Why West Coast gangsta rap appealed to Lupe Fiasco growing up in Chicago
Lupe Fiasco has admitted to a sort of blasphemy. While he grew up in Chicago, he didn’t listen to the rap music many might have expected him to as a young person. He was a kid drawn to the West Coast sound.
“If I mention that I didn’t grow up on A Tribe Called Quest, that’s blasphemous to rappers from the East Coast,” Lupe told The Ringer in 2022. “They say, ‘Well, what did you grow up on?” and I’m like, ‘Spice 1.’ Spice 1 was more relevant.”
In addition to California rapper Spice 1, Lupe shouted out Snoop Dogg and NWA, not to mention Southern rap groups like 8Ball & MJG from Memphis, Tennessee, Geto Boys from Houston, Texas. These were among the acts he loved most.
That, on the surface, can seem surprising. Lupe Fiasco appears to be much more a student of East Coast acts like A Tribe Called Quest, Nas and Jay-Z, and, as he mentioned during the interview, he did learn a lot from these artists as he got a little bit older. But as a kid, he was less interested in rappers like that. He instead looked westward.
The reason was simple. While Lupe was from Chicago, that hardly meant that he grew up in a world of luxury. “I’m from the ghetto,” he said, arguing that he comes from “one of the most violent neighbourhoods in the world.”
Gangsta rap, especially the gangsta rap produced out west, captured Lupe’s experiences so vividly that he became a dedicated fan. Not only was it “entertainment at a distance” for him, but it played out in his life. He lived gangsta rap.
“There was gangbanging,” Lupe said of his environment growing up. “We didn’t have Bloods and Crips but we had GDs, Vice Lords, Latin Kings, King Cobras, Black Souls, BDs, we had all the others.”
Lupe argued that, while Bloods and Crips have strong “brands,” the gangs he grew up surrounded by were equally powerful and violent within their own context. People outside of Chicago may not have heard of them very much, but Lupe was more than familiar with their activities.
Lupe felt that often people missed that this violent history is “a part of [his] DNA,” especially in light of the rapper he became. He ostensibly fits into an East Coast tradition, but his musical development isn’t as straightforward as that binary implies.