Lupe Fiasco Explains Who "Tetsuo & Youth" Was Made For

With his fifth studio album, Tetsuo & Youth, released today (January 20), Lupe Fiasco recently spoke with DJ Skee to discuss the project and reveal why he believes this effort is not designed for new Lupe fans.

“I don’t have one, to be honest,” Lupe Fiasco says regarding his musical message in 2015. “I don’t think this album is for new Lupe fans. I don’t think you can get this album and become a Lupe fan. It’s a really good album, but it’s not meant for that. It’s not meant to get you to come in and buy this. It’s to satisfy something that I think kids where saying that they were missing over the past two albums, which were to go sell records. And not even Food & Liquor II. Food & Liquor II was kind of like, ‘I want to get off Atlantic [Records] and here’s album number four.’ On this one, as we leave and get off this label, I’m gonna give the fans what they want. I’m gonna give them [it] because they don’t think I can do it and it’s like, ‘I can do it all day.’”

Elsewhere during the conversation, Lupe Fiasco spoke on whether or not he believes radio records are important at this stage of his career.

“I dunno, it depends,” Lupe says when asked whether he needs radio records. “We’ve had our biggest successes with radio records. That’s what pays the bills and sends my little sisters to school and stuff like that. At the same time, too, I think I’m just at a place in my life, as a person, where artistically I’m so just free, that I don’t really care. I don’t really care about the radio. I don’t really care about the reviewers. I don’t care about the bloggers. It’s like I got 16 fans that I pointed out, they don’t even know who they are, that I just lurk and look at and I make songs for them.”