Lupe Fiasco, I love you.
Over the last two or three years, I’ve been attempting to see Lupe Fiasco live whenever he is making public appearances. I like that he is easy to see, he does shows very frequently. however, he does not make frequent visits to the south, at least for concerts. I’ve been able to fly several times up north to Boston to see him live – in case you are unaware, he is a visiting scholar at MIT. Impressive, yes? I think so, too. (Can you believe that there are now programs emerging at elite collegiate institutions for students to study rap to and learn how to be rappers? WOW. Wow. Yeah, I’m pretty sure most of the rappers I listen to learned by listening to other rappers via the radio, or MTV, BET… the streets. But I’m not really sure… still pretty cool. I know he even visited my alma mater, but I’m not sure as to why.
In early May, MIT + LU did a free to the public concert with some of the students from MIT’s 2025 Jazz Ensemble. It was lovely. No pictures allowed, but here is one from his show with BOB back in 2023. Lupe doesn’t seem to like pictures, hard to get any anyway without the MIC in his face.
Oh well. I’ve seen him plenty.
I got to go to Arizona to see him, even got a hotel upgrade, which has nothing to do with him, but it was nice. 4 days in AZ, was super cool. Nice and relaxing but hot. So hot! I sure do wish that the FashionCitizen was still around, they were so much fun to watch and were based in AZ, at least during their height.
Anyway, I’ve noticed that Lupe often has budget friendly tickets or even free to the public events. If you can’t catch him on a solo tour, you might be able to see him with, funny enough, touring rock bands during the summer. (If you don’t know who he is, he is one of Pharrell‘s close phriends, or was. I tried soooo hard to talk up CRS on Twitter a few years back but I’ll just have to accept that it is now defunct. I don’t want lie though, I’ve done some searches for his events and they don’t always feature him. So if you’re trying to see him for the free, be careful as the event might just be about him. One example is the DMV Festival, Words, Beats, and Life, he was the first honoree to receive the Rap Laureate, but he was not able to attend the event. The program was beautiful nonetheless. Though he was not in attendance, I did have a good time staying at the Capsule Hostel near Howard University. What an experience.
I hope that one day I can get a picture with him and an autograph on sweatshirt I purchased on Mercari – this is a good place to get things if you missed out MERCH from different eras like I did. I even got one of the 1/50 tees from his ITJOTLOD time – check out the Japanese Cartoon (Lupe’s rock bank) album here if you haven’t ever heard it before.
I only have one question to ask him and he has been hard to chat with… but I’ll just pose it here:
Lupe, if you ever read this, how do you come up with your album concepts? They’re really great. As a arts student in undergrad, I struggled with concepts. I’m technical, but having good concepts is essential to making good work.
Good work. <3