Wasalu Muhammad Jaco better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco, is an American rapper and record producer. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his debut album, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor. He also performs as the frontman of rock band Japanese Cartoon under his real name. As an entrepreneur, Fiasco was the chief executive officer of 1st and 15th Entertainment.

Life and Career

Fiasco was born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco on February 16, 1982, in Chicago, Illinois. Fiasco is of West African descent, one of nine children of Shirley, a chef, and Gregory, an engineer. His father, a member of the Black Panther Party, was a prolific African drummer, karate teacher, operating plant engineer, and owner of karate schools and army surplus stores. Fiasco was raised Muslim on the West Side of Chicago on Madison Terrace housing project. At the age of three, he began taking martial arts classes. His parents divorced when he was five, and he went on to live with his mother, but his father still remained an important part of his life. He described his father's influence over the family by saying, "After school, my father would come and get us and take us out into the world—one day, we're listening to N.W.A, the next day we're listening to Ravi Shankar, the next day, he's teaching us how to shoot an AK-47, the next day, we're at karate class, the next day, we're in Chinatown...".

In sixth grade, he went to live with his father full-time in Harvey, Illinois. His father lived next door to a crack house and taught Fiasco to use guns to defend himself from drug dealers. Despite his unstable upbringing, Fiasco states that he was well-educated as a child, asserting that his parents exposed him to a diverse array of subjects and that reading was highly encouraged in his household. As a teenager, Fiasco participated in Academic Decathlon competitions. His mother described him by saying, "He was a great spirited child. Smart, a bit complex; he kind of was a loner; he didn't hang with a lot of people...He always had the glasses. Always had a book bag over his shoulder and some type of a writing tablet." Fiasco initially disliked hip hop music for its use of vulgarity, and preferred to listen to jazz; he idolized clarinet player Benny Goodman. His struggle to learn to play an instrument led him to create poetry instead, which led to his interest in the lyrical aspects of music.

Fiasco released Drill Music in Zion on June 24, 2022, through 1st & 15th Too and Thirty Tigers. It was preceded by two singles, "Autoboto" and "Drill Music in Zion". On 9 December 2022, Fiasco was featured on Aesop Rock's song "Pumpkin Seeds", produced by Blockhead. The song is a fundraiser for the Collaboratory, an organization promoting two local DIY skateparks in Dayton, Ohio.

On 28 April 2023, Fiasco released the song "SentRock" in collaboration with the Chicago visual artist SentRock. The song was written and produced by Fiasco, while SentRock painted a piece with references to the song's lyrics.

Personal Life

Gaming

Lupe Fiasco is an avid gamer and likes to play the Street Fighter series of fighting games. He surprisingly won an exhibition match of Street Fighter V against professional player Daigo Umehara in 2016, defeating him 3–2 using Ken.

Martial Arts

During a 2008 interview with methodshop, Lupe Fiasco revealed that he has "a black belt in karate, two black belts in the styles of samurai sword fighting, kendo and aido" as well as "the equivalent of a black belt in Chinese wushu."

Fiasco is such a fan of Martial Arts, he named one of his companies "Righteous Kung-Fu," a brand that does fashion design, sneakers, toys, video games, comic books and more. He also once revealed on Facebook that his family is "three generations deep in the martial arts" and they have 5 Karate schools in Chicago.

Political Views

In an interview with Stephen Colbert on the satirical news show The Colbert Report, Fiasco stated his credo on political philosophy: "You should criticize power even if you agree with it." In another interview in June 2011 on the CBS program What's Trending, Fiasco discussed the political content of his music, stating, "My fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama and the United States of America. I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism. You know, the root cause of terrorism is the stuff the U.S. government allows to happen. The foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists." He additionally criticized Obama for his stance on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Fiasco says he did not vote in U.S. elections until 2018. He said on Twitter that he changed his stance due to the racial views of Donald Trump, and that he would vote for Democratic candidates. However, in 2023 he implied on Twitter that he still had never voted, and endorsed Cornel West's 2024 presidential camapign, saying it would be the "first and last time" he would vote.

On January 20, 2013, he was removed from the stage by the security for refusing to move onto the next song after performing a 30-minute version of "Words I Never Said", which contains anti-Obama lyrics, in Washington D.C., during Obama's second presidential inauguration. In June 2015, Lupe Fiasco wrote an open letter about white supremacy.

Visual Arts

Having did the artwork for Tetsuo & Youth, Drogas Wave and Drill Music In Zion, Fiasco has also spoken on his interest in visual arts via interviews and his infamous Instagram Lives, specifically in photography, acrylic painting, chiaroscuro and pencil drawing.

On October 11, 2020 via His Official Instagram, Fiasco shared that he had held his first art exhibition at SOHO House Chicago. On October 15, 2022 Fiasco shared images via his official Twitter account of an alleged soon to be released graphic novel themed around the Atlantic Slave Trade titled Longchains.

Discography

• Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (2006)
• Lupe Fiasco's The Cool (2007)
• Lasers (2011)
• Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1 (2012)
• Tetsuo & Youth (2015)
• Drogas Light (2017)
• Drogas Wave (2018)
• Drill Music in Zion (2022)