Lupe Fiasco

Future rapper Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, also known as Lupe Fiasco, was born and brought up in Chicago, Illinois. There were many children in his family – Fiasco became the fifth kid among the nine brothers and sisters. No wonder, Lupe's father had to have several jobs in order to feed such an amount of children. However, he always had some spare time for them – so he gave records of Massive Attack to his son. It should be noted that for that moment, Lupe's attitude to rap was rather negative than positive – vulgar and aggressive lyrics irritated him, but after the acquaintance with Nas' works Lupe understood that rap differs like people do. While studying at the Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Illinois, Fiasco started rapping not knowing what the consequences could be. After listening to the album It Was Wrilleh by Nas in 1996, seventeen-year-old Lupe made up his mind to become a rapper too.

Firstly, he decided to choose a pseudonym – Lupe Fiasco, where Lupe is his school and domestic nickname, while Fiasco, meaning failure, defeat – was taken from the song he listened to. At the age of 19, Lupe became the participant of the band Da Pak. Before splitting, the band managed to record one single. After this disappointing experience in show business, Lupe decided to start a solo career, but the signed with Arista Records contract was torn by the company due to the head staff changes. Since that moment Fiasco decided to work independently - he made guest appearances on the tracks of other rappers and distributed his mixes through the Internet, thus creating his fan base. In the beginning of 2006, Lupe with a friend started a radio show FNF Radio on the campus wave of the Illinois Institute Of Technology. By 2005, Fiasco was a rather popular person in rap underground circles. His appearance on Mike Shinoda's (member of Linkin Park) solo album Fort Minor: We Major greatly contributed to this. At that period, promising artist Lupe caught the eye of the hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, who decided to help the young talent to record his debut solo album Food & Liquor.

In 2006 Lupe made a guest appearance on Kanye West's track Touch the Sky from the album Late Registration. The young rapper immediately attracted the attention of the public. The released soon after this event single Kick Push, dedicated to the skateboard culture, was highly acclaimed by the audience. The album itself hit the shelves in late September, 2006. High quality rap, full of fresh and witty metaphors, turned the Food & Liquor disc into one of the biggest releases of the year, while Jay-Z who promoted the artist compared Lupe's appearance on the scene to "a fresh breath of air". The album Food & Liquor itself got three Grammy nominations. In 2007, Fiasco announced that his new album The Cool should be anticipated the same year, and that the album would become the conceptual continuation of the previous full-length, in particular, of its song The Cool. It was also made public that Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams organized a band called Child Rebel Soldier. In December 2007, Lupe released the second album The Cool, which became the brilliant embodiment of all the things the public adored in Lupe so much after his forceful debut. However, the rapper continues his uneasy labor - he has already started the work over the new disc LupEND, which would be issued in 2008. It will become the final work in the trilogy.