Lupe Fiasco has been injecting messages into his songs ever since his star turn with his smash debut single “Kick Push” back in 2006. With the latest video for “B-tch Bad,” the latest single from his forthcoming Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap album, Lupe is once again using music as a means to incite a deeper conversation. Although well-received by fans across the social media sphere, longstanding music publication SPIN magazine hurled heavy criticism at the Chicago wordsmith over the song. Lupe Fiasco has reacted by urging his fans and supporters to boycott of SPIN, saying they should call for a “higher standard.”
Writer Brandon Soderberg, who helms SPIN’s Hip-Hop blog “No Trivia,” gave Lupe Fiasco’s video poor marks and didn’t mince words in his dissection of the piece.
From SPIN:
“B**ch Bad” is, to play Lupe’s game and get histrionic, how you “debase” a “culture.” You twist a rap song into poorly thought-out grab for attention, and give it a muddled video, all under the guise of “starting a conversation,” which implicitly suggests that rap music isn’t having these conversations already.
Lupe Fiasco defended himself via Twitter last Friday by calling the critique unfair and directly tweeting to Soderberg’s account. “And now that you have my attention @notrivia I intend to do my best to expose you and your publication 4 ur actions #BoycottSpinMagazine,” tweeted Lupe.
The fiery rapper has not only galvanized fans to change their Twitter avatars to a “Boycott Spin Magazine” logo, he has continued to rail against the magazine all weekend. Additionally, Lupe fans have also started an online petition replete with the boycott message.
Soderberg has seemingly relished the attention and even mentioned that the Lupe controversy has raised his profile. MTV News senior Hip-Hop writer Rob Markman also got into a brief exchange over Twitter with Soderberg after he defended the song, with the SPIN blogger hurling insults in Markman’s direction as a result. In one of his last salvos towards SPