also really unexpected, because I think sometimes the external expressions or the success that we have, that we celebrate with the rest of the world, sometimes we don't really know what inspired those expressions and how it came to be. I will have to say that in the times that I've had the pleasure of speaking with you, one thing that always struck me was the amount of depth you had in whatever it was that you were exploring. It's fascinating to me that I sort of identify you more as a creative. I hope that's okay, not just as a musician, because it was just so intriguing to me that it seems that you approach everything with a lot of curiosity and a very open mind.
Emily Kwok:
It sounds like your biggest influence in that respect was your father who also had a plethora of things that he was dabbling in and that he also studied on a level that can only be appreciated by a few who have that window, I'm sure. Did you ever feel any pressure in terms of doing these things, or was it more that your father set the framework or set the example, and you came to all of these different things with a certain amount of play and curiosity as well?
Lupe Fiasco:
Good question. Yeah. There's definitely pressure. When you look at the shoes that you have to fill, we look at it as a dynasty. So we really look at, okay, in this generation, we're going to take this Jaco name and establish it as a world-class family, right? What does that mean? What does that look like? Okay, well, look at the patriarch of the family, and the matriarch of the family. I hate to leave out my mom, but my mom was a model, a seamstress, super uber creative, constantly creating things and new arts and crafts projects and all of these different things, but also very much so kept a library. My mom and pop split, but both had a library, but libraries of different things. My dad had a library full of war manuals and how to blow up stuff. My mom would have the Invisible Man and National Geographic and all this other stuff. My mom would have a bunch of jazz. My dad would have a bunch of Queen and Foreigner and soundtrack to Rocky and all this other stuff.
Lupe Fiasco:
So I got immersed in both cultures. My mom was very much so African American culture, jazz, all off that stuff, so I get that dose. Then you go to my dad, and you're listening to koto drums and all this other stuff. So just every point of culture that we needed to have and reference points was kind of given to us. It was kind of like this immersion training, if you're going to be the world's best diplomat, right? At a young age, here you go. You can speak to your own people, and you can speak to as many other people as you need to, right? Or at least be aware of them. So both roles.
Lupe Fiasco:
But again, focusing it back on my dad, you got this dude who he's dan in everything, at one point or another, and at a certain level, grand mastery in all these arts. So his range of black belts is ridiculous and world class. Could have went to the Olympics type judo player, right? I went to go actually train with his sensei, who I think he's still with us, named [Keya 00:16:27] Shen, who in his own right is kind of somewhat of a legend. He trained my dad up in a few different things, I think judo as well. I remember he was like, "Yeah, your dad could have been world champion in a real way." But I think my dad had injuries and other pursuits that disallowed that.
Lupe Fiasco:
But anyway, here's this guy with all of these credentials. In addition to that, he's an engineer. In addition to that, he plays all these instruments. In addition to that, he da da da da. In addition to all of that, the entirety of the community respects him and respects him to a degree of either out of fear or pure, raw loyalty that you only see in cases of world leaders or great masters, right? So he has a legion of students and co-masters or sub-masters, to use that word, who would do anything for him. "Go jump out that window." "Okay." "Go climb up this building." "Okay." "Go jump over this car." "Okay." "Go walk across these nails. Go walk through this fire. Go," da da da da da. It wasn't just grown men, right? It was little kids. It was the spectrum of age and outlook and perspective and philosophy. So he had a way to speak across all generations.
Lupe Fiasco:
So all of that is like, okay, "Now, you're his son. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?" It really was like the pressure, but in a good way where it was like, "All right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to try and do this. I'm going to try and do that. I'm going to try and do this. I'm going to try and do that. I'm going to try and do this. I'm going to try and do that."
Lupe Fiasco:
That gets to a danger zone where it's like you become a jack of all trades, but a master of none kind of a thing, but it's like, "No, I'm going to master that, because my dad's a master, so I'm going to master rap. I'm going to become a master rapper." And I did. It's like, "Yep. You're a master rapper. Okay, cool. Now what are you going to do?" It's like, "Ah, you know what I want to do now? I'm going to become a master swordsman. I want to become a master swordsman, so I'm going to do that." It's like, "All right, I want to become a master businessman, so I'm going to go become a master businessman." Realizing that it's still a pursuit. So I'm on the pursuit of these pieces, and there's more to be gained. You reach a certain level, you realize there's another level and another level and another level.
Lupe Fiasco:
So it was that, and becoming a force in the world. So it's like how can I take what my dad did and then multiply it? You'll see it in my sisters, right? You'll see it in one of my sisters who's out here killing it right now on the social side of things and just becoming that diplomat. So when we look across each other as siblings, it's like, "What are you doing?" Shout out to my little sisters and my nephews. It's like looking at them, it's like, "Hey, you see what we did. You know what I'm saying? Now you got to take what we did and double it."
Emily Kwok: Wow.
Lupe Fiasco:
And keep that family name, [Tokugawa 00:20:03].
Emily Kwok: Lupe, do you have a family crest yet? Come on, man.
Lupe Fiasco:
Yeah, actually yeah.
Emily Kwok: All right.
Lupe Fiasco:
I started to kind of manufacture one.
Emily Kwok: All right.
Lupe Fiasco:
We'll see what happens.
Emily Kwok:
So in hearing this, I also wonder when it comes to you pursuing all these different disciplines, for you, when you stepped out and decided you were going to give this a try, it seems like you're not only someone with a lot of depth, but also a lot of breadth, and being able to put yourself out there. When you experimented and when you tried, how was that effort received by your family, your father, your master, your dan, in the sense that if you failed, were you encouraged to get up and try again? Did nobody pay attention to what you were doing, and they just kind of gave you the freedom to explore? Because I think that when we look at students and teachers, or apprentices and masters, not every master will guide or mentor or teach the same way. Depending on how the student receives that, the outcomes can be very different, and for some people can be incredibly discouraging. You seem to have had a real tenacity to continue to explore and to continue to push.
Emily Kwok:
What was it that allowed you to do that? Was there a specific innate relationship or quality that you had with your father where he encouraged you, or was this something that was just more self-driven and intrinsic to you?
Lupe Fiasco:
My dad, he didn't... I was dwelling on this last night actually, in a way that hopefully I can make clear. My dad, he didn't... Let me see. How can I put this. He was very much so self-sufficient and self-driven to a degree. He had a lot of alliances, and I think alliances that will provide material support and things of that nature, right? So he was tapped into anything that needed to be built or got, he was able to build it or get it. From doll houses to record collections to cars, whatever it is, he always had this phrase, "Robbing Peter to pay Paul," was his thing, right? I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a thing, right?
