EP153: Tiffany Johnson on Lupe Fiasco’s “Food & Liquor” (2006)

Episode notes

Chicago has given us plenty of great artists: Noname, Chance the Rapper, Common, and of course today’s focus, Lupe Fiasco. Lupe might not have known it at the time, but his debut album helped usher in a new era of rap. This new class of freshmen were raised by videogames, skateboard culture, and anime, but also addressed issues that affected them like systemic racism and gun violence.

Filmmaker Tiffany Johnson sits down with Oliver and Morgan to discuss Food & Liquor, the interesting production choices made on the album, and how Lupe’s style influenced the Odd Futures and Cool Kids of today.

More on Tiffany Johnson

• Women Win Big At 2020 Tribeca Film Festival Awards: Alice Wu, Ruthy Pribar, Lena Waithe, Tiffany Johnson, Julia Jansch And More. (Forbes)
• The Black Female Director with Dime Davis and Tiffany Johnson (KCRW)
• Twitter | Instagram

More on Lupe Fiasco

• Lupe talks about the making of Food & Liquor
•  The Kick, Push music video in all it’s mid 00’s glory
• The Successes of Rapper Lupe Fiasco (EW)

Show Tracklisting (all songs from Food & Liquor unless otherwise indicated):

• Sunshine
• Intro
• Kick, Push
• Kanye West: Touch the Sky
• I Gotcha
• Just Might Be OK
• Daydreamin’
• American Terrorist
• Wallace Collection: Daydream
• Gunter Kallmann Chor: Daydream
• I Monster: Daydream
• Moody Blues: Dear Diary
• Free the Robots: Diary
• Pressure
• The Instrumental
• Pressure
• The Emperor’s Soundtrack
• I Gotcha
• Outro
• Pressure
• Outro
• The Cool Kids: Black Mags
• The Cool Kids: Mikey Rocks

Here is the Spotify playlist of as many songs as we can find on there.
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