Lupe Fiasco, whose popularity exploded after a successful guest spot on Kanye West’s single “Touch the Sky” and his successful debut album Food and Liquor, has run into a bit of a career snag recently.
For one, his album Food and Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, Part 1, was, in this writer’s opinion, just not as good as his first two albums (Food and Liquor and The Cool), and only marginally better than his third release, Lasers—plus, it has a goofy-ass title that’s not only not reflective of its content, but lacks a second part, as he cancelled F&L II: TGARA, Pt. 2 via an announcement on his Twitter, shortly before deleting said Twitter.
Secondly, and most recently, he left the stage mid-concert at a celebration thrown for today’s Presidential Inauguration.
From the Daily Caller:
Josh Rogin, a reporter with Foreign Policy magazine, tweeted late Sunday, “Lupe Fiasco just got thrown off stage here at the Hamilton Live after he went on an anti-Obama diatribe mid set.”
“So Lupe played one anti-war song for 30 min and said he didn’t vote for Obama,” he continued, ”and eventually was told to move on to the next song…Lupe refused to move to the next song so a team of security guards came on stage and told him to go.”
The event’s promoter, StartUp RockOn disputes that he was booted for anti-Obama statements:
Lupe Fiasco performed at this private event, and as you may have read, he left the stage earlier than we had planned. But Lupe Fiasco was not “kicked off stage” for an “anti-Obama rant.” We are staunch supporters of free speech, and free political speech. This was not about his opinions. Instead, after a bizarrely repetitive, jarring performance that left the crowd vocally dissatisfied, organizers decided to move on to the next act. Lupe Fiasco repeated the one song for more than 40 minutes.
But Fiasco probably wasn’t the best guy to bring to a party celebrating Obama, if you look back at a statement he made to CBS a few years ago:
“In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America. For me, I’m trying to fight the terrorism that’s actually causing the other forms of terrorism. The root cause of the terrorism is the stuff that you as a government allow to happen and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it’s easy for us because it’s really just some oil, which we can really get on our own.”
So congrats to Lupe Fiasco for standing up for his beliefs in the face of a concert promoter that probably should have known better than to bring an artist who called the president a terrorist to a party celebrating that same president. At the same time, he might be douche of the week for screwing a roomful of people who came to see him by playing one song, then letting his band vamp for half an hour.
You win some, you lose some, I guess. Check out video of his performance below.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2013.
The Andy Borowitz New Yorker piece regarding Fox News (linked-to briefly in these pages this morning, then deleted) was trenchant and humorous…
This one by David Mendez is dull.
How anyone can have this much exposure to rap albums to critique three is beyond the scope of my comprehension. Well, at least it explains why David’s brain is fried and why he’s a sociological outcast.
According to other reports, the guy first called Limbaugh and Glenn Beck racists which was apparently OK with the audience, but then he dared to state a negative opinion about The Prez, and we just can’t have that.
Isn’t it possible that his “talent” wasn’t so talented last night? I heard some of it and it sounded like three cats fighting on top of a back yard wall.
Where’s that big over sized hook that used to appear in the Looney Tunes shorts to remove unwanted performers from the stage when it’s needed? That would’ve provided a lot more entertainment than the security types that rushed the stage did.
P.S.: I couldn’t have said it better than tiredofpc did when he/she commented on what the performance sounded like. Brilliant!
Lupe is an idiot, but so is whomever booked him for this performance.
Lupe didn’t “leave the stage”–they cut the power, shut off the lights, and TOLD him to leave. So this headline by Mendez is totally misleading. We don’t care what David Mendez thinks of Lupe’s albums. We do, however, care about our right to free speech. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are racist, shortsighted, copycat hypocrites, but so is Obama! It was OK to call out Clinton, and Bush, but it’s taboo to say truthful shit about Obama? Lupe Fiasco swung the hammer with his words via a live rap performance, and he is CENSORED, period.
Lupe didn’t cut the power. He did not fucking “leave” the stage. He was kicked the fuck out because some Obama worshippers took offense.
It’s extremely obvious in the video that this headline contradicts what is in front of your eyes.