Lupe Fiasco:
So anyway, he had all these allegiances, all these alliances, right? Because of that, you have it too. So when I wanted to do music, and when I wanted to become a rapper, some of the first rap that I ever heard was via him. So I heard NWA through my dad, him riding around playing NWA. I was like, "All right, cool." But I didn't want to become a rapper until I got-
Lupe Fiasco:
But I didn't want to become a rapper until I got into junior high school. It's like, "I want to do this," and then get into high school, and it's like, "I really want to do this." But it's like, "Okay, how do you do it?" It's like, "We got to build a studio." I found myself, I'm going to use the basement at the house. I'm going to clean out the basement, get the homies, we're going to clean this basement out. Now we need equipment.
Lupe Fiasco:
What equipment are going to use? My dad has a old tape player. We get that. We're going to go to, again, one of his resources and they have an old mixing board, which looks like it was from the '30s. We're going to get that. We're going to get this record player. Also we need beats and music to rap over. That same place that we got the mixer from, that person just happens to get just random boxes of singles with instrumentals from songs or whatever on it. We get those so now we got beats and we got mics, because my dad may have a mic laying around.
Lupe Fiasco:
We basically, I just went and pilfered his junk pile of stuff that he, his junker homies and was able to kind of put together a studio. Now we got a studio, now we're recording. We're recording, recording, recording. But the studio's right underneath my dad's bedroom. He's hitting the floor, boom, boom, boom, boom. "What are you all doing?" Boom. He's still being human, _, he's super at that, but he's still human, like, "Yo, it's noisy down there."
Lupe Fiasco:
But this is the same guy who will play Rabbi Shankar maxed out for eight hours straight in the house with the ill stereo system with the incense lit and the whole, and then if it's not that, it's Foreigner on repeat or it's this record or it goes in. A Juke Box Hero just on repeat, like juke box hero, just going in. Was that me or was that him? I think it was him. Maybe me. I don't know.
Lupe Fiasco:
Anyway, so he just had the collection of things and it was like, "Okay, I want to turn the key and do this,: and it's there. It's like, I wanted to play the clarinet like Benny Goodman. My dad had a clarinet. He was like, "Well, there you go. Start, get it in."
Lupe Fiasco:
But it wasn't like, "I'm going to show you how to play the clarinet." It was like, "There's a clarinet. Are you using it? No, just don't break it. Good luck." It's like, "All right, cool." That's kind of his thing.
Lupe Fiasco:
Even in the martial arts space, it was a lot of freedom to pursue it how you see fit. When I got kind of bored or uninspired with the Japanese martial arts, I want to do the Chinese martial arts. I wanted to do wushu and these other things. It was just kind of like, "All right. I'm not going to really teach you so you got to figure this out for yourself, but have a ball. Kind of knock yourself out."
Lupe Fiasco:
It was that kind of let you be free to carve out. You have the fundamentals and build on those fundamentals. Whether it be material fundamentals, technique fundamentals, spiritual fundamentals, that was kind of his thing. I'm going to give you these fundamentals or make you aware of them. Now it's on you to build on top of those.
Lupe Fiasco:
He would always say to his students, notorious for saying, this was like, "Make sure that you go to ... When you're done here, go to Japan to complete your training. Go to China to complete your training. Go to these things that I introduced you to, and then go here and complete your training." It was [foreign language 00:27:08] for real. Go sit in front of the dojo until they let you in type work to these little black kids in the ghetto. I'm going to introduce you to this thing and I want you to go to the places where it started and master it.
Emily Kwok: Wow.
Lupe Fiasco:
Learn from the source. He was big on understanding himself as being, I'm just a bridge and I can motivate and push you and make you ... He was very good at getting you to do things that you didn't think you could do with and with the goal of saying that now, nobody, you don't need anybody to do anything for you. If you could do this on your own, just imagine what happens when you go to school or to work or whatever your pursuit is, because you realized that you had the capacity to do this all along and that you just needed a crazy person like my dad to push you through the fire.
Emily Kwok:
Wow. Sounds like an incredible human being. How did this journey become affected or how was it received when you actually started to get really, really damn good at whatever it was that you were doing because to be great at one thing, I mean, as humans, we can only hope to be great at one thing in our lifetime, but you've gone on to repeat this in many ways and on a level that most people only dream of.
Emily Kwok:
Maybe if we could explore a little bit what happened in your music career when you were inspired to become a rapper and you took that to the level that you did, what happened when you achieved that pinnacle of celebrity or success or being heard, I should say. Maybe it's not about the awards and maybe it's just about being appreciated and heard by the public for the artistry that you have. What did that do to your relationship with music? Did it make it better? Were there certain pressures involved that made you not enjoy the external success?
Emily Kwok:
Because so much of what spoken about so far has been about an internal journey and a curiosity and a playfulness in some ways, but once you become recognized for something, it kind of changes the game a little bit. I'm curious to know how that might have affected you.
Lupe Fiasco:
Strange. For me, strange in terms of how this is going to come out. When I started rapping, I really, really didn't want to go to college. In high school it was like, "I really don't want to go to college because they're bringing back all these people like my senseis at school would be bringing back their students who were at college to come speak to us. It was just horror stories of, I mean, you could tell that they were coming back because the teacher loved them or they had a good relationship with the teacher. I actually found myself in this position too. It's a funny story, coming back to speak to the class to motivate them like, "Hey, make sure you go to college and this is what I do."
Lupe Fiasco:
For me it was just like, "Yeah, but I mean, you're in debt. There's loans." I don't like writing papers. There's a lot of paper writing that's going to happen. I'm not a social butterfly like that to a degree. It's like, "Eh, this doesn't sound cool at all." I was like, "If I do go to school, I want to go to school on my own terms. I actually want to go and learn something that I want to learn. I don't want to learn a bunch of stuff that I'm not going to use. I don't want to pay somebody to teach me a bunch of stuff that I'm never going to use or I don't want to learn. I want to go under my own terms."
Lupe Fiasco:
I was like, "I'm fitting to become a rapper and it's rapper or nothing." It was my friends who were also in the midst who had a little rap crew and it was like, "Yeah, rap or nothing." I didn't take my ACTs. I didn't take the prep classes for the ACTs. I didn't take my SATs. I didn't do anything that was required for you to go to college, at least at that level. I mean, you could still break into a community college and stuff like that. But it was state university or whatever. It was like, "I'm not doing that."
Lupe Fiasco:
This is at 16. It was like, "All right. You really got to do this now because you burnt that boat. There's no way off this island." I dove into it like, "Okay, we're starting from scratch. Let's go. I need words. I don't know that many words so I need to learn all these words."
