As I’m sure, you all have heard that over the weekend, beloved rapper, Lupe Fiasco was pretty damn heated. According to his blog, the powers that be decided to push his heavily aniticpated, 3-disk album back indefinitely. Being the industry insider that I am, I found this to be pretty weird. For the fact that Atlantic is pretty much a graveyard, along with Def Jam, they should have probably been happy to release this triology-set closing to Lupe’s career. In all actuality, they should have actually been trying to push it up. So as the bright and intelligent reader that you are, you’re probably wondering what the f*ck is going on up there.
The answer to this question is GREED. Labels have always been the downfall of talented artists. They have always been trying to stifle the creativity of those who have made their livings off of witty wordplay and catchy punchlines but in today’s drought, things have pretty mich flip-flopped. Every label has ONE talented artist. Maybe two if they’re lucky. So with that in mind, they hold the phone on whatever is scheduled to drop, just so their star artist can get the attention they need so that they can at least try to make a dent in the fiscal deficit that labels are in.
As we know, Lupe is one of the most talented and anticipated artists in the game. He utilizes his skill as a performer to urge his fans to support his albums but also go see him live. I can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure of ever seeing him in concert but I’ve heard only good things about him. Besides that, the blogs always make it known that he releases new songs and features to his fans during live shows. So it’s basically a win-win for everybody that follows him. But that’s neither here nor there.
Since his first major appearance, Touch The Sky, Lupe exuded himself as a sorcerer type artist when he exclaimed ‘Lupe still stealin, like LupEND Lupin the third…..something something something Mrs. Butterworth’ in his 3rd bar. After going back and listening to the works of his so far, short career, I’ve realized that this man has had his plan in place since he first stepped foot in the studio. He originally wanted to come into the game, make a big impact, progressively make his music better, and then leave the world wanting more. Being the artistic genius that he is, or at least portrays to be, he blamed the wanting to leave early on the fact that he hated the industry. Great marketing idea.
Now, let me bring this around full circle. A couple of months after the succes of The Cool, LUpe annouced at a live show (what a coincidence) that his final album will be a 3-disk set. Like everybody else, I originally was upset by the idea that LupEND would be his last work but the 3-disks kind of made up for it to me. Then Saturday comes along and my homie/Lupe info insider (pause) Jake, hit me up via email, and told me that the album was pushed back. I was surprised. But later that weekend, I got the official press release from the Lupe clan.
If you haven’t read it, it goes into detail about how angry Lupe is that his album is being pushed back and that he has absolutely no control over it. He’s so angry that he’s going to be releasing a cd in Jun, December, and Jun of the next two years. Then after all of that, he’s going to release LupEND. Now, wait a minute. We all can count. 3-disks from Lupe now turned into 6. We went from hearing this guy one more time, to having 4 more releases from him. Isn’t that crazy?
I can’t guarantee that this ploy was on purpose but knowing the industry, it probably was. Here’s why. As I said before, Atlantic is already in the garbage dump. They have nothing to offer and nobody to sell records. Record labels are already like the MOB, so why would they let their only bread-winner leave the game this soon? Exactly. They wouldn’t and they didn’t. Atlantic obviously botched Lupe’s initial plan to put out 3 cd’s and bounce but I’m pretty sure they gave him a nice sum of money, probably borrowed from the Madoff Scandal, to keep recording. By no means am I getting at Lupe in this post but I hate it when the industry tries to play the mass public for suckers. This ploy was just as see-through as that whole Charles Hamilton vs Soulja Boy beef.
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