The socially conscious rapper remembers life on the on the west side — and works to give back to the city he loves
Rapper Lupe Fiasco — born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco — comes by his rebellion honestly.
He recalls how his late father, a Black Panther, threw eggs at Mayor Richard J. Daley in 1962 when the Robert Taylor Homes opened on the South Side.
“He got whupped for that,” says Fiasco, 30, who grew up toggling between his mother’s home in East Garfield Park and his father’s in south suburban Harvey.
And though Fiasco has risen to global stardom — as a Grammy-winning artist with four albums to his credit (including “Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1,” which was released Sept. 25) — he is only six years removed from his former life in a gang-ridden part of Chicago, and it still haunts him.
In was obvious in July when the socially conscious rapper appeared on an MTV show, and the host prefaced the interview with a 2006 clip that was shot in Fiasco’s former West Side neighborhood.
Watching the video brought him back to that troubled time. “We’re standing in the alley, and it was like, ‘Oh, you just chose the alley for dramatic effect,’ ” explains Fiasco. “No, we used to play in that alley. We used to run from the police in that alley. Prostitutes used to turn tricks in that alley. People used to sell drugs in that alley. I got chased by the homeless man’s dog in that alley. And then you get these shots of these people who are ex-felons, people who are currently incarcerated, people who are dead.” On the MTV show he was visibly shaken, barely able to speak about the “ghosts” of friends who had been murdered since the video was shot.
Chicago’s rising murder rate is a subject Fiasco, a Sun-Times Daily Splash columnist, has addressed in recent interviews. After a Twitter battle erupted with local rapper Chief Keef, Fiasco said he might retire from the music industry. Now, he broaches the topic of violence more carefully.
The new album, he says, is about the “duality” of food and liquor. “I think food is good; I think liquor is bad,” says Fiasco, a Muslim who shuns alcohol. “It speaks to the human condition. I think everybody has a little bit of good and a little bit of bad.”
But the rapper, who now splits his time between a home in Chicago’s “exurbs” and Los Angeles, balances his more introspective lyrics with songs like “Put Em Up” and “Form Follows Function,” which “have nothing to do with any type of agenda,” he says. “It’s just rap for the sake of rap as an art form.”
That duality goes further than the album: While he laments hip-hop consumerism (“the only thing that’s marketed to the ’hood is its own destruction: cigarettes, alcohol”), he’s also on the cover of this month’s Dub magazine, which features him talking about his car collection. He has a penchant for high-end clothing brands like Yohji Yamamoto’s Y-3 and Jeremy Scott, whose New York fashion show he attended in September.
Lupe Fiasco reflects on violence on a recent visit to the Sun-Times. | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times
Those contradictions may stem from the very thing that helped him rise above the circumstances of his childhood.
Describing his home on the West Side, which was in Gangster Disciples territory (he says his brother was a member of the gang), “There’s multiple views,” he says. “And when I say that I literally mean views from where we lived. We lived right on Madison, and from the alley all you’re seeing is a burned-out building. But if you walk up a block, you see the Sears Tower. So you knew that it was a way out; there was the Emerald City in the distance.”
His parents helped nurture his love of books — especially poetry — and shaped the lyricist he would become. “My father was a weird guy,” says Fiasco. “He would take us to Downers Grove and to all these different places to go to an army surplus store, or go here to pick up some African art, or go here to do a karate class. We knew from an early age that the city was bigger than just our block.”
Fiasco’s mother was equally influential. “She was a part of all these different movements, and intellectual and fashionable things, and living life on the scene as a model and a gourmet chef,” he says. As a result, he grew up surrounded by “a collection of National Geographics and a poster of Malcolm X and a bust of the Sphinx — that was our house in the ghetto.”
These days, Fiasco’s social consciousness is at another level: During the summer he performed at the Electric Burma concert for Amnesty International with Bob Geldof and Bono, but he is still worried about Chicago.
The Lupe Fiasco Foundation is step one in his goal to “take back the city.” Over the summer, he provided 100 vegan meals each day during the monthlong Ramadan to reach Chicagoans in food deserts. His foundation also recently partnered with After School Matters on the Little Man Project, which provides a hip-hop music curriculum to inner-city youth.
“It’s music, art, theater, all these multimedia things,” he says. “One kid’s going to write the score, another kid’s going to write the raps, another’s going to stage it, another’s going to act.” He sees this as part of the solution; helping stem the city’s rising murder rate is “all about restructuring the cultural agency from one of corporate exploitation on every level to one of cultural advancement,” he says. “It gives people an incentive to stay alive, to do better for themselves, to participate in something.”
Sometimes, all it takes is a different point of view.
Story by Susanna Negovan | Feature photo by Reid Rolls
