Lupe Fiasco Islam, Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1

One of America's finest rapper is Lupe Fiasco, born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco was born a Sunni Muslim, Lupe says he fully embraced Islam when his cousin, who had just converted, moved in with the family when he was 13. To me, Lupe is one of the smartest and most informed rappers out there. Rappers are not to be thinkers, not this one.

But as a rapper his 2006 album shaken the rap industry and presented fresh material. A year later "The Cool" where he was bolder and had a biggest budget. "Lasers" was not as celebrated as the previous work. Socially aware hip hop album and very electronic with some good singles, but as an album it disappointed. The problem is in the entertainment value, most agreed with the ideas and philosophy  but the music left somethings to be desired.  Now comes, "Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1"

I am reading his interview with Newsweek and I am astonished how informed and how one can have an intelligent conversation with this very talented raper.  

About the film--or trailer "Innocence of Muslims", the anti-Islam amateur film Lupe walked a fine line “They should fight for the dude’s right to make that movie. Unfortunately, we also live in a world with everyone else. America is not its own planet. You can say whatever you want, but have some class.” He adds, “It’s a provocation, but I think that at the same time, the Muslim world is taking it a little too seriously. If you want to battle and protest against it, this is the opportunity to talk about all the great things the Prophet Muhammad has done and the ways he’s inspired people.” This is true and Lupe said it best. After all he is the guy who had a song called Muhammad Talks.

“There’s Muslim rage. There’s Christian rage too,” he says. “Truth is supposed to hurt. That shit’s supposed to hurt, it’s not supposed to feel good. If you’re feeling good about something, you should really question that. That’s how I was raised. With Muslim rage, you’ve got a kid who walks into a restaurant with a bomb strapped around his waist, pulls a cord or presses a button, and kills all these innocent people. He’s not killing Christians or Jews, he’s killing other Muslims from a different section of Islam, because they’re Shia and he’s Sunni. He’s 1,400 years removed from the original conflict, so people say, ‘That’s terrible.’ Then you have a plane that drops a five-ton bomb on a school because there are reports that it’s insurgent-based, but they haven’t been thoroughly sorted, and you just dropped a bomb on a school and killed kids. And that guy’s Christian. But you don’t say, ‘Oh, these terrible Christians.’ All you say is, ‘Oh, these misguided intelligence officers. It’s collateral damage. Shit happens.’”

He continues: “Isn’t that rage, to drop a bomb on somebody? Isn’t it rage to park a tank 50 miles away and shoot rockets into a village? What’s more rage: people burning an effigy of a president that they’re never going to meet, as people chant and throw rocks, and then they go home to their poverty-stricken shanty towns. What’s more rage: that, or dropping a nuclear bomb on somebody? We’re still the only country that’s done that.”

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Lupe strikes me as a very loyal person who stays close to his roots not trump on them. He is very vocal about his religion, but he also remembers the great things that come with free speech. Lupe is rapping like he is your favorite history professor. His fourth album Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1 is out.

Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album PT 1 - Available Now