The concert headliner came unsuspectingly into the neon red media room. Breezing past a line of anxious teens fiddling with their camera straps, he flashed a smile showing his ubiquitous gap and gave a modest, “Hello.” That’s Lupe Fiasco.
For a Grammy Award-winning rapper who has been deified for saving hip-hop from its mindless spiral, Lupe doesn’t make a lot of noise when he enters a room; but the message in his music says plenty.
Branded the “hip-hop nerd,” the Chicago native is known for his socially deep lyrics with quirky injections of robots and video games. But don’t relegate him to Backpack Mountain. Lupe’s Gillette-sharp wordplay keeps him in the company of rhymers like Kanye West, Jay-Z and Southern rap pioneer Bun B.
Off the strength of his hit song “Superstar,” fans flocked to his shows on the Kanye West headlined “Glow in the Dark” tour (also featuring Rhianna and N.E.R.D), arguably the biggest concert of the year.
Fiasco sat surrounded by Coca-Cola branding in Philly’s Electric Factory, Sunday, noticeably tired from performing before a crowd of 75,000 at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago just the day before.
So what is he doing in a room of ogling teenagers?
“A lot of my younger fans, they don’t get a chance to come out and see my shows for whatever reason, whether it be the venue selling alcohol, or it’s 18 or over
So it’s a good opportunity for them to come out and see my shows, hear the music, sing along,” said Lupe, 25, who is headlining the Coca-Cola-sponsored teen concert tour “Refresh Your Flow,” hosted by comedian Brandon T. Jackson with rising Def Jam singer Karina Pasian.
Lupe has managed to go where few “conscious rappers” before him have: mainstream. His cerebral 2006 debut “Food and Liquor” gave him instant industry recognition and a Grammy for Best Urban/Alternative Performance, with help from Philly songstress Jill Scott.
“Jill’s a phenomenal talent. She’s like my No. 1 singer in the world. So it was just like one of those quick things like, ‘Yo, you know who would be dope on this song? Jill Scott,” Lupe said of the collaboration with Scott on the orchestral “Daydreaming.”
“She’s like an angel. She has like a glow about her that’s very impressive.”
Though he is a product of Chicago’s Westside, Lupe forgoes the scripted Godfather tales that seem obligatory in today’s commercial hip-hop, and instead references absentee fathers, Abu Ghraib and the plight of child soldiers in his music.
Some in hip-hop call Lupe’s rejection of watered-down rap and sprinkling usage of puzzling metaphors elitist. Featured in CNN’s “Black in America” series, Lupe answers critics in his song “Dumb It Down,” his declaration of brainy lyrics over banality.
“I pick and choose; I don’t like all hip-hop. There’s a lot of stuff in hip-hop I don’t like,” he allowed. “If I don’t do music and I just pick a genre to listen to, I’d listen to jazz.”
Even after his last album “The Cool” brought a wider fan base and commercial success, Lupe is still, oddly, the anti-superstar. The devout Muslim doesn’t drink or do drugs and has no interest in satisfying the groupies who stalk outside his hotel.
Yet it is his bottlecap glasses and anime indulgence that make him more appealing. The sneaker connoisseur (“don’t take a picture of my shoes man, they’re dirty,” he warned the photographer) who favors Japanese-inspired fashions has redefined cool — with help from a Princeton scholar.
“I was listening to a Cornel West speech and he was like, if you want to affect change in the world you gotta make it hip to be square. You gotta make it cool to do the un-hip things which are the positive, progressive things. Basically I have to show that you don’t have to be a gangster to be cool. You can be a nerd and be cool.” Indeed.
