Latest Release
- JUN 28, 2024
- 8 Songs
- Lasers · 2011
- Late Registration · 2005
- Lupe Fiasco's The Cool (Deluxe Edition) · 2007
- Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, Pt. 1 (Deluxe Version) · 2012
- Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor · 2006
- Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor · 2006
- Lasers · 2011
- Just the Way You Are - Deluxe Single · 2010
- Samurai · 2024
- Lupe Fiasco's The Cool (Deluxe Edition) · 2007
Essential Albums
- Some of the best moments on The Cool hearken back to the nimble mischief of A Tribe Called Quest; “Paris, Tokyo” is Lupe’s holler-back to Tribe’s classic “Award Tour,” while “Gold Watch,” with its tricky beat and trickier rhymes, might be the album’s best song. As his music grows beyond the simple nostalgia of his 2006 hit “Kick, Push,” Lupe weaves what are easily mainstream rap’s most ambitious verses
Albums
- 2018
- 2017
- 2024
- 2024
- 2024
- 2024
Artist Playlists
- Kick, push, and coast into the mind of one of hip-hop's most conscious voices.
- His dense, passionate rap style inspired several generations.
- Political activists, soulful crate diggers, and Chi-Town legends.
Appears On
More To Hear
- The artist talks about his track "Galveston."
- A curation inspired by the Juneteenth Freedom Songs playlist.
- Lupe Fiasco and Kaelin Ellis talk about their HOUSE EP.
- The artist teams up with Kaelin Ellis for the HOUSE EP.
- Tunes to help a young traveler get through the family vacation.
About Lupe Fiasco
A brilliant lyricist with a nimble, self-assured flow, Lupe Fiasco has shaped a career with juxtapositions that have grown continually more complex and rewarding since he arrived on the scene in the mid-’00s. The Chicago rapper born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco in 1982 manages to be both a pop star and a conscious-rap cult hero, able to skate through references to Nietzche, metaphors about yoga, and the excess of hip-hop culture with an easy nonchalance. With a flea-market mixing board and a stack of used vinyl, Fiasco began creating music in his father’s basement at 18, eventually finding inspiration in the thoughtful lyricism and jazz inflection of artists like Nas and The Watts Prophets. Fiasco’s record deal in the early ’00s was the first of many rocky major-label relationships, but the mentorship of JAY Z and an attention-grabbing verse on “Touch the Sky” from Kanye West’s Late Registration made Food and Liquor one of the most hotly anticipated debuts of 2006. On that record and its 2007 follow-up, The Cool, Fiasco’s verses were loaded with ideas and delivered with dexterous flourish, musing on small pleasures—like his love of skateboarding—and the impending apocalypse alike. When his third album, Lasers, was released in 2011 after a protracted label battle, the rapper’s dedicated cult following was rewarded with an artistic journey that had grown increasingly cinematic and conceptually ambitious. Fiasco’s layered, string-adorned 2015 release, Tetsuo & Youth, was another critical and popular triumph, filled with moments that rushed by in a glittering sweep. True to form, it was a Fiasco album with depth that revealed itself after repeated listens, emblematic of an artist who has never shied away from big ideas.
- HOMETOWN
- Chicago, IL, United States
- BORN
- February 16, 1982
- GENRE
- Hip-Hop/Rap