Chicago, IL · hip-hop

Lupe Fiasco

1 upcoming festival

Chicago's technician's technician — two decades of dense, dexterous lyricism from 'Kick, Push' to late-career records rap nerds treat like scripture.

Lupe Fiasco is the recording name of Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, born February 16, 1982, and raised on Chicago's West Side in the Madison Terrace housing project, one of nine children in a Muslim household. His father was a Black Panther Party member, martial artist and drummer, and Fiasco began martial arts training himself at age three.

He grew up disliking rap for its vulgarity before developing an interest in his teens, adopting his stage name at 19 and recording in his father's basement, briefly working with a group called Da Pak. A meeting with Jay-Z led to a deal with Atlantic Records, and a guest verse on Kanye West's "Touch the Sky" in 2006 brought him wider recognition ahead of his debut album.

Food & Liquor arrived in 2006, followed by The Cool in 2007, a loosely conceptual record built around recurring characters; "Superstar" became his first top-40 hit. Lasers, delayed two years and released in 2011, became his first number-one album on the Billboard 200 despite mixed reviews, with "The Show Goes On" reaching number nine, his highest-charting single. He won a Grammy for "Daydreamin'," his collaboration with Jill Scott.

His writing tends toward intricate rhyme schemes, extended metaphor and narrative structures that reward re-listening, drawing on his faith, Chicago politics and skate culture. After Tetsuo & Youth closed out his Atlantic run in 2015, he founded the label 1st & 15th Entertainment and released Drogas Light, Drogas Wave, Drill Music in Zion and Samurai independently.

Beyond music, he has run clothing lines Righteous Kung-Fu and Trilly & Truly, designed footwear for Reebok, and worked as a visiting scholar at MIT before joining Johns Hopkins University in 2025 as a Distinguished Visiting Professor for its music degree program.

Read more

hip-hop