S. Samuel
Grammy-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album Part 1 is reportedly en route to sell up to 95,000 copies in its opening week.
Although not enough to topple its competition, Fiasco’s new LP is expected to chart in the top ten next week.
Their banjo keeps strumming, and now Mumford & Sons have the year’s biggest chart debut. The Glassnote Records folk-rockers’ new album, Babel, will score a #1 album next week, with a total between 575-625k. Coming on the heels of front man Billie Joe Armstrong‘s iHeartRadio Music Festival outburst over the weekend and subsequent trip to rehab, the first of Green Day‘s three Reprise albums, Uno, will debut with between 150-175k. Interscope’s new No Doubt album, Push and Shove, the Orange County ska-popsters’ first in a decade, will do a quite respectable 120-125k in first-week sales. Atlantic hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco’s Food and Liquor II is on target for sales of between 85-95k. (HITS Daily Double)
His last solo album Lasers debuted atop the chart with over 200,000 sold copies in March 2011.
Leading the pack this week is Lupe Fiasco’s Lasers which topped the chart at No. 1. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Lupe’s long-awaited third solo album sold 204,300 records in seven days. (SOHH Sales Wrap)
Fiasco recently discussed plans to step away from the music industry’s commercial side.
“Contractually, I still have to do another record if the label picks it up,” Fiasco said in an interview. “But even after this part one and part two [of Food & Liquor 2] I’m basically kind of done, because that album is even almost finished. I won’t make music for commercial purposes after that. It’ll more just be kind of artistic and developing my other music projects — I don’t even know if Lupe Fiasco is gonna exist after Skulls, I might even just do a name change or something like that — if I feel like making a rap album, then I’ll make it.” (Music Feeds TV)
Last month, Fiasco dug deep into his reasoning behind considering an early retirement.
“It’s not too much of a drastic, revolutionary thing. It’s the end of one thing, stepping into another capacity now. Music business is a very taxing thing, I’ve done it for a long time. I’ve been doing it for like 12, 13 years, in various capacities. Major labels, almost every major label. And it’s just time to do something else. I don’t really look at it as being that crazy of an idea. I don’t really look at it like that. As soon as this contract is up, I’m going to step more into an independent space and have the freedom to do whatever we want.” (Hard Knock TV)
Check out a recent Lupe Fiasco interview below:
