Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Lupe Fiasco: "I hate this album"

This has got to be the most negative interview I've ever read from an artist about his own album, especially considering that said album was still a month away from being released at the time this article was written. An excerpt:

"There’s nothing really to tell about that record, to be honest. I didn’t have nothing to do with that record. That was the label’s record. That wasn’t like I knew the producer or knew the writer or anything like that. That was one of those records the record company gave me, [they even gave me] stuff they wanted me to rap about. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey I did this and I went to a mountain and found inspiration and it was this.’ [Last April] I was backstage at a show at the House of Blues in L.A. and the president of [Atlantic Records] came to me and said, ‘Hey check this out, I got this song.’ He played ‘Show Goes On’ for me on the iPod. I was used to it because they presented me like ten other songs in the same fashion or via email. So for me, at that point, it was just another record like, ‘Is this a song you want me to do?’ There was nothing special about it for me at that point. It was like, ‘You know we still want off the label, right?’ That was the conversations we were having."

I guess I'll probably still hear it, because at his best I love this guy...but this does not sound promising at all.

5 comments:

drischord said...

At best, this is reverse-psychology PR. At worst, it's yet another caution to anyone dumb enough to covet a major label record deal. (Particularly with Atlantic; they always sound particularly awful.)

drischord said...

In case you were wondering how Atlantic was going to fill Lupe's roster spot...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/09/gwyneth-paltrow-atlantic-records_n_833338.html

Nice going, Atlantic Records! You'll always have John Coltrane and Led Zeppelin... no one can take that away from you. (Except both of those artists when they left you in disgust.)

Eric said...

I never really paid attention to which evil record labels are more evil to their artists, but you're right that Atlantic does seem to do this more often. Saigon, despite making an album produced by Just Blaze (with a couple tracks by Kanye) and guest starring on Entourage as himself in an extended storyline, took almost four years to get control of the album back and finally release it on an independent label. And it turns out that the major he was signed with was Atlantic. Q - have you heard the album? Is it worth a damn?

Quinapalus said...

I actually haven't heard it yet, but I'm sure I'll end up buying it. I'm too big of a fan to just pass it by.

drischord said...

Well Pitchform just bombed this album, for what it's worth.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15208-lasers/