In 2021, the names Chris Gibbs, Dave Ortiz, and Kanye West will come together on year-end lists ranking the best releases in footwear.
In 2006, those names all appeared somewhere else: the “Outro” to Lupe Fiasco’s famed first album, Food & Liquor.
Entering a new era of internet rap, Lupe Fiasco was the ethernet cable connecting coordinates of clothing, culture, and genre. The whiz kid from Chicago cleverly caught Jay-Z’s ear in the early 2000s, stacking up boxes of “Rocafella” Air Force 1s while eliciting listeners through his Revenge of the Nerds mixtape series.
In 2005, the buzz broke through with his feature on Kanye West’s “Touch the Sky,” providing the Hov co-signed Nas fan with his own “Live at the BBQ” moment.
Around the industry and on the internet, the hype around Lupe Fiasco was real. Following his first feature on a radio release, Lupe inked a deal with Reebok, becoming a pioneer in the partnership game in having a shoe contract before he had an album out.
The momentum quickly continued through “Kick, Push,” a storytelling single centered around skateboarding and set to a sample of Filipina singer Celeste Legaspi.
The track touched nerves all over the hip-hop landscape. Fans of lyrics and narrative loved Lupe’s approach to writing while members of the skateboarding community caught feelings both positive and negative around it.
That same month, Lupe’s debut album leaked on the internet, igniting a fan base and forum fever around the project before it actually arrived. Because of this, the actual album was pushed out for months so that Lupe and the label could create a new product they could still sell.
In that time, Lupe fans created online hives before Beyoncé and Future, swarming through message boards to share songs and decipher his lyrics.
Finally, on September 19, 2006, Food & Liquor was formally released, receiving rave reviews and eventually four Grammy nominations.
Executive production from Jay Z backed by beats from friends like Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Mike Shinoda, and Soundtrakk set the stage for rhyme-ridden tales that touched topics ranging from romantic dating to domestic terrorism, media addiction to heartbreak at home.
(Image via Amazon)
Lupe’s strong subject matter, nuanced nerd image, and cultured clothing rotation made him the most interesting new face in hip-hop. In 2006, Lupe was dominating print press like FADER and GQ, being shot by Terry Richardson and making headlines on Hypebeast.
In fact, Lupe’s fixation with shoes, skate, and streetwear was seminal to his arrival as quoted in his 2006 FADER cover story:
“Fiasco explains that because of his sneaker obsession he had been getting deeper into streetwear culture, frequenting websites like Hypebeast and heading straight to the LES when he visited New York.”
This deep dive into street fashion shined through in his early press pics, often seen in an ALIFE crewneck or a Y-3 hoody. The likes of Maharishi shirts and selvedge denim straight from Japan clothes his limbs when most peers were swimming in tall tees or trying to make button-downs pop.
(Images courtesy of KING & SPIN via Kanyetothe & La Cassette)
Ultimately, Lupe’s connection to online footwear, fashion, and collectible culture made him a man of the people as a new world was opening up.
Not only was Lupe a rapper’s rapper, he was someone who could actually comment on OkayPlayer or SLAMXHYPE like the rest of us. When Food & Liquor finally hit stores, his clout and connectivity were on full display on the “Outro” as he shouted out Kevin Ma, Kid Robot, Maharishi, Rob Heppler, Don C, Greg Street, and Kicks Hawaii on the same song that also thanks TI, Reebok execs and staff at Def Jam.
Lupe was not just connected to the culture, he was embedded in it. During his year-end victory lap, he expressed so much in his sartorial choices. Back when most people were buying shoes based on athletics or affluence, Lupe’s approach was art and convergence culture.
“The illest sneaker of ‘06 is still the John Lennon Chuck Taylor, which actually came out in 2004,” Lupe told Format in an interview after Food & Liquor dropped. “I have a pair on my feet right now and they’re still crushing everything in the world.”
