Lupe Fiasco

Lupe Fiasco energized hip-hop when his highly anticipated 2006 debut Food & Liquor was leaked online before shooting into the Top 10 of Billboard's album charts upon its release. Critics hailed the rapper as the savior of the genre on the strength of tracks like the skateboard anthem "Kick, Push" and his mellow, Grammy-winning duet with soul/jazz singer Jill Scott on "Daydreamin'."

Born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco on February 17th, 1982, in Chicago, Illinois, he is the son of a gourmet chef mother and engineer father. When the rapper was a child, his mother gave him the nickname "Lu" by shortening his first name. By high school his friends began calling him Lupe and he picked up Fiasco from a track by hip-hop supergroup the Firm. A fan of Nas, Fiasco began rapping at age 19 with the group Da Pak, which signed with Epic Records and released a minor single before splitting up. He then signed with Arista, but the deal was cut short when the label folded in 2004. Fiasco forged on, eventually finding himself on the hip-hop radar when he released a series of critically acclaimed mixtapes. He signed with Atlantic Records, released "Kick, Push" as a single and appeared on Kanye West's 2006 song "Touch the Sky.”

Fiasco's last album, Tetsuo & Youth, was released in January 2015. "For some people it's gonna be a shock, because there are no politics on the record. Consciously, there are no politics on the record," he told Rolling Stone prior to its release. "If you want to hear my political spiel or some pseudo-intellectual Lupe, go listen to [2012's] Food & Liquor II. From here on out, I'm just making music."