Chicago emcee Lupe Fiasco has proven to be a worldwide traveler with his fashion designs, touring and Grammy-nominated debut album Food & Liquor. For his follow-up, The Cool, Fiasco found inspiration in what may seem to be an unlikely place: Houston, Texas.
On Wednesday night, Lupe told HipHopDX about his affinity for H-Town rappers, and how the track “Hip Hop Saved My Life” came to be. “Bumping into all the Houston rappers that I’ve bumped into, whether it was a facade or they were putting on airs, they were all so cool. There were just too many for it to be a coincidence. Paul Wall, he’s cool as hell. Mike Jones, he’s super-cool. Bun B, Slim Thug, and then there’s all these rappers from there that didn’t really blow-blow like that,” says Lupe on his discovery down south. “I don’t feel that when I come to New York; I don’t feel that in Chicago.”
Recalling one example of Houston’s cool, Lupe reveals, “Bun B came and picked me up at the hotel with his wife, and we just drove around Houston. That never happens.”
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Of the actual song, Lupe says, “It’s about a brand X Houston rapper, with everybody branding him as this gangster, trappin’ – the kind of rapper that a lot us thumb our noses at right now, but the way the story is told, he reflects every rapper. He could be from Chicago, he could be from Paris, Tokyo, because his struggle is exactly the same. I know that because I’m a rapper. It was nothing to articulate my experiences and other peoples’ experiences with it. It just happened to be from Houston.” The track is produced by Lupe‘s in-house producer Soundtrakk, with a heavy reliance on 808 drums, according to the emcee.
On the death last week of Pimp C, Lupe also reflected. “I called Bun that morning, just talking about tracks and music. Later on, when I heard [what happened], I called back. I really didn’t know what to say,” revealed a somber Lupe. “Pimp C was a cool dude in the times I met him,” he added. “He and Bun actually stayed after their category at the recent BET Awards to see if I was going to win mine. After that, they left. That meant a lot to me.“
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Lupe‘s album The Cool releases on Atlantic/First & Fifteenth on December 18. Listen to “Hip Hop Saved My Life” in HipHopDX‘s Audio Section.
