Lupe Fiasco explains his motivations for taking part in Summit On The Summit: Kilimanjaro in his new blog.
One of the most utopian and challenging phenomenon of man is the process of trying to realize the ideal. To sculpt the tangible from what is the ether of the mind. It manifests in the artistic mind as a vision and translates in the world via the specific talents of the artist as a song, a painting, a poem, a sculpture, a building, etc. The ambitious among us try and take a crack at it in every category. I think the category that best fits this trek is dance. Expressing oneself through the movement of one’s own body. An inaudible rhythm that silently screams a message to the audience. A public sacrifice of sorts. Putting ones own body directly in the firing line of critics, risking humiliation and to the extreme even creating enemies of friends and friends of strangers. All because of a dance. The steps of this dance in particular are simple enough, one foot in front of the other. The stage is a harsh and meandering, chaotic thing. The cast is a mix of Juliard graduates, street trained, pop-lock champions and downright hopeless amateurs. The music is all natural thunderclaps and raindrop drumsticks upon cold plastic rooftops. But the message is the real star of the show. The underlying manifesto is one of awe inspiring pageantry fit for carnival in the streets of Brazil or the main drags of New Orleans. It’s classic and new, unchanging but full of progression. Alvin Alley meets The Court Waltz. A “dance macabre” and the unfortunate ones amongst the skeletons are ignorance and complacency. So What’s The message?!?
Read the rest here.