lupe-fiasco_darkcrop
UPDATE: Pete and Lupe appear to have settled their sampling differences. Get the full story here.
As a number of outlets have reported, Lupe Fiasco addressed his use of the beat from Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth's 90s rap classic "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)" on his brand new single "Around My Way (Freedom Ain't Free)" during an industry conference call moderated by DJ Whoo Kid today. Pete Rock expressed his hurt over the use of the beat, which he created to commemorate the passing of his friend of Trouble T-Roy of Heavy D & The Boyz--even going so far as to point out that he received the blessing of Tom Scott, whose song "Today" provided the sax and bass loop at the heart of the beat. Read his twitter stream for context but the substance of his remarks can be found below:
"No disrespect to Lupe Fiasco and i like him alot but TROY should be left alone. Feel so violated,the beat is next to my heart and was made outta anguish and pain. When it's like that it should not be touched by no one! It's so hard for folks to make original music, I possess that, but these dudes are scared of that and this is supposed to be HIP HOP? Man I'm a lupe fan and everything but TROY was my homie man. I think about him and Hev every fucking day!!!! Smh. Who ever Re-created that didn't do a good job @ all. #nohate. ...Yo hev and t-Roy I love and miss da shit outta y'all. U guys have been violated with no Vaseline. So fucked up this business smmfh!!! And I don't care who got something to say about it, kiss my...I'm not flattered @ all. Dat shit is wack, and the producer should be ashamed of his fuckin self. That record is dear to me...I think lupe is a great artist, I'm that angry with him but it's a major label idea. I can feel it. And y'all need to stop the childish games, I'm a fan of lupe and he is a great artist and a great person. And let me be clear cuz a lot of y'all don't know this. But Tom Scott himself gave me an approval for TROY, told me I did a great job!!"
Although Lupe apparently did not address the comments directly, he did provide insight on his use of the beat (after the jump):
“All the credit goes to my partner and manager Chill, he just felt like it was time to bring back a joint… Go back and take one of the iconic records of Hip Hop and put a new spin on it and put it back out there. I spit on it a couple times before, some mixtape stuff back in the day, Chill felt it needed a bigger look than that.”
And of considerably more interest to Lupe fans, he spoke at length about what can be expected from the new LP Food & Liquor 2, the themes it addresses and how the single encapsulates them:
“The album is meant to be my interpretation of America. Politics, society, religion, class, race, food, all across the board. It was only right that we had to have a song that was a collage of that, so people got it from the door that all these different things, topics, that make up America, that make us Americans, the things that influence us and the things that we influence. You needed that first record to be the embodiment of that whole piece, the whole direction that we’re going in. This record is a collage, but it’s a more like an introduction. As you get into the album, as we release new records, and hopefully we’ll release the album in a few months, you’ll see that we focus on particular issues on particular songs. We will expand on something that may have came up in the second verse of “Freedom Ain’t Free”. There will be a whole song that speaks about this particular relationship in American society, or this particular phenomenon in American society, so people can get a good direction of where the album is going. You get it all in the first joint. But it’s not necessarily angry. The whole record’s not angry. It’s not coming from an angry place, it’s coming from a serious place.”
He also gave a rough timefram for the LP's release, which will apparently come in two parts:
“It’s Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album Part I. Part I, which “Freedom Ain’t Free” is the single off of, is coming in the next few months. It really ain’t got no features on there. It got a few people on the hooks and stuff like that, but no other real features other than myself. But that’s part one. It’s a double album. We’re probably 80% finished with part 2, which is going to come out a little later. It’s not finalized. You don’t know who’s going to be on it… Part 1 is done and there ain’t gonna be any features on there, but part 2, it maybe somebody coming at the last inning to drop a verse. We’ll see.”
spotted at HT
