When drill music first started in the city, I made a notorious statement ten years ago that it scares me. This album isn’t a critique on drill music as a whole, so I don’t want to lean into that narrative like that’s what I was doing it for. You tackle the epidemic of death in rap throughout the album, especially on “ On Faux Nem.” Coming from Chicago where drill music began, do you feel like you have survivor’s remorse? Or, I got a great introduction or a great transition record, now I need a song that’s like this to kind of end the album with.” So I found myself in the process of making those decisions, moreso towards the end where it became more deliberate. Maybe not ‘new,’ but let me reference this idea and use that.”Īs I got towards the end of the process and I was consciously making album decisions, it was like, “Oh, I need a song like this. I gotta think of a new flow pattern, a new way to attack it or structure it. I know exactly what to do with that because I’ve had beats like that before.” On others it was like, “This is interesting, I can’t just approach it normally. On some of it, it was like you open it up, play the beat and it’s like, “Oh, perfect. I had these daily or weekly freestyles I was doing around that time, and I just said “my next album is gonna sound like it’s drill music in Zion.” So, I had the title, and then I made the decision to do an album in 24 hours, like that was the goal to see if I could do it. I had the title because I mentioned it in a random freestyle I was doing. Before you went through the beats, did you already know the concept of the album, or did it come to you when listening to the production? That’s the only time I’ve ever done it, I haven’t done any slams, competitions or anything like that.ĭrill Music in Zion was recorded in three days when you explored a folder of beats from Soundtrakk. It wasn’t a rap, but it was me with some background music doing this Last Poets-type style. I remember writing this long piece about going to another planet or something weird over this Parliament music.
It was a speech class or something like that. The only thing that I did that would be considered close to spoken word was in high school – and this was probably one of my first spoken language performances before I was doing shows – we had a project in school to write an essay and then perform it in front of the class. “But I almost died, so I was like, ‘I need to sleep, I need to eat, I need to rest my voice.'” “I really tried to do it in one day,” Lupe told Okayplayer. The 40-year-old made it his mission to record the album in 24 hours the process ended up taking three days. Lupe spends the majority of Drill Music In Zion flowing over lush, jazz-centric production from longtime collaborator Soundtrakk. Now on his eighth album, Lupe – born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco – is looking to the future of hip-hop while keeping his perspective close to his hometown of Chicago. Nearly 16 years have passed since the release of Lupe’s debut album, Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor, and the rapper has seen it all. “Rappers die too much, that’s it, that’s the verse,” veteran rhymesayer Lupe Fiasco laments on “ On Faux Nem,” the final track from his new album Drill Music in Zion.
Lupe Fiasco spoke with Okayplayer about his new album Drill Music in Zion, his forthcoming MIT course, rappers catching RICO cases, his friendship with Virgil Abloh, and more.
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