Lupe Fiasco:
My first rap notebooks were just full of words. I would just use those words in these weird raps. They weren't even to beats. My first raps weren't even, well, I don't want to say my first, first raps because as a kid you might doodle something. But when it became this is what we're doing for real, it was like, they weren't even to of beats. It was just me just throwing. When I tried to put it to music, it sounded like a conceptual art piece from some German weird art movement or something like that. I was like, "Yo, that's not going to work."
Lupe Fiasco:
It is just a memory of all these steps, creatively learning the craft, building, building, building in high school and getting to the point where when I really started, "Okay, now I need to put this to music in a real way and organize it in a real way," my friends who are rapping with me at the time, I remember they were marked, they was like, "Yo, you know what? You sound like you really do this for real." I remember them saying that. It was like, "You sound like ..." They was like, "We sound like who we sound like, and we all crew and blah, blah, blah." But they like, "Yo, you sound like you can do this for real."
Emily Kwok: Wow.
Lupe Fiasco:
"On the radio for real." This is when we're still teenagers, still kicking things down in the basement. At the time, I'm also studying people like JayZ, Wu-Tang Clan, Ghost Face, AZ, these rappers to me are the top of the pop rappers, but learning how to rap. It's like, "I'm going to learn from the folks that are at the top now. I'm going to figure out their styles and figure out how to rap like them," and stuff like that. I think that's part of the reason why I was like, "Yo, you sound like you do this for real because I'm just pulling from these dudes who are actually doing it for real, state of the art." Lo and behold, I get a record deal or start looking at a record deal while I'm still in high school.
Emily Kwok: Wow.
Lupe Fiasco:
I'm still in high school, like mission complete. I'm looking at deals. It's real. It's like that. I went straight from high school into a record deal. There was no grace period of I had to wait two years and thug it out and work at McDonald's until I get my shot. It was like even though I did that, I worked at a fast food restaurant and quit to do an open mic or something like that. It was really strange. I quit to go do rapping, or that's the myth. I can't remember anymore.
Lupe Fiasco:
But anyway, you're in a profession really out of high school. I'm paying my dad's mortgage or the back taxes with my record deal advance. It's like, "Yeah, I'm in it. I'm a rapper now." But at a new ground zero, because now I got to master this industrial space. That's going to take three record deals to do. I get one record deal in one capacity, leave that record deal, go right into another record deal and another capacity, and then right out of that record deal into another record deal. In that record deal, I become what I am today. I'm Lupe Fiasco. That's when you get my first albums and everything.
Lupe Fiasco:
But that was between the time that I left high school, which was 2000, and the time I dropped my first record, it was 2006. It was six years of trial and error floating through the industry, wins and losses, ups and downs, finding the voice, and then you get 2006, album comes out and then you get that's nominated for three Grammys. You're like, "Yo, your next one's going to be nominated for such and such Grammys." Then your next one is too. Then the one after that is too, and then these two are going to be considered modern classics. Then this one's going to be ...
Lupe Fiasco:
It was just kind of you see, and you're going to be GQ Man of the Year 2006 too, so not only are you killing it on the music side, on the social, that side, you're also doing that. Then it's like, "Yeah, also, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, all of these things are happening and you're going to go travel the world and you're going to go on this big tour and all of the rappers that you grew up listening to, they all respect you now."They all look at you as you remind them of them type things. It's like, "Well, there you go."
Lupe Fiasco:
I find myself today getting the fruits of those laborers and I trace it back directly to just like, I remember when I didn't have enough words to rap. That was my dilemma. I don't know that many words. I got to get these words in my head, all the way up until now, where you're looked at your contemporaries and the folks I consider the grand masters of the craft, look at me in a same or similar or even more, a higher light than that. I guess that's a good summary of the music piece.
Emily Kwok:
What a trip. I have to say, how did your head not get big and explode because you have always been, at least in my experience, extremely relatable, very humble. I mean, when you just tied it back to that piece of I'm still a kid that remembers not having enough words, I wonder how many people can truly find those moments and link it back because you've achieved success. I mean, I'll just call generic success because I'm not sure if that is necessarily definition of success for you, but most people wouldn't know what to do with themselves. It seems like you were well equipped to sort of handle a lot of these different fireworks, if you will, without getting your hands burned or burning your eyebrows off your head.
Emily Kwok:
Do you think that when you think about this journey, how much of what you've done as a musical artist equates to talent versus work? Because you've spoken about the work that you had to do. How much of it do you also think might be a talent component or was this something that you really had to buckle down and put a lot of hours and thought into?
Lupe Fiasco:
A lot of it is luck. The initial conditions that got me to where I am, you have talent, you have work ethic, but there needs to be opportunity for that to have a place to express itself.
Lupe Fiasco:
There's this story I always tell. I won't tell it here but I'll paraphrase. My dad told me to go to my mom's house. It's like, "All right." Randomly, they live on complete opposite sides of town, multiple buses, one of those where you got to get on a completely different bus line to get onto the other bus line because my dad lived in the far south suburbs and my mom lived on the west side of Chicago. He was like, "Go get your sister," randomly. Like, "All right." Get on one bus, which takes you to a train, which takes you to the option of a bus and a train. It's like, "Okay, I'm going to take the bus instead of the train. The bus lets me off in front of my mom's house. The train lets me off behind my mom's house. Cool." Then it's like, "I'm going to get off on this stop. Okay, cool. And I'm going to walk up and okay."
Lupe Fiasco:
If I hadn't done that at combination, I would've missed this car that was just happened to be driving past full of dudes who were local producers and rappers who recognized me from being a rapper in the neighborhood around my mom's house. They're like, "Yo, we're going to this showcase. You should come with us."
Lupe Fiasco:
If I'd have got off on the train, if I'd a took the train, they wouldn't have saw me because I would've been on the other side coming up the back. But since I was on Front Street, it was like, "Yo, hey, what's up?" If they were doing a drive by though, it would be worse. It would be the whole opposite like, "There you go. Right there." If he would've took the train, he'd still be alive.
Lupe Fiasco:
But anyway, this dark, dark little turn. It's that luck aspect which is there too. When the door opens, when the opportunity presents itself, is your work ethic and your talent at a level to capitalize on that moment? Some people, no. Some people, yes. Some people may be missing. They got the talent, but the opportunity never presents itself. Or when the opportunity presents itself, they never put themselves in a position to be prepared at all times.
Lupe Fiasco:
My dad, we had a phrase which if you go to anybody who's ever trained with my dad and you'll say, "What is one thing that you know my dad said?" At the school it was like, "Are you ready?" "Always ready sensei." That was the thing. It was just like, "Always ready sensei." "What? " "Always ready sensei." Just crescendos, louder and louder. That's what we were is always ready sensei. State of constant readiness. I think that kind of bleeds into that like, "Okay, here we go. Let's perform. Let's go. Where we at? On top of this table? Sure. Let's do it. I'm ready."
