S. Samuel
Grammy-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco's Lasers is reportedly en route to sell up to 240,000 copies in its first-week on store shelves.
Based on one-day estimates, the project will not only top the charts but become Fiasco’s biggest opening week release to date.
It’s Lupe Fiasco time. The Chicago-born rapper–real name Wasalu Muhammad Jaco–arrives with his third Atlantic Records studio album, Lasers, which will debut at #1 next week with between 220-240k in sales, the second biggest of the year next to Adele and the best start of his career. Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor, his Grammy-winning 2006 debut, bowed at #8 with 81k sold, and went on to sell 350k. His second album, the multi-Grammy-nominated Lupe Fiasco’s Cool, debuted at #15 in Dec., 2007, selling 143k, going on to a total of more than 500k. Ice H20/EMI rapper Raekwon’s Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang is looking at between 40-45k in first-week sales. (Hits Daily Double)
The high projection comes just days after Lupe claimed Atlantic requested specific demands for the album’s material.
“I was specifically told” — Fiasco chuckled — “‘Don’t rap too deep on this record.'” He laughed some more. “That was a specific order from the top. ‘You’re rapping too fast or too slow, or it’s too complex.’ … There are consequences and combat that comes from that process and the eventual compromise. With me, though, I’m not writing about someone else. I’m writing about me. This is my life. It’s very personal for me. So for somebody to kind of put their fingers in that and play with that, it becomes more damaging.” (Chicago Sun-Times)
The rapper went on to accuse Atlantic of holding stipulations toward him.
The process of finishing “Lasers” he described with words one hates to hear from a creative artist. He “hunkered down” and “got through it.” He “went along,” he “acquiesced.” He “found some emotional distance from the music.” He “lost those aspirations.” “I am a hostage,” Fiasco said. “I gave them what they wanted. If I didn’t, at the end of the day the album wasn’t coming out.” (Chicago Sun-Times)
Fiasco recently expressed feelings of hatred toward the new solo effort.
“One thing I try to stress about this project is, I love and hate this album,” Fiasco explained in an interview. “I listen to it and I’ll like some of the songs. But when I think about what it took to actually get the record together and everything that I went through on this record–which is something I can’t separate–I hate this album. A lot of the songs that are on the album, I’m kinda neutral to. Not that I don’t like them, or that I hate them, it’s just I know the process that went behind it. I know the sneaky business deal that went down behind this song, or the artist or singer or songwriter who wrote this hook and didn’t want to give me this song in the first place. So when I have that kind of knowledge behind it, I’m just kind of neutral to it like, ‘Another day, another dollar.’ As opposed something like The Cool, which is more of my own blood, sweat, and tears, and my own control. With this record, I’m little bit more neutral as to the love for the record.” (Complex)
Check out some recent Lupe Fiasco footage below:
