Lupe Fiasco

Hot 100 Roundup: Jerrod Niemann Gets Happy, Passion Pit Tells A Sad Story, Karmin Remains Annoying, And More

This week the new entries in the Hot 100 attain a near-perfect balance: Two good to great records (Passion Pit and Jerrod Niemann), two terrible ones (Karmin and Macklemore), and a bunch of mediocre stuff in the middle. Over the course of a year, the quality of the Hot 100 usually settles into a nor ... More >>

Hot 100 Roundup: Brandy Comes Back, Lil Wayne Gets Gross, And More

Editors' note: Each week in this space, chart-watcher Robert Myers will offer his reactions to all the new entries on the Hot 100, Billboard's big board for popular songs. The late-summer doldrums continue in the world of Hot 100 debuts with two less-than-stunning rap records that won't be on the c ... More >>

The Trouble With Lupe Fiasco Goes Beyond Pete Rock And Touching "T.R.O.Y."

It was all good for Lupe Fiasco just two albums ago. By 2008, the Chicago MC, co-signed by Jay-Z and brought on the Glow In The Dark Tour by Kanye West, had released two critically acclaimed albums, Food & Liquor and The Cool, and built on a reputation as a nimble lyricist with a political bent forg ... More >>

On Saturday, 20,000 People Could Be Doing Yoga and Dancing to 'Thriller' on Wall Street

​On September 17, 20,000 people will pitch tents and set up kitchens at Chase Manhattan Plaza in an occupation of Wall Street that will last for months -- or at least, that's what the organizers of Occupy Wall Street are hoping for. According to them, the event will involve a couple thousand p ... More >>

Every Day I Write: Music-Related Events At This Year's Brooklyn Book Festival

​ At last year's Brooklyn Book Festival, Joshua Clover and Ta-Nehisi Coates argued the relative merits of Roxette's "Listen to Your Heart" and Public Enemy's "Fight the Power." The year before, Ian MacKaye (on a panel with Thurston Moore and Lupe Fiasco) decried the overuse of the phrase "Goog ... More >>

Lupe Fiasco Debuts New Track, Calls Glenn Beck A Racist, Admits He Didn't Vote For Obama

Lupe Fiasco's Lasers is another in a long line of albums held up by record-label issues, with fans going so far as to organize Fiasco Friday, an October protest march on Atlantic's New York offices. Which was a success, actually: The album is officially dropping on March 8, and today the Chicago M ... More >>

Here's Das Racist's "All Tan Everything," Earnestly Explained, Line By Line

​Perhaps you are familiar with Rap Genius, a useful interactive site that aims to "discover the meaning of rap lyrics" by painstakingly explaining every single line of various popular tunes -- at press time Lil Wayne's "Hoes & Ladies" is exactly 13 percent explained, with Rick Ross' "Made Men" ... More >>

GOOD Friday: Kanye West Preps for "Runaway" Video Release, Drops "Don't Look Down"

At 8 p.m. ET the Kanye West-directed 35-minute music video, starring Selita Ebanks and narrated by Nicki Minaj, will debut concurrently on MTV, MTV2, BET, MTV.com, BET.com and VH1.com. (The video above showcases the opening scene.) Leading up the premiere, West again came through on his promise of ... More >>

Lupe Fiasco's #FiascoFriday March on Atlantic Records Is Underway, Right Now

Fiasco Friday, undeterred by the weather. All photos via LupE.N.D.​The official start time for Fiasco Friday, the coordinated march of Lupe Fiasco fans (and, allegedly, Lupe Fiasco himself) on the New York and Chicago offices of Atlantic Records in protest of their long-standing (and now remed ... More >>

Victorious Lupe Fiasco Fans Will Still March on Atlantic Records This Friday

Lupe Fiasco and Atlantic President Julie Greenwald, pals again.​Last week's most unlikely good news? That a grassroots, online, surprisingly young movement of Lupe Fiasco fans seemed to have actually convinced Atlantic Records, the label sitting on Lupe's new album for going on two years now, ... More >>

Lupe Fiasco's Lasers Has A Release Date

​So Atlantic Records has been sitting on Lupe Fiasco's new record, Lasers, for a couple years now, an untenable state of affairs given that "he's really much more than just a rapper from Chicago -- he represents a generation, and a movement," as it was explained to us last week by the guy plan ... More >>

Week in Review: Report Gang Activity

Have seen you seen this man?​In the week we wondered if it was still possible to sell out in 2010 (short answer: no), we also found ourselves introduced to the horrific new term "rape gaze," about which the less that's now said, the better. Cleanse your palate with the six best things you can ... More >>

Week In Review: Kill Harvilla, But Get Belly To Reunite First

​It was the week White America lost its mind, as did the guy who wrote a song called "Kill Harvilla" and sent us both the lyrics (not bad) and the instrumental MP3 (very bad). But we here at SOTC prefer more constructive exercises, like listing every '90s band that hasn't reunited yet. A lot o ... More >>

Meet the Surprisingly Young Guy Who Is Organizing Lupe Fiasco's Protest Against Atlantic Records

Won't somebody please liberate this record?​Matthew La Corte is a 17-year-old rap fan from West Paterson, New Jersey. Specifically, Matthew's a fan of Lupe Fiasco, the bright, tortured, socially-conscious Chicago rapper whose third album, Lasers, has been infinitely delayed by his record label ... More >>

