S. Samuel
Grammy-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco boasts his lyrical skills and why he deserves to be considered one of the best emcees ever in the new XXL magazine.
Within the cover feature, Fiasco proclaims his greatness as a lyricist.
Fiasco admitted that he made a more [pop-sounding] album than he would have liked with Lasers and isn’t proud of the artistic compromises he had to make. While he might not feel comfortable making pop music, Lupe is confident with his skills on the mic; even going as far as calling himself one of the best lyrical MCs in the game at the moment. “I can actually make the argument, seriously, that, Yo, I’m better than all y’all,” he boasted. “You have people who can say that. Jay-Z can say that. Eminem can say that. Canibus can say that–if we are going line for line. If you want to relate me to the newer cats, let’s go. Let’s go line for line and bar for bar. If it’s all about spitting and metaphors and MCing and lyrics and entendres, I will eat 99 percent of you dudes up.” (XXL Mag)
Last year, Lupe talked about not wanting to achieve the same fame as rap mogul Jay-Z.
”There’s a misunderstanding with my fanbase,” he said in an interview. ”People [at Warner] feel they know my fans more than I do. They want me to step out of my comfort zone and step into theirs. I don’t have necessarily the celebrity success they want me to have but it’s more social success and being able to speak at a college about world affairs. That’s a success, to me. ‘I don’t want to be Jay-Z and be worth $400 million and perform on every awards show. It’s getting in touch with somebody who needs to improve their self-esteem. As opposed to driving a Bentley and putting some chains on.” (The Age)
Following his interview, Fiasco later clarified his remarks.
“Jay-Z’s a personal friend of mine,” Lupe said in an interview. “[He] executive-produced my first album. [My comments were] just an example using him of how people rate success. There’s an idea of the status quo that every rapper wants to be Jay-Z. Nah. Every rapper does not want to be Jay-Z. Every rapper don’t wanna be Kanye West. Everybody don’t wanna be Lil Wayne. They wanna be who they are. … You’re a fool trying to chase that success down and manage it like that. I always look at my success as further than a dollar sign, further than record sales. … Everybody thinks because you’re black and you’re from the ‘hood, you wanna be Jay-Z. There’s kids who wanna be astrophysicists and don’t care about rap. That should be OK. You should be OK just being you, working your regular job and being happy. That’s why I made that statement. I felt it need to be said.” (MTV)
Rap newcomers Ninjasonik recently crowned the Chicago rapper as SOHH Underrated.
“We honestly feel like we’re the most underrated. We’re legends of our city and where we’re from, the lifestyle that we’ve created as well. We’re all about branding oneself and representing your city. We’re the underrated of the underrated. But if we gotta [pick someone else], we would have to name Lupe Fiasco. We love him. Everything about him is amazing. There’s plenty of brands of talented artists and it could go on and on. But the people that make this great music that we get inspired by are ones like Lupe Fiasco. He’s really doing it for the love of the music. The cool thing about Lupe is that he’s doing this for the love and not even trying to be amazingly successful with his craft. But he’s still successful with everything he does. We listen to a lot of hip-hop and punk rock music but we think Lupe is a great artist just because of the topics he talks about. He’s not fabricating anything and he’ll tell a story.” (SOHH Underrated)
The new XXL magazine drops Tuesday, April 26th.
Check out some recent Lupe Fiasco footage below:
