Another Hip-Hop Concert?

By Lewis Corson | February 23, 2010 at 4:00 pm | Arts & Culture, Life | 24 comments | |

CMC will be welcoming Lupe Fiasco, B.o.B., and Anthem to Claremont on March 5 at Big Bridges auditorium on Pomona’s campus. Ticket sales have been through the roof with 723 sold at CMC alone on the first day of ticket sales and a complete sell-out as of Friday.  Although there has been a bit of controversy over booking “another” hip-hop artist, ASCMC president Isayas Theodros explained that total cost, artist availability, and student body interests all play important roles when coordinating an event of this magnitude.  “Of all the artists we considered, from a variety of different genres, Lupe Fiasco seemed to fit that combination best,” Theodros said.  For some CMCers, the question still beckons, “Are students being misrepresented by the very people we have entrusted into office?”

Let us learn a little more about what Lupe Fiasco is about.  A Chicago native of West-African descent, Fiasco was exposed an array of experiential and ideological influences.  His father was, among other things, an engineer, a member of the Black Panther Party, and an African drummer while his mother was a gourmet chef at fine restaurants in Chicago. He was raised Muslim on the West Side of Chicago, a predominantly Christian and Catholic city, learning the tenets of the faith from his parents and the reality of the streets from his peers–the FNF crew.  Well-documented in Food and Liquor (2006) and The Cool (2007), Fiasco resented hearing only vulgarity and mysogonism in hip-hop during his youth.  The release of Nas’s modern-day classic It Was Written (1996) not only changed the entire game, but also provided extraordinary influence for the thirteen-year old Fiasco.  As a result, Lupe Fiasco is undoubtedly one of the most progressive names in the hip-hop game right now.

The first word that comes to mind when I think about the contemporary hip-hop community is “homogenous.” While that label is usually applied to Caucasian communities in the Northeast, I did not see a performance at the BET Awards where cars, women, clothing, and money were not rapped/sang about in excess. The Cool and It Was Written both focus on Mafioso narratives, street culture appraisal, and symbolism–content that sets Lupe Fiasco and Nas apart from field of hip-hop. Lupe Fiasco’s work to date is impressive; it does not fit the hip-hop mold for success. To the best of my knowledge, Fiasco is the only mainstream hip-hop artist to have crafted an “abstract conceptual album” in recent years. The Cool expounds upon three characters introduced in Food in Liquor that each embody a different aspect of street culture and symbolize the degradation of morality in the face of greed, opportunity, and poverty–sociological ideas that reverberate through the college demographic in the form of dissertations and discussions.

So whether you’re complaining to your suitemates about how ASCMC does not care about what the student body wants or actually just have no idea for what you are in store on March 5, take an hour out of your day today and listen to what Lupe Fiasco has to offer.  Listen to his lyrics, consider his message.  Hopefully you will find that he is not trying to be another “girl you stank” rapper, but rather a champion of a deeper, intellectual discourse within today’s offbeat hip-hop climate.