Lupe Fiasco:
I have that to this day. It's like, "What are we doing? How many people out there? There's six people out there? Let's go. There's 600,000 people out there. Let's go. The mic don't work? Okay, cool. But cut the mic off then. We just going to scream. We going to do it."
Lupe Fiasco:
I always find ways to execute no matter what the circumstances are. Some people may not have that. It may need more preparation. The context has to be right. The candles have to be lit. Whereas other folks, they just like, "I don't even need music. Let's just dance right now. We'll figure it out."
Lupe Fiasco:
I mean, there's those components, but to a certain point, it's not about talent. These are kind of reflections. Maybe these are coming from a privileged state, but privileged based off talent, not necessarily privilege based off a resume where it's like what's more important? What would you rather have, talent or execution? It's like in this space, it's execution because there's a lot of people who aren't necessarily super talented, but they execute. There's a lot of people who are super talented who don't execute. It's like, "Well, what's the point in this space when you're actually coming into a commercial space or a space where you're serving the public in a certain thing?"
Lupe Fiasco:
There's a lot of talent. There's a lot of people that can sing. There's a lot of people that can dance. There's a lot of people that can rap. There's a lot of people ... There's a certain phenomenon of doing too much. You're expressing too much, whereas if you just expressed once a week or once a year or once every two years or once every five years, you'd be the man. But because it's so verbose, because it's so much, you get lost in your own talent, you get lost in your own skillset. It's like, "Okay." It becomes not special.
Emily Kwok:
Quality over quantity.
Lupe Fiasco:
There's a quantity issue, which sometime hinders people's performance, even though their performances are ridiculous. But it's too much. When somebody comes in with something very simple and very relative to their life, very personal, as opposed to something sophisticated and very complex, the person with a simple touch wins. They may lose that fight, but they win in that moment. They win over that person. All the people want to hang out with them. They look at you as being too sophisticated.
Emily Kwok:
Interesting. Another area that's really intriguing to me is the artistic area that I also see you exploring. I don't know how many of the listeners out there are aware that on Instagram you also have a martial arts account and you've also now got an art account and you're producing art and you're putting it out there. How did your artistic endeavors come about? You speak about early influences from your father. At what point did you decide to take that exploration a little bit further? What has inspired you to now start showing and also selling your art?
Lupe Fiasco:
I always, I'm not say I always, I can't draw, but I can write. I can always tell a story, a good story, even if it was a lie. But I remember way back in second, third grade, I had a friend named Terrence who's still friends today. I think he's a movie director-writer type situation. He could really, really draw. He was the dude in class who could really draw. He could draw characters and this and that, and I could write. I was like, "Yo, why don't we take my writing and put it with your drawing and create a little comic book." We had this ...
Lupe Fiasco:
What you're drawing and create a little comic book. And so we had this comic book called For Kids By Kids. And it was just us, the single prints, one of ones type situations. And I remember being interested in comic strips and stuff like that and comic books as a kid. And it's like, I want to make my own. And I remember having this comic strip called E-men and all I could really draw was these bubble E's and then I would put like an eyeball in it and then like some teeth and then maybe some random hair. And then I would like... And then but I could put a story in it. Right. Because I could the little thought bubble or the speak bubble. And then I would put in my little thing. Right.
Lupe Fiasco:
But I can't draw. Could never draw. And that always fascinated me. People who could draw always fascinated me. I was like, wow, that's fascinating that you can draw. And but it was something I just couldn't do. Right. And I didn't have, and maybe I'll end with what I think is what I experienced last night. So remind me in summary, what I was pondering last night about execution and mastery and stuff like this to a degree. But anyway, I couldn't... Always fascinated with people that could draw. I could never do it. And it was just kind of like, all right. I'm going to figure out other ways to kind of express myself. Right. And I was the dude who was like, when we go into a new city and kind of blowing out time.
Lupe Fiasco:
Right. So it's like I'm mixing a bunch of time periods right now. When I land in a city, you're on tour and it's like what is there to do in Denver? And it's like nothing. And it's like, all right, well, let's... Shout out to... No, no, no. Shout to Denver. Shout to Denver, man. It's not ragging on Denver, but it's the perfect example. Right? It's super cold. Right. It might be snowy. Literally, what is there to do? And it's like, let's go to the museum. In every city the go to is always a museum for me. It's like, let's go to ta museum. Let's go to this museum. Let's go to that museum. So I would always be, dude, let's go to the museum. They got a such and such museum. Let's go to that museum. So I'm constantly around art and observing art, absorbing art. And I think it's from that one, that tradition of wanting to be sophisticated. Another tradition of just experiencing new inspirations, getting new data points. Because now I got all the words, but now let me get all the images.
Lupe Fiasco:
So I found myself just kind of at the museums and I got a membership at the museum and I'm constantly at this museum. It's like, Hey, I want to do that. I think I could do that. Because for me, it's just a graduation from what I do in rap. Right. Which is very metaphoric, very conceptual, very taking different narratives and weaving them together in very interesting ways and presenting you with kind of these punch lines. And so I kind of looked at, especially a lot of contemporary art, as just visual punch lines. There's just this crazy punchline, right? Whether it be Damien Hirst or it be... I don't want to say Theaster Gates. I was going to say John Maynard Keynes for some reason, but Kerry James Marshall. Right.
Lupe Fiasco:
Where it is like here's this presentation, but here's the story behind it. It was like, oh wow. So I would be at these museums reading the placards. Right. That was my thing. I have probably more pictures of the placards, of the explanation of the piece, than maybe the piece itself.
Emily Kwok: Wow.
Lupe Fiasco:
Right. So for me, it was like, oh yeah, I could do that. Because those are placards. Right. If I could make those... Basically, my raps are these placards in rhyme form. Right. But without the picture or the photo or the sculpture. So it was like, all right. Let me... I'm bored. Let me do that. Because I got an idea for a piece. Right. Or I got an idea for a work. I got an idea to visualize this cliche or this metaphor or this punchline, and that's where it started.
Lupe Fiasco:
But not knowing how to paint. So it was kind of like, okay, but you don't know how to paint. So it's like, okay, well what can I do? It's like, oh there's photography. So I remember some of my first things was I was just out in the world, and I would just see things that were opposites, very ironic kind of opposites operating in real life. Not staged, just you see something that is two opposites working in tandem to form one thing like a yin yang type situation.
Emily Kwok:
A polarity. A polarity.
Lupe Fiasco:
Right. So these dual opposing forces, polarities. Right. And they will pop up in all these different places and arrangements. And one was, I'd be walking down the street in New York and the walk sign and the stop sign are on at the exact at same time.
Lupe Fiasco:
And it's like, well, what do you do in this? What do you do? Or I'd be outside of Detroit and there's a church connected to a strip club. Right. On the block. On one block, there's a church and a strip club. The strip club is painted like crazy aquamarine blue, like a crazy blue. The church is just very basic and gray, but they're connected. It's like they're the same building. It's almost like you can walk through the strip club and walk out the church type situation. I was like, oh, how does that work? And that's a joy division. Right. It's like, ah, that's a punchline. I snap a picture. Right.
Emily Kwok: Oh.
Lupe Fiasco:
And give it a title. And then it was like over the course of years, you've collected all of these little moments.
Lupe Fiasco:
It was like, Hey, maybe I should print these out and do a show you. Right. And that became like the first show. Right. Of me going around all around the world, finding these weird moments in time. And some cases there was another one called death boat. It was called lifeboat, ghost ship. And it was literally at the end of this road way out in the country, there was just this boat in the middle of a field or on the edge of a field. Right. The edge, just a boat. It's like, how did this boat get to this field? Right. And you come back months later, different season. Right. You see it in almost like the end of spring or the in the fall or whatever. And it's... Or not in the spring. Whatever. The sun's out, it's nice.
Lupe Fiasco:
There's a boat. You come back when it's snowing and somebody set the boat on fire. The boat has burned to the ground. I'm like, yo, what happened to that boat? You know? So luckily I took a picture of the boat in the field when it was alive.
Emily Kwok: Huh.
Lupe Fiasco:
When it was a life boat. And when I came back, it was like, oh, it's burned to the ground. It's a ghost ship. Right. And so then you got these two dual. I was like, boom, cool. There you go. You didn't have to work for that. You just had to wait, let nature and culture take its course. Right. Vandalism take its course. And then capture it. So I found myself in these interesting moments. I was like, okay, cool, boom. That's one. That's one whole train of thought. And then it was like, you know what?
Lupe Fiasco:
I want to go to art school. I want to go to the center St. Marks. I want to go to RISD. I want to go to a art school and learn this. Going back to that moment of in high school, it's like if I want to go to college I want to go and learn something I want to learn. And it was art. I want to do this. Right? There's something to this. But I couldn't. It was like, what are you talking about? You're still on tour. What are you talking about?
Emily Kwok:
Also I mean, I've got to imagine there's an element of when you become a celebrity, does it make it difficult for you to function and do the things that you would do as a regular person? Right? Because you might not be... Are you able to fully embrace the experience of what it is that you're doing or do people or does the circumstance distract you because everybody else sees something else that you're not trying to be invested in? If that makes sense.
Lupe Fiasco:
Oh yeah. No people think you're crazy. They think you're faking it. They can't take it serious.
Emily Kwok: Huh.
Lupe Fiasco:
Because they know you for one thing. Right? So it's a struggle where it's like, okay, I can't use Lupe Fiasco. This is because it's not Lupe Fiasco. This is me. This is Wasalu Jaco. This is my mind. If anything, Lupe Fiasco is similar to these art things that I've been doing. He's a production of Wasalu's way of thinking. Right. And it created a Lupe Fiasco and Lupe fiasco is just a audible vehicle. Right. But here's the visual vehicles and stuff like that. So some people don't take it serious. And it becomes, you find yourself in immediate competition with artists who did go to school, who did do it as a professional thing, who are part of galleries and stuff like that.
Lupe Fiasco:
And it's like, I got to set up my own shows and all these different things. And you're kind of tainted because you're used to being Lupe Fiasco. So there's certain cache and a certain demand and expectation for that, that doesn't exist here because now you're just a dude trying to take somebody else's real estate with people who can draw. Right? They can draw. I'm a realist painter, I can draw you. I could make you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Right. And it's like, well, I just know how to throw some paint on a thing and scratch it. Like I could do that. And there's a certain level of kind of feeling like you don't belong. But it's... I put myself through school, but just not in a traditional way. Right. So I went and was like, I'm going to put myself through my own version of art school.
Lupe Fiasco:
Right. And built a studio way out in the middle of nowhere and was just like, all right, let's just throw some stuff at the wall. Let's see what happens. Any idea, just put it down, do your best to fulfill. You got this crazy idea for bobbing for apples, but you're going to use 40 ounce bottles full of paint, and all right. Do it. Let's see what happens. And then like, oh MoMA has this little course about abstract expressionist. So yeah. I'm going to take that course. Right. Let's take that online course. Cool. My friends an amazing painter. So I'm going with her and like, Hey, teach me the basics. Right. And so, I'm actually literally apprenticing under working artist who's selling work and phenomenal in her own right.
Lupe Fiasco:
And then just hitting museums to learn new styles and learning new things. And let me talk to this curator and let me get... So I put myself through what I felt was a world class level art program. Right. But it was completely ghetto. It was like completely... But then, you do a show and everything sells out. Right. And he is like, oh, did we just sell out of everything? Yeah, we did. He was like, oh my God. Did dude just offer me six figures for this? Yeah, he did. Right. And you're like, oh, oh, I'm here. I'm here. Right. It's legit. It's authentic. I can look at people and they'll say, how much does this cost?
Lupe Fiasco:
And just to be fair, there's certain things that I'll just create for me. I'm not selling it. And that's for... I did that because I wanted to express this idea and it's for me, for my own consumption. And there's other things where I make to sell. And it's like, I'll say a price for something. And you see people's faces like, nah. Yeah, yeah. That's the price. And that's not me like making up the price for you right now. That's what I just sold some of these for prior. Right. And it's just kind of, you got to sit there and it's real. It's like you're proving yourself to like, no, it's real. The commercial side is real, the artistic... It may not be accepted at the level institutionally from a gallery standpoint, but I mean, it's accepted. I have collectors and I do shows and people come to them and they write reviews. It's like yeah, this is a thing.
Emily Kwok:
I actually... That brings me to the next question that I wanted to ask you, which was at what point, when you're an apprentice or a student where you've studied something for a while and you've put yourself through the paces and you've tried to meet every opportunity. At what point do you feel you've come into your own and you feel all right about or you feel with conviction that you have started to reach a level of mastery yourself in any of the disciplines that you've studied or anything it is that you look at? Because I find that that moment it emerges, and sometimes I have to look at that moment in retrospect. It's almost like I missed the moment when it happened. And the way that I relate to it is in jujitsu, as I was competing and creating my own career, I was so deeply immersed in what was happening at the time that it wasn't until maybe I got to the other side and I had to receive more external value or gratification that it made me turn around and acknowledge what I had accomplished myself.
Emily Kwok:
And you've done this multiple times. Is there a definitive moment where you feel that you have sort of transcended being the student or the apprentice and achieved that level of mastery?
Lupe Fiasco:
In plastic arts. In the fine arts, no. I still feel like I'm dawdling around. I still go and apprentice under world class painters. So whenever I get the opportunity to go hold canvas for Futura, let's go. Yeah. There's... I think mastery is kind of like Satori, right? So in Zen Buddhism, in certain aspects of Zen Buddhism, certain traditions of Zen, there's different ones. Right. There is the concept of satori, right. Which is kind of like this instant enlightenment. Right. That you achieve working through koans. Right? And processing and meditation, and these cycles. Right. And then at a certain moment, you reach satori and you're enlightened. Right. Is there a dharma transmission and all the other kind of deeper stuff? I don't know. But there's that piece of, ah, you figured it out. Go, my child. You're done. Right.
Lupe Fiasco:
And for other folks, it's more of it's not that. it may, it may not be a certain instant epiphany kind of point. It's a consistent journey. Right? And there's a... Mastery is less of a central point and more of a spectrum. that you have to maintain. Right. And you can choose to maintain your mastery or not, but there's that kind of option. So and I believe that there's potentially many more. Depends on how you choose to frame mastery and define it. For me in the rap space, because it's most clear of my mastery in the rap space. It's a certain mushin, which is borrowed again from the martial arts, which is like no mind. Where you just respond to the moment. Right? You're just so aware of what needs to happen, that you just, okay, it's a commercial record.
Lupe Fiasco:
It's about this. It's about that. It's about this, about that. Okay. Boom, pop. Right? You lay down the first pat, the first word, and then it just builds itself because you're kind of automated. Right. And there's moments of where you smile because you know your brain has automatically constructed something elegant. And so it's these repeated moments of humor and elegance that you've tooken to opposing or even similar forces and have combined them in a certain fashion that they express something new, but on multiple levels. Right? So for some folks it may be the entendre right. So the entendre is one of the kind of signs that you can point to in rap that shows mastery, plus. Right? Where you're able to craft and create single sentences that have multiple meanings.
Lupe Fiasco:
And quadruple entendres, triple entendres, double entendres, stuff like that. And not in a traditional sense of entendres in terms of being a dirty joke. That's the core of it, right? You say something that has a sexual undertone.
Emily Kwok:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lupe Fiasco:
But the way we've kind of taken entendre in a rap space to create these multiplicity of meaning out of a single thing. Right? To the point where it was, we were taking it to, when I say we, I started this organization called SOSA, society of spoken art, which kind of pulled in all these master, literally, master rappers and created this Guild. We have apprentice, journeyman, masters, grand masters and a level above that. But around all these masters, where we kind of superficially set a time was like, oh, you had to be doing this for 10 years.
Lupe Fiasco:
If you're doing rap and was what we call nice. Meaning like very skilled for 10 years, you're a master. Right? But there's also understanding there's levels within mastery. Right? Of like people who are really good at certain things or have a mastery over certain things. But it kind of comes down to one, if you had to point at one operation that if you can successfully pull off, it would be these entendres. So it was getting to the point where we were crafting systems to produce entendre. Or it got to that point, it was like I can make a cognitive machine. That will just produce entendres. Or I'm able to, we're able to now look at entendres where... This is a perfect example. We call them spoon raps. Right? And if you ever look at a spoon, you look at a spoon, it's always inverted.
Lupe Fiasco:
You know, you look at your reflection in the dish, it's inverted. You turn to the other way, it's still inverted. Just the way the reflection or refraction, whatever it's called, works. The optics. And anyway, these spoon raps were like, how can I create a rap that when you look at it, it has meaning in four directions. Right? It continued... There's no way that you can turn this or look at this and it not have a meaning. Right? And it was like palindromes and some [inaudible 01:06:14] laps and all these kind of standard operations. But it was like, what can we do to understand it if you flipped it upside down. Right. Would it still work? And we would come up with these very simple... And when I say we, it's these are things that you have to do in tandem with other masters because the cognitive load is so high, you need four masters or five masters working on this one thing.
Lupe Fiasco:
And it would be like, okay, you mop down. Right. And it was like, you mop down. What is it? What is that? And you're like, oh, it is a [inaudible 01:06:49] because you can read it, it's you mop down this way and you mop down that way. But then if you flip it upside down, it's still you mop down. If you flip the other way, it's still you mop down. Right. And it was like, okay, we got the word you. We got mop. We got down. We got to play with the graphics. So now we got to get into text and different fonts to accomplish this. So now we got to establish a font, almost like those old kidnap like I had the money, I have the... Bring the money, the ransom letters like bring the money to the side of the beach. But it's made out of different pieces of magazines cut up.
Lupe Fiasco:
So we were diving into these operations of... Because we were all able to do triple entendres and quadruple entendres. We're able to just do them like this. You want entendre? Bam. Right. Sit, think about it for a little bit. Bam. Here it goes, blah, blah, blah. And not only do one, but I could make a whole rap out of one. Just the whole rap will be one big entendre. Right. And be like, oh God, I can listen to it this way. But then it means this. And then it means that and this. And then it got to the point where it's like, okay, can you read this upside down? Right. And you're finding yourself like, yo, what are we doing?
It's like, are we high? What's happening?
Emily Kwok:
Little bit too far down the rabbit hole.
Lupe Fiasco:
But it's, to other masters, it's mind blow... It's this is where we are. This is the bleeding edge of what we do.
Emily Kwok: Yeah.
Lupe Fiasco:
And you look back and you see who else is doing that. There's definitely gap and a separation between the layman in rap and then folks who are operating at these really, really high rabbit hole type levels, but still producing things that come off very subtle, very simple. Almost not good. Like this isn't good. This is stupid, this is plain or super basic. And it's like... Flip it upside down. And then it's like... oh my God. Oh, no. So I constantly find myself in conversation with other masters of the form.
Lupe Fiasco:
Well, I constantly find myself in conversation with other masters of the form. And I'm actually on my way to my grand mastery, similar to art school where you have to create your... Maybe art school. But there was this... Sorry for rambling. I came upon these guys who were building cars and they were doing metal work. And I guess one of the tasks that proved that they had a mastery in metalworking was they were able to hammer out I think a sphere by hand, kind of like drawing a perfect circle. Dude kind of had it in his shop where it was this semi-circle spheris thing where it's like, "That's the sign of mastery and metal working, is this."
Lupe Fiasco:
The Magnum Opus, your master work. So in order to get into my grand mastery around my other crew of masters is I have to present a Magnum Opus. So I've been writing my Magnum Opus for the past maybe couple years as kind of my submission for grand mastery. And it's just taking an idea and then building that idea out to a certain degree where, again, it just exhibits an ability to build things with words that have just multiple dimensions. I actually got to present that to some of the masters so I can get my grand master certification.
Emily Kwok:
Wow. That sounds really exciting. I'm sure they're looking forward to hearing it, but I can't imagine how the rest of the world feels about it, because you certainly have a really loyal and dedicated fan base. I want to be mindful of your time, so I have a couple other questions just to wrap up. When I think about people who really excel in whatever their field is, they are often doing something that nobody else can do or they're doing it in a way that nobody else has done. When you think about who you are as a complete artist, and I won't define that in any of the different realms that you operate within, and I don't know if this is Lupe or Wasalu, but what do you do better than anyone else?
Lupe Fiasco:
Nothing. I don't think I do anything better than anybody else. There's folks around me who rap way better than I can. There's folks who do martial arts way, way better than I can. There's, again, folks who paint way, way better than I can. They talk better than I can. There's folks who do everything that I do way better. So for me, I always just go back to is that it's luck. And not to discount talent, discount skill, it's luck and execution but I'm going to execute. Right. So there's folks who do it way, way, way, way, way better, but maybe they're not executing. And the difference between me and them is I execute.
Lupe Fiasco:
And there's other folks who... Again, it's that quantity thing. You're doing too much. I'm going to do just enough. And it's those differences that I think what hesitations versus always trying to capitalize on something, being very, very methodical about certain things versus just being very, very much so gung ho about jumping into things, understanding the cycles and the cycle of ebb and flow. Rising tide and the title forces. The tide's going to come back in, so don't build your house right there.
Emily Kwok: Why not?
Lupe Fiasco:
It's going to come back. It's not here now, but it's going to come back and you're going to have problems. And so some of it is very much so just understanding, problem solving, staying out of the way of certain things.
Lupe Fiasco:
Some people are super duper talented, super duper rich, super duper wealthy, super duper... Pop, pop, pop, but they're dead because they couldn't get out of the way. And that's real. And so you look at artists who are super geniuses, super duper wealthy, super duper... They are dead. Killed by their fame, killed by their this, killed by the jealousies, killed by this, killed by their own intake of their own toxicities. And I always kind of keep that in mind. What's the good of being a master if you're dead? What's the good of being talented if you're dead? What's the good of being rich if you're dead? I always say this to my friends who critique... I always say, you can be broke anywhere. At least be broke where it's safe.
Lupe Fiasco:
You can be poor anywhere. You could be poor on top of the mountain. You could be poor in the desert. That's always going to happen, but you could be safer over here and be poor, but be safe. What's the point of being poor and in danger? So it's little algorithms like that, that I think separate me from other folks and separate other folks from me, people who have a better algorithm than even the one that I have that are able to achieve certain things, cetera.
Lupe Fiasco:
And then also, just not to... Maybe one point, which is probably a little bit more technical and people take with as something that they can actually use is don't discount the team. Everybody that I know that is super successful, has a team. They have a really great team. Or if they're not the executor, they have a teammate who's the executor. And I witnessed that because I lost my team. My manager who I was with during this whole ride went to prison. And when he went to prison, he was the guard and the executor. And when he went away, I lost the guard and executor.
Lupe Fiasco:
And so then you get this bum rush of folks who wouldn't dare step into the equation if my manager was still present. And so you realize, "Ah, it wasn't just the talent. It was also the team. It was also this, it was also that." And so a lot of my behind the scenes during my career was actually trying to rebuild the team, reinstall the team, create these things that are needed to protect the talent, to create the luck, so to speak, and to maintain the work ethic. Because you already got work ethic, but it's very vulnerable. You have talent, talent's very, very vulnerable. Talent can't defend itself, so you need another layer of something to defend the talent, to maintain a work ethic, and to go out and produce and create the opportunities, "the luck." And when you lose those pieces or you don't have those pieces, that's also a part of the lack of success or the lack of progression or however you want to call it.
Emily Kwok:
I also hear in what you're saying, this idea of reducing the friction so that the artists or the talent can create and do what it is that they are best at doing. Sometimes when we are wearing too many hats and doing too many things that aren't actually aligned with our inner purpose, that can create a lot of friction that can either slow you down or in some moments actually just completely jack you up and create problems for you. So that's a great point that you brought up. In closing, I'd love to, if you're willing to, bring us back to an earlier moment in our chat where you said you were reflecting on your father last night and it was relative to execution and mastery. And I'm wondering if you would be willing to expand your thoughts on that.
Lupe Fiasco:
Sure. It's a little interesting. It wasn't necessarily about my dad, but it's the looking at the meta of our conversations thus far, which has been great. I apologize for laboring on. I got to do better with that. I deal with OCD. Self-diagnosed, but also YouTube diagnosed, but also experience-diagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. And the way my mind works is I always try and figure out... You sit back and you reflect on what is this? Why is this? What can it be used for? What are all the different components of it outside of just it expressing itself and washing your hands or something like that. And so through the years, I've come up with ways to use it.
Lupe Fiasco:
It's part of my creative process, being able to create narrative that is constantly referencing itself. So this self-referential cycle is like, "Hmm, maybe that's an extension of me having this OCD, where you're constantly going to a narrative." But it changes over time. You don't wash your hands the same exact way. There's always some slight variation, et cetera. So it's like, "Hmm, what if I do that with a narrative or with a word? Or maybe this is the different variations of this word." I sit on it because I ruminate, I think about it. And thinking about it breaks down all of its constituent components. So we had a kind of a little conversation at [inaudible 01:20:04] where it's like, "How does your mental health impact your creative process?"
Lupe Fiasco:
So you think of things like savants that are autistic, that can create a painting that is just so detailed, but they're completely gone. They're at savant level of autism, way on the other side of the spectrum. So it's like, "What is your mental illness or your mental deficiency or your handicap that actually powers your creative process?" And so because we're around all of these literal masters, some of the best rappers in the world and people, like, "You know what? Let me think, what is wrong with me first? Let me see how that does. Maybe it is a thing there." And it's just a conversation to explore that piece.
Lupe Fiasco:
And that's kind of what we do at [inaudible 01:21:03], have these, "What about this? How does bacon affect the creative process? Hey, I have an idea about pork supply chains." So thinking about my OCD, and I was thinking, "Okay, there's one aspect. It powers the creative in this weird way. And if I can isolate it to that, then it has a use case and blah, blah, blah." It's Ramadan right now, so I'm fasting. And during Ramadan, the fasting isn't really a big deal, the eating part, luckily, thank God. But it's more the mental, maintaining the mental, maintaining a certain mental clarity within prayer. And there's a ablution, like a ritual purification washing type thing that you have to do before prayers. It's not crazy. It's not super over the top, but it is a process. And it's 30 steps. And I know it's 30 steps because I counted them, because why not?
Lupe Fiasco:
And so that ritual state of purity, it can be broken. So if you pass gas, you go to the bathroom, you break it, you got to redo it. And so since I was a kid and really getting into... Islam, you don't really take praying serious until you're about 13, when it becomes, like, "You got to do it. Get up and pray." It's like, "No!" There's always been this, like, "Did I just pass gas? Ah, I got to go do this thing again." Then as you're doing it, you're like, "Yo, did I just pass gas? Ah, I got to go do this again." You're in the middle of prayer, you're like, "Yo, did I just pass gas? Oh, I got to do this all over again." It becomes, like, "Oh, I got OCD." That was kind of like the trigger.
Emily Kwok: Oh, dear.
Lupe Fiasco:
So it's something that I deal with to this day, and it created all these little sub rituals and all this other weird stuff. But during Ramadan... Because Ramadan is such an intense spiritual... There's been all this kind of layering of the importance and the spiritual of Ramadan that it really dials things in on you, especially if you're OCD. So anyway, finding tactics kind of lessen it, not think about things, not worry about it too much. Hence, why I know how many steps it is because I'm going to just count. And as long as I hit 30, I know I'm done type situation. Anyway, between a mix of stumbling into some Allen Watts and on YouTube, and then just really, again, sitting back and thinking about what it is, how it is, and how it would be used.
Lupe Fiasco:
And you mentioned a word called purpose, and this is going to be interesting. Last night I was like, "The core of OCD is non-committal, is non-commitment. At its most fundamental, you're not committing." And because you're not committing it, you're constantly fluctuating between extremes across the spectrum. "Did you do it? Didn't you do it? Did you do it? Didn't you do it?" And if you step back and you look at it, it's because you're not committing. And then I did an inner perspective of the entirety of my existence. I was like, "Yeah, I'm very much so non-committal. I don't really commit to this. I don't really commit to that."
Lupe Fiasco:
I literally have a game of Go that I started playing against myself, that's just sitting over in the corner right now, that's just like, "Are you going to finish me?" It's like, "Please?" I literally took it off the table and sat it closer to the floor and was like, "I'll get to you later." And then you think about all the books that I have, it's like, "Did I finish?" And the books are like, "Are you going to finish us? You see the bookmark. Come on, man." And there's a certain level of non-commitment. Maybe it goes to that jack of all trades, master of none. See how it comes back together? Where, here's all these spaces where what's the source of your non-committal? Is it just you don't have enough time in the day to finish because you have multiple things going, getting a jack of all trades thing?
Lupe Fiasco:
Is it literally like, "Look, you need to stop and ponder this to really understand instead of just rushing through it and putting yourself at a disadvantage because you're more so focused on the finish line than the race."? And what's the point of winning the race if you break your ankles to get there type situation. You want to race, but now you can't walk for the rest of your life. But this thing about non-commitment leads me into saying, "Oh, the cure for it is to commit." And that things like purpose, purpose is a crutch. Purpose is actually... I don't want to say it's a negative, but it's not going to help you unless you commit. Commitment is what is most important with purpose or without purpose. Purpose doesn't matter. Purpose can either just hide things for a little while or give you a sense of value or something like that.
Lupe Fiasco:
But if you're still not willing to commit to that purpose, then it doesn't matter. The purpose just becomes a bunch of mental cognitive baggage or actual physical material baggage. Because now you bought a sew machine and you got all these fabrics and you're going to start a clothing line, but, "I'll do it tomorrow." Now you got a room full of purpose but no commitment so none of that stuff matters. And eventually it'll rot and you have to throw it away or put it on eBay. And just think about that across all dimensions of work and capacity and life. And I really got to drilling down on it. And this is all taking place in the bathroom. So this is all taking place in the shower and I'm like, "Yeah, commit. Your hip hurts because you're not committing to standing up straight. So stand up straight."
Lupe Fiasco:
You're going through these OCD moments because you're not committing to the reality. OCD is about feelings. Even if something happens in reality and you're short of recording it on camera, there's the feeling that you didn't do it, or that you need to do it again because you're not committing to reality. So there's something about committing to the reality of things outside of the purpose of things, but committing to the action and in that there's a solve, at least for me, for the OCD side. But is that true across other spectrums, committing to a reality? And how much is non-commitment a part of a lot of the problems and trials and tribulations, psychological mismanifestations that we have, misdiagnosis and stuff like that, where it seems like it's an array of lack of purpose? It's an array of lack of this, a lack of resources, a lack of that. And it really is just a lack to commit to something. So that was my thing that kind of flared up and was like, "Oh, I was just thinking about this last night."
Emily Kwok:
I love it. It's a great thought for us to end off on. I can't thank you enough for taking this time to speak with me. I have to say, I love listening to you, Lupe, for all intensive purposes because your mind and your curiosity just go to so many different in places. And I hope if the world didn't already know that you go far beyond making rap music, that maybe they'll get a touch of that here. And I really appreciate you sharing some of these lessons and observations throughout your life, beautiful memories and history that you have with your father and your mentors and your mother. I just loved everything that you had to say, so thank you. Do you have anything that you'd like to talk about, relative to where people can find you or any projects that you're working on that people should watch out for?
Lupe Fiasco:
Yeah. Hit me up on at the social medias @Lupefiasco, Twitter and Instagram. But also, like you said earlier, I started a page specifically for art, it's Wasalujacoworks on Instagram. And you can go to Wolfstudio.xyz if you want to buy or purchase some of that art or get a deeper understanding. Wasalujacoworks on the Instagram if you're interested in the physical art, plastic works and stuff like that. And if you just want to know about some shows and some raps and buy some merch, go to Lupefiasco.com.
Emily Kwok:
You're going on tour this year, now that we're getting out of COVID, that'll be exciting for people to be able to see you live, in the flesh.
Lupe Fiasco:
In the fleshes, yes. End of the year. Food and liquor tour and all of dates and all that stuff is at lupefiasco.com.
Emily Kwok:
Beautiful, Lupe, thank you so much. I hope we get a chance... I just thought to myself, I could keep questioning you for hours and hours, but obviously you have a life and I have to get back to mine, but hopefully we'll have a chance to engage again in the future and learn again from you. Thank you very much, Lupe.
Lupe Fiasco:
Absolutely. Thank you
