Fresh off the release of his fourth studio album Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album, Pt. 1, Chicago emcee Lupe Fiasco is back in the spotlight for his incendiary political commentary. In a recent interview with NPR, Lupe explains why he doesn’t pledge allegiance to the flag.
Lupe recalled that his parents instructed him and his siblings to refrain from pledging allegiance to the US flag in school. He said that their instruction wasn’t meant to be overly critical of the USA; rather, it was intended to make them fully comprehend the dilemma of blindly subscribing to pro-American jingoism without serious consideration.
“When I was a little kid, actually my whole family – my mother and father – instructed us not to say the pledge of allegiance in school,” he recalled. “They wanted us to understand fully – fully – not just haphazardly and for the sake of making my teacher happy – they wanted us to understand fully what we were doing at that young age, and what that means, and what America is, and what is your place within that.”
Lupe also spoke on the upcoming Presidential Election and the pitfalls of voting. He said that he feels people don’t understand that President Obama will never be able to fulfill the needs of all of his voters; instead, Lupe stresses activism in local politics, which he feels more directly impacts the general populous.
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“Barack is at a level where he can’t – no matter how much he wants to or how much we want him to – he’s not going to come take out our garbage, so to speak,” he said. “He can’t be the garbage man and the president. He can’t be the mayor and the alderman. He can’t fill all those roles. So I always push for local, local activity on the political scene. I always preach that you have to be active as a citizen no matter what, and some people [use] just voting as an excuse not to do anything.”
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