CAN Lupe Fiasco please start liking Barack Obama?It's not about you, Lupe. It's about me. The Clebster cannot handle cognitive dissonance. You're making it so I can't be into both your music and Barack Obama's political message. When "Superstar" comes on the radio, my brain short-circuits because I want to groove around the kitchen,
but I don't want it to mean "No, We Can't."This is really awkward for me. Please fix it.
IF YOU haven't heard "Kick, Push" or "Daydreamin'"--and you'll enjoy both unambivalently if you hate hope--Lupe Fiasco is a brainy, young rapper from Chicago. His lyrics are brilliant and his breathy inhale before verses makes him sound like an excited kid desperate to get everything in one breath. This is from "American Terrorist," off his debut album Food & Liquor:
Don't give the black man food, give red man liquor
Red man fool, black man nigga
Give yellow man tool, make him railroad builda
Also give him pan, make him pull gold from river
Give black man crack, Glocks to teens,
Give red man craps, slot machines
HE HAS publicly rejected/denounced Obama, saying he doesn't deign to vote, but if he did, he'd vote for Hillary Clinton. Which is deeply lame. And, unsurprisingly, he doesn't have a real reason for taking this stand, just mumblings about how Obama wants to bomb Iran. (No one knows where he got this mistaken impression.)
I suspect the truth is that Fiasco is so perfectly in Obama's demographic--young, black, famous, smarty-pantsy, hailing from the South Side--that he opposes him just for spite. Because he's too damn clever and has to defy expectations.
He was raised by Black Panther-y, Muslim intellectual parents who are, in his words, "damn near anarchist," and it would just be so tacky and mainstream to support Obama. (Anyway, Hillary Clinton is the obvious choice of any self-respecting black nationalist.)
SO Obama takes the fall. Which is so not fair to me.
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