Latest Lupe Fiasco Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I can strip down basic principles of certain things and apply it to everything else. And that keeps you interested, changing the art form, making it more avant-garde. Because I can't play any instruments.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Art

  Source: pitchfork.com

• The stuff that I make and the things that I talk about, you have to listen, so if the beat is doing too much, it's going to take you away. If the hook is too distracting, it's going to take you away. The hook just needs to be enough to get you from one verse to the next.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Hook, Enough, Verses

  Source: pitchfork.com

• I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Thinking, Dancing, Listening

  Source: pitchfork.com

• Nature only goes so far. Nurture, what you raised on and what you ingest as a youngster, it really affects you when you grow up in really subtle, long drawn-out ways. And to find that, to hear that thing again all those years later and to realize that was the source, it's like, "What else has me twisted?" So now I'm going back to robots and cartoons; I go back to all this to see what got me the way that I am.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Growing Up, Long, Cartoon

  Source: pitchfork.com

• When I write, it's intimate. I write in the car, and I don't even hear, like, ambulances driving past me because I'm in my car, listening to the music, writing. I record in an attic with no booth. It's not like I'm in the dark with candles, but it's like a house, a home, and I record like that. I think that plays into the music.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Home, Writing, Dark

  Source: pitchfork.com

• People have their morals, but morals aren't concrete. People think because I'm a Muslim that I pray five times a day, but you're never going to see that on a day-to-day basis. People fluctuate. To me, that was the most specific way to put it, the best way to be like, "I listen to this music, but it's the most violent music on the planet." But I like it, and to make up for it, I don't say the cuss words. That's how I get away with it.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Thinking, People, Moral

  Source: pitchfork.com

• I really embrace my hypocrisy. I embrace that because after I do that, I can move on; I can try and go away from that. You gotta understand what your problem is and know what it is, and then you can change it. You can't just be like, "I'm a hypocrite, and to not be a hypocrite, I'm just going to not do hypocritical things." You can't do that; you don't even understand what a hypocrite is.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Moving, Hypocrite, Hypocrisy

  Source: pitchfork.com

• China is soon to be probably the most powerful nation in the world, but they only making like $10,000 a year, and that's doing it. They're balling on $10,000 a year, and this is the strongest nation? But it's a billion people. The way it breaks down, if you really look at it, it's still built on the poor, on the backs of hundreds of millions of destitute, impoverished farmers that you'll never see. You just see Shanghai and you see Hong Kong.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Powerful, People, World

  Source: pitchfork.com

• People are hypocritical. That's just human nature. I embrace my hypocrisy. Once you come to grips with who you are and what's in you, and you aren't ashamed of it...but people are made to feel ashamed. You start thinking, like, "Is this human nature? That I like certain things, but I don't like certain aspects of certain things? Should I just shun it altogether?"

  Lupe Fiasco

  Thinking, People, Hypocrisy

  Source: pitchfork.com

• America is not all white people. It's not all black people. It's not all Mexican people. We together, and we all relate on certain levels, so if you actually scaring people away, they can't relate to what you're saying.

  Lupe Fiasco

  People, Mexican, Black

  Source: pitchfork.com

• I have people who want to pull me into specific projects in the community based on my music and on the mixtapes. It's like, it's the truth but I'm not trying to preach to you. Because who am I to say what's really right or wrong, or whether what I say is going to change anything? I don't take it too seriously; it's really whimsical.

  Lupe Fiasco

  People, Community, Trying

  Source: pitchfork.com

• To me, you can't win. You can't win. There's a war in Iraq; there's no way that they're ending that. The war in Afghanistan is still going on. There's no way that's going to end anytime soon. You can complain about it, you can throw rocks at it, but you really have to come to the conclusion that this is a really twisted place sometimes and some stuff you're not going to win.

  Lupe Fiasco

  War, Winning, Complaining

  Source: pitchfork.com

• World is not designed for you to win; it's designed to be played. It's designed for you to play your position until a certain point, when you get a chance to actually do some good, make a statement, get on your soapbox and say something.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Winning, World, Chance

  Source: pitchfork.com

• We on the internet. That's such a small community. We think we're so huge. If you went up to people on the street and asked them about it, they'd probably be like, "You had a album coming out?" Let alone it leaked.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Thinking, People, Community

  Source: pitchfork.com

• There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Song, Writing, Long

  Source: pitchfork.com

• People see your reviews sometimes, and it's so good that they think I wrote it. And I'm like, "OK, yeah, I wrote it. And I own the company that put it out."

  Lupe Fiasco

  Thinking, People, Sometimes

  Source: pitchfork.com

• I have a lot of fans in the Tea Party, and they disagree with me vehemently. But they're fans, so we meet and connect and talk, so I'm open to everything.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Party, Tea, Fans

  "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. March 9, 2011.

• The biggest budget is the military budget. For what? We're fighting two wars in very small countries that have no nuclear weapons, that have no capabilities to destroy anything. They probably couldn't even get to America.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Country, Military, War

  "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. March 9, 2011.

• When you understand that your tax dollars pay for those tear gas canisters that were being fired into the crowd, and when you see that, and to know that a little bit of your fingerprint, your American DNA is a part of that, as well as those stealth bombers and that bomb that's lodged in the side of the school that has "Made in USA" on it in Gaza, and all of the unmanned drones that are blowing up weddings and things of that nature, to know that you pay for that, you really have - you don't have to do it now, but you need to think about that.

  Lupe Fiasco

  School, Thinking, Dna

  "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. March 9, 2011.

• You need to think about the system that you live in and the comforts that you have. But the comforts that you have that are causing the discomforts of a massive amount of people around the world.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Thinking, People, Comfort

  Source: www.pbs.org

• My mother and my father taught me to look at the actual problem, not the face of it, not the veneer of it. So for me, I was never - I was impressed that it - racially, I was impressed, right, but now in America it's about economics, and it's been about economics, and honestly, everything's been about economics since I don't want to say the beginning of time, but it's been about economics for a long while.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Mother, Father, America

  "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. March 9, 2011.

• The men can have a moral compass that is just unshakeable, they can have ethics that run to the core.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Running, Men, Ethics

  "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. March 9, 2011.

• For me, I walk a line of fame and infamy. I walk the line of celebrity and non-celebrity.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Lines, Fame, Walks

  "Hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco". “The Tavis Smiley Show”, www.pbs.org. March 9, 2011.

• My greatest enemy at one point was myself, and so now once I got over the fear of myself I don't fear any man. I never have.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Men, Enemy

  "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. March 9, 2011.

• I always say that you define what success is to yourself.

  Lupe Fiasco

  "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. March 9, 2011.