Lupe Fiasco admits to XXL writer, Thomas Golianopoulos, that he wanted commit suicide. Why? Because it got really hard for him when he felt the pressures of the glass-ceiling of Atlantic Records.
In 2009, Atlantic Records froze his budget on Lasers citing that they were unhappy with his songs. It put Fiasco under a crippling depression.
“It follows you everywhere,” he said of his suicidal thoughts. “The way you rationalize things gets titled through that mentality.” In his song titled, “Beautiful Lasers,” Fiasco talks about keeping a gun at bedside. “That was literal,” he admits. “I own a ton of them.”
Fiasco hit a turning point and convinced his devoted fans to save him from the one-hit wonder black hole. Last October, he and his fans were able to convince Atlantic for another shot after organizing a boycott outside Atlantic’s New York office Incredibly, fans purchased over 204,000 copies of Lasers, once the disc finally hit shelves in early March, making it the No. 1 album on the Billboard Top 200 for that week, proving to Atlantic that he shouldn’t be shelved.
Lupe admits the content on Lasers has its artistic compromises, but best believe he is a real emcee. Hence, the title of his cover story, “Hip-Hop’s Most Enlightened MC Fights To Stay Alive.”
“You have people who can say that. Jay-Z can say that. Eminem can say that. Canibus can say that—if we are going line for line. If you want to relate me to the newer cats, let’s go. Let’s go line for line and bar for bar. If it’s all about spitting and metaphors and MCing and lyrics and entendres, I will eat 99 percent of you dudes up.”
Lupe Fiasco XXL issue hits newstands April 26.
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