Lupe Fiasco is a Chicago rapper, born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco in 1982, whose dense, technical writing set a bar for conscious hip hop. Food & Liquor (2006) and The Cool (2007) are the entry points, and he has run fully independent since 2016 — lately teaching hip hop seminars at MIT. Dig into Lupe Fiasco vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, performing as Lupe Fiasco, was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 16, 1982. He is a practicing Muslim and open about his faith in his work. He signed with Atlantic Records and released his debut Food & Liquor (2006), with critical attention. He has had extensive conflict with Atlantic Records across his career - particularly around the 2011 album Lasers, which he has stated represented commercial compromise. He has been a independent artist since 2016. He has been a Visiting Artist Scholar at MIT in recent years, teaching seminars on hip hop, AI, and contemporary culture.
Lupe Fiasco's sound combines hip hop, conscious hip hop, alternative hip hop, jazz rap, and underground hip hop with his distinctive flow, virtuosic technical approach, and lyrical content addressing race, religion, politics, science, and broader social commentary drawing on literary and philosophical reference points.
Atlantic and Thirty Tigers pressings of the Lupe Fiasco catalog have been issued in color variant editions.
Listeners new to Lupe Fiasco typically start with The Cool (2007) or Food & Liquor (2006).