Introducing Fiasco Friday, A Quixotic Plan to Picket the Offices of Atlantic Records In the Name of Lupe Fiasco

As far back as 2007, Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco was threatening to quit music and telling us, "The entity of recorded music really sucks, it's really wack, especially when you're doing it through a major. It's like, you don't make any money unless you sell tons and tons of records. And I'm not sel ... More >>

The Top Ten Rap Supergroups That Never Happened

Over the weekend, the rapper Sean Price took to Twitter to propose a collaboration album between his own Brooklyn-based Boot Camp Clik hip-hop crew and Staten Island's mighty Wu-Tang Clan. The idea has been received rapturously. But then again, theoretical hip-hop supergroups usually are. Rap's hi ... More >>

B.o.B Fulfills His Destiny, Goes #1

​Not to brag or anything, but Sean Fennessey pretty much called this exact turn of events a full month ago. The success of The Adventures of Bobby Ray, which sold 84,000 copies out of the gate, was a phenomenon long in the making--follow, if you care to, his team's careful set of decisions, fr ... More >>

Spring Guide: Londoners the xx and More

Enjoying American top-10 lists with the hit Brits

Cornel West Disses Jay-Z!

​"Guys like Talib Kweli and Lupe Fiasco rap messages and have something to say," America's second most famous living public intellectual told the University of Buffalo's Spectrum. "Now Jay-Z is on the radio and he's talented, but he's just not at the level he use to be at on Reasonable Doubt a ... More >>

KRS-One Is Your New Santa, America

And Lupe Fiasco is your new head reindeer, Blitzen. Somewhere in here there's an indignant note to be plucked about the guy who made "The Bridge Is Over" doing novelty raps for Nike, but even the puppetry has like ten brilliant visual jokes per bit, we give up, we just like it, sorry hip-hop. Up t ... More >>

News Roundup: Radiohead, Weezer, Brooklyn Book Festival, Them Crooked Vultures, The Verve

​--A new Radiohead track was mysteriously posted at the fan site Atease yesterday. "These Are My Twisted Words" is a two-minute number that may just well be the sing-along anthem of the summer. Just kidding. It's an eerie, echoey five-and-a-half minutes of noise and Thom Yorke's vocals don't e ... More >>

News Roundup: Lupe Fiasco, Elliott Smith, Brooklyn Bowl, Late Night TV

-- Lupe Fiasco released the first single from his upcoming album, Lasers. The track is the spacey "Shining Down," which has Lupe taking a dig at autotune by using it. It leaked last month to the rapper's dismay. He plays Governors Island on Sept 11 (tickets go on sale Friday at noon) and SUNY's Dewa ... More >>

Week in Review: I've Never Seen So Many Sick Weirdos Gathered in One Place

Rebecca Smeyne In the week one of us had to publicly defend himself against the crime of using the phrase "Fey Highwayman," we watched with amusement as close SOTC affiliate Christopher R. Weingarten became a viral video poster boy for the death of music criticism. Poetic choice of t-shirts, Chris! ... More >>

The Lupe Fiasco "Shining Down" Leak: Point, Counterpoint

Lupe Fiasco's new "Shining Down," the hyper-lyrical first single destined for his forthcoming Lasers, leaked in full quality today, to some considerable controversy. In response to the song's rapid transit around the internet, Fiasco posted an outraged statement to the comments section of the LupE ... More >>

On Big City Philadelphia's "How to Rob An Industry Hipster"

Rapper-robbing: a time-honored tradition. And rap "hipsters" are easy targets: Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, Asher Roth, Kid Sister? Alright...This from a rapper whose official bio reads: A deal from Beanie's label State Property was on the table when fate would intervene yet again. Big City's affiliatio ... More >>

Coachella: Paul McCartney's Coming to the Desert

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Photos from the 2008 Virgin Mobile Festival

Status Ain't Hood Podcasts 39 & 40

Bun B and Prodigy, On Their Own

Emotionally fraught solo nods get paranoid, triumphant

Live: Kanye West Justifies Everything

Kanye West's Glow in the Dark Tour Tonight

Tuesday 5.13

DRUNK AND HOT GIRLS

Kanye West and friends nerd out

Status Ain't Hood Podcast 30

WAKE UP!

DJ Kstarr drops a mix tape intended for hip-hop sleepers

Status Ain't Hood Podcasts 18 & 19

More Songs About Burgers and People

Lupe Fiasco shows off and nerds out on his ridiculously ambitious follow-up

Interview: Lupe Fiasco

When Streetwear Goes. . . Legit: Weeklydrop On Satellite Radio?

Splendour in the Crass

Spring load with punk psychopaths and cheerleader cherrybombs

Spirited Diners

P&J Winners: Singles #2-10

Spankin' Pop? No, It's Pazz & Jop!

Noise from the Front

Pazz & Jop Special for the week of February 7-13, 2007

Status Ain't Hood Interviews Lupe Fiasco

A Kinder, Gentler Rap Triumph Emerges (Legally) at Last

The New Jay-Z Album: A Bad Idea?

All Dolled Up

Kid Robot's "secret" store opens up with toys by The Daily Show, rapper Lupe Fiasco, and more

Why Isn't Pop Music Political?