“One thing I try to stress about this project is, I love and hate this album,” Lupe Fiasco recently told Complex about the album that was once indefinitely shelved, the subject of large-scale protests, and finally given a March 8th release. The album is Lupe’s third, and going by what the Chicago emcee told the magazine, as well as RH in a previous interview, his least favorite to make.
He continues in the article, “I listen to it and I’ll like some of the songs. But when I think about what it took to actually get the record together and everything that I went through on this record—which is something I can’t separate—I hate this album. A lot of the songs that are on the album, I’m kinda neutral to. Not that I don’t like them, or that I hate them, it’s just I know the process that went behind it. I know the sneaky business deal that went down behind this song, or the artist or singer or songwriter who wrote this hook and didn’t want to give me this song in the first place. So when I have that kind of knowledge behind it, I’m just kind of neutral to it like, ‘Another day, another dollar.’ As opposed something like The Cool, which is more of my own blood, sweat, and tears, and my own control. With this record, I’m little bit more neutral as to the love for the record.”
Lupe echoed sentiments in the interview we published in November entitled At War With L.A.S.E.R.S. He noted that many of the songs were given to him by the label, and much of the delays were more or less creative differences. He was ready to leave Atlantic and proceed with Japanese Cartoon before both sides reached an agreement. The album, for better or worse, drops on March 8th.