*Classic Lupe Interview*

And on the heels of the Classic Blog comes the Classic Interview...

You ever notice how I like to start entries off like I was already in mid-sentence? hmm...

Lu talks about some stuff back in October of 2006 that caused controversy when he brought it up recently. He's telling the truth maybe? Maybe?

Anyways...[[I say that often too]]...here's a little taste..a tid-bit if you will..

The last time I interviewed Lupe Fiasco, I did it for Pitchfork. This time, as soon as he saw me, he said, "I don't even know why I'm talking to you guys," and he brought up every problem he had with Sean Fennessey's Pitchfork review of his album and the 7.9 rating that it got....

Do you think it makes sense to make plans this far in advance at a time when the music industry is floundering?

The music industry is wack. I think we got too caught up in the numbers. I don't really think people were selling back in the day like that...

Something that I've learned from knowing a few people who make music is that when somebody thinks that something is their best album, it's never their best album. They get into their headspace, people telling them that they're right all the time. Do you ever worry about that happening with you?

You kind of start living in a bubble. You never know the real impact of your music unless you force yourself to participate in arenas which are shunned by your fellow artists. Like the internet; do you know how many rappers aren't on the internet, don't know what's going on, don't care? It's shunned; it's nerdy.

So you talked about killing people.

Yeah, but this is what people don't understand about me: I've had a gun since I was like twelve. My gun, given to me by my father who was in the military, who taught me how to shoot when I was four, how to shoot AK-47s and take apart M16s. I used to write my raps with my 9 millimeter right there. I understood what it was for, and it went from the stage of being like, "I have a gun, and I'm not going to kill you, but I'll defend myself" to getting caught up in the industry: "Yo, I'll shoot you." And then it got to the point where you can't explain that to people, you can't explain your history of it. Everybody's not going to read that one interview where you do, so I'd rather just not talk about it at all.

...and we see exactly why today...

--Courtesy my favorite place in the world for stuff like this: Village Voice**

**None of those answers are Lupe's complete answers. Click the link to read the whole thing.