In that same interview, Fiasco talked of collecting Futura x UNKLE toys, having a working relationship with Nintendo, and practicing his kickflip inside his studio. Goals ranged from retiring after three albums to winning a Nobel Peace Prize, while future plans included his upcoming clothing line, Trilly & Truly, collaborating with Hiroshi Fujiwara and fragment design.
Keep in mind, Trilly & Truly was a passion project in partnership with a young Virgil Abloh.
Again, this was all in 2006.
At that time, Lupe was Kendrick Lamar to lyrical hip-hop fans and Travis Scott to streetwear kids — just all at once. One could find the ‘mixtape Weezy’ stepping up his bars in the same era and even Kanye West adjusting his wardrobe to a more global and graphic approach.
(Images courtesy of Les Enfants Terribles and Hypebeast)
The world was taking notice and much of it was happening on the internet. The next generation of XXL Freshman would all pull from Lupe’s pedigree from on-point delivery to crossover culture appeal.
“I can’t tell you how big of a Lupe fan I was when he first came out,” Wale once recalled to Complex. “I didn’t know a damn thing about skateboarding, but I was like, ‘This fly Chicago n—– man, he’s spitting. For real.’ That Revenge of The Nerds mixtape? Fucking crazy. And it was the start man. People think Kanye started these new n—–. But Lupe Fiasco started all of this shit for us to get a chance and for Complex to really fuck with n—– like us. For someone like myself, Cudi, or even my artist Black Cobain, that kind of gave us that other look.”
As said by Wale, Lupe was a door opener to the world we’re living in now even more so than Kanye.
As crazy as that sounds, it’s true.
In the early aughts, Lupe was rapping over indie rock beats from the Gorillaz, paving the way for mixtape work from Kid Cudi, Drake, Wale, and Wiz Khalifa.
His early endorsement deal with Reebok predated similar signings to Travis Scott and much of the 2010’s adidas Originals roster, capturing the momentum of the next to blow by having them in campaigns before they even released albums.
(Image via Brightest Young Things)
When Food & Liquor released in the fall of 2006, it stood tall in a crowded fourth quarter headlined by a Jay-Z comeback, a long-awaited Clipse album, and anticipated releases from the likes of Nas, Jeezy, and The Game.
Only fifteen months later, he’d do it again, outdoing himself by dropping The Cool.
For a few years, Lupe Fiasco was unequivocally that dude when it came to damn near everything. He had bars that basically birthed Genius while his wardrobe and rhymes were a glossary for streetwear and global fashion in a sense similar to Biggie and Hov in their early hey-days.
By album three, the industry had gotten the best of Lupe. The machine at Atlantic shelved songs that would work on a modern-day Juice WRLD or Lil Uzi Vert project instead forcing him to put out a collection of tracks that charted commercially but fell flat artistically.
Even then, the same hive had his back, but the momentum behind Lupe began to widdle as he was at war with his label and other institutions of power.
In the past week, Lupe’s longtime hive has shown to have a powerful voice in it: Tyler the Creator.
After rhyming over Drake’s “Champagne Poetry,” the reserved rapper proved his pen is still working with the Converse-collaborator booing the industry and the culture for not protecting and preserving one of the most unique talents to come through.
Responding in funny fashion, Lupe is still good and still worthy of all the flowers. Those that came up not just after him, but in many ways because of him, consider him a cult icon the same way hoopers revere Brandon Roy who had his prime cut short when considering scale. Wale even went on to call Lupe “one of the greatest rappers of all time” recently.
These days, Lupe is still on his own wave when it comes to all his interests. You might find him recreating his favorite Visvims in Air Force fashion on Nike By You or hopping into the comment sections to tell tales of Trilly & Truly samples sourced by Virgil Abloh.
Yes, in 2021 Lupe Fiasco is still very much the connector he was in 2006, weaving the worlds of fashion, footwear, and music in a manner much more important than algorithms and much more meaningful than Billboard charts.
Lupe Fiasco planted the seeds for this generation’s multi-hyphenate heroes to become multi-millionaires, breaking the game open with his acclaimed first album that debuted 15 years ago today.
