Tonight, (Friday April 17), The BBC‘s 1Xtra will sit down with Lupe Fiasco to talk about his new projects, politics, Lil Wayne, and his upcoming tour with Kanye West among other things. Fresh off of his own tour for his last release, The Cool, Lupe tells the UK radio show:
1Extra: How you feeling about the forth-coming Glow in The Dark tour?
Lupe Fiasco: I feel good, I feel upbeat, I’m more excited for my artists to see it I’ve got a very talented roster Matthew Santos, Sarah Green, Nikki Jean, these new kids I just picked up He Say She Say, of course Gemstones for them to get that opportunity to get on that stage and to go up there and actually perform something that is a hit that they are responsible for being a hit or are associated with it being a hit, more than it just being a homie look for them to take those hits and propel their careers. I’m more exicted to put them on and see how they are gonna perform, when they go out to do a verse on such and such or a hook on something. But you know I’m happy to be around the big N.E.R.D. I’m a big fan. You got Rhianna on the bill, N.E.R.D., Kanye West. You know what that means, you got CRS on the bill!! It’s a wonderful line up, it should be a good tour its already sold out every week they add another few dates.
1X: What joints are you looking forward to performing?
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LF: “Hello, Goodbye” – we’re gonna use this tour to break out some of the more eclectic records on the album – we’ve put out a lot of the pop stuff with “Paris Tokyo” being the next single in the US but we definitely want to push the more eclectic side – the second half of the album.
1X: How do you feel about the Obama vs. Hilary situation?
LF: I’ma bite and take 50‘s stance – I’m kinda uninterested. I was interested at first but now it’s not even mathematically a race anymore between Barack and Hillary. Barack is like crushing her, there are still some things he has to get passed but ya know the real fight and I always said it was the real fight, no matter who got there to the Democratic nomination was when they go up against the Republicans. Because the Republicans are no punks and you better believe that and most of the country is on some ‘we good’ and I still tell people the second time Bush ran for office he won the popular vote. He won it fair and square, it wasn’t no big discrepancy, next time he should have lost ridiculously, he won fair and square on all sides. They are definitely a force to be reckoned with, the Republicans are gonna play real dirty… that is really when the fight starts.
1X: The way that Wayne has done it a lot of people have been critical because he has jumped on so many tracks – do you think that could be the new model?
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LF: Nah, I just had a discussion about that – unless you can keep the intensity there you are gonna burn out and no one is gonna care. No one is gonna care. when it means something is the album.
Albums may not mean anything to consumers, they may not mean anything to iTunes fans any more nothing like that – the singles generation but the core Hip Hop that is still gonna be around when it comes back because everything comes back and works in cycles. The same people are gonna be expecting the album. So if you come with all this content all this content all this content
I caught it on my mixtapes and my fans were asking why my mixtapes are banging and my album was so blah compared and I was like I can’t do mixtapes anymore I got to put all that energy into my albums. It works for some, some it don’t for a lot it don’t, it works for Wayne – he’s a monster and for 50, he’s a monster he can keep it going and going.
For more of Lupe‘s interview, including updates on the status of the CRS super-group with consisting of Lupe, Kanye West and Pharrell, tune in tonight (Friday) at 10pm GMT on 1xtra.
