A Quote by Lupe Fiasco

My whole team, it wasn't about putting the album out, it was about getting off the record company and going independent or going to another label. To the point we were like, 'Listen, just take 'Lasers.' You can have whatever percentage off the next ten records I do for the rest of my life. I just do not want to be here anymore.'
It's hard if you're just touring constantly. It's like, "What am I going to write about? I'm in the van, I'm playing another show..." I'm still writing about heartbreak that happened years ago. I don't see the point of writing and putting out another record until I can do something else.
After we finished touring 'Ignore The Ignorant' we had this perfect idea that we were going to take a couple of years off, that was the plan. Because we thought we were definitely going to take time off, I was going to go back to college, that was what I was going to do. Because the whole idea of it was that I have spent ten years in this band and not even realised that that amount of time has passed.
I call it "being interrupted by success." We had done The Soft Bulletin, which came out in 1999, and we knew we that were gonna make another record before too long. But in between this, we were still in this mode of kind of just - not re-creating what we could be, but kind of doing different things. For the longest time in the Flaming Lips we were like, "Make a record, go on tour. Come back, make another record," and you know, I think, frankly, we were kind of like, "There's more to life than just recording records and going on tour."
One thing that did get me into a lot of different types of music was when I was very young, the local record store went out of business and they were selling off all the vinyl. I remember going in - I was probably 16 or 17 and I'd just gotten a record player as a present. It was like hitting the jackpot: all these records for $3 apiece.
I'm not big on trying to label it [my rap] or trying to prove people otherwise. I'm just making records that I like and that I wanna make. I'm just making records that relate to me and that relate to my life. If you listen to what I'm saying I'm not talking about anything that isn't my life. I take pride in having truthful lyrics.
I realized how important it was to have a good team - manager, attorney and label. It's not just about putting out a record and somebody signing you.
There were actually times where I thought, 'Do people even remember us? Are people gonna be interested in hearing what we put out next?'And, you know, there were times I felt like, 'Are there going to be people out there waiting for this record?'. So we kind of live in a bubble, in a sense. We're very closed off to that whole world of thinking about those kinds of things.
No. You can't. And I can't do anything either, about my life, to change it, make it better, make me feel better about it. Like it better, make it work. But I can stop it. Shut it down, turn it off like the radio when there's nothing on I want to listen to. It's all I really have that belongs to me and I'm going to say what happens to it. And it's going to stop. And I'm going to stop it. So. Let's just have a good time.
Like, in retrospect, this whole Mini-Album is about itself, and the process of letting go of the fear of what people will think about the music or of me or whatever and just putting it out there. But none of that was intentional at all.
There's just something about getting up, putting it out there, and getting this exchange of energy. Whether your audience is a camera lens, or live theater, or whatever it is, just putting that out there and getting it back is just an honor.
In the future, I just think that as far as when it comes to me and my music, I'm trying to help be the catalyst for whatever is going to inspire more people and keep a great creative community going. Whatever I can do to make everyone's records better, not just my own, just hopefully keep the whole flow of stuff going in a good direction. That's what I'll be doing, so look forward to whatever I'm involved with it and hopefully I can inspire the next generation.
When Alcatrazz played in Japan in early '84, the record label offered me the opportunity to do a solo album while continuing to play in the band. I wanted the whole album to have vocals, but the record company didn't want that. Initially, the album was released solely in Japan.
I left the Pumpkins in 2010, and I just took a year off to hang with my family and be with my daughter and my son and my wife, and just get acclimatised to being off the road. Then I started looking at what was going to be the next part of my career/legacy, whatever you want to call it.
I don't really think about what the subject of my next album will be. I just know that I'm going to make another album.
At the (record company) meeting Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do, so in the end I just said, 'I think you're daft. I want a divorce.'
It's normal at this point for the fear-anger syndrome to take over and make you want to hammer on that side plate with a chisel, to pound it off with a sledge if necessary. You think about it, and the more you think about it the more you're inclined to take the whole machine to a high bridge and drop it off. It's just outrageous that a tiny little slot of a screw can defeat you so totally.
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