Lupe Fiasco made waves back in August, when he stated he was seriously considering retiring as an artist after his third album (Click HERE for a recap). While most chalked it up to frustrations over the deaths of his aunt and his friend Stack Bundles, poor sales and the recent incarceration of his mentor and manager, Charles “Chilly” Patton, Lupe has reiterated his desire to quit in recent months.
“LUPEnd–that’s going to by my last album’s title,” remarked Lupe, during what was supposed to be a promotional interview with Billboard for his sophomore album, The Cool. “When you play a video game, you can only put in three letters for your name and when the game’s over, those three letters and ‘END’ pop up. My next record might be my last one.” This talk comes as The Cool is being prepared for its Dec. 18 release date and after some backlash from a portion of Lupe’s fans over his remarks about A Tribe Called Quest during his Hip-Hop Honors performance in October (Click HERE for the original story). Yet, according to Lupe, that didn’t factor in to his decision to hang it up.
“Ninety percent of the people saying something about that probably downloaded my first album,”Fiasco says, in reference to the Hip-Hop Honors incident. “Besides, the people at my shows don’t care about that shit. I don’t define myself by this industry’s standards. I have a core fan base of about 200,000 people, so I’m fairly comfortable that I can sell 200,000 if it takes me a year-and-a-half.”
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While Food & Liquor was nominated for a Grammy and received much critical acclaim, the album’s sales were hampered by bootlegging and a release date that was pushed back multiple times. When the official album was finally released in August of 2006, it sold 81,000 copies in its first week, and now sits at 320,000 according to Nielsen SoundScan. For his part, Craig Kallman, CEO of Atlantic, isn’t fazed by the less than stellar numbers, and is still seems to support Lupe.
“The industry doesn’t really want to step out of the norm, but Lupe still inspires risk-taking in music. It’s more challenging to market Lupe for certain, but it pushes all of us to be more creative in our approach,” says Kallman.
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Part of that approach will include new deals with wireless carriers, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, a more aggressive online campaign and possibly more blogging in the dates leading up to Dec. 18. However, it looks as if Lupe has made his decision for the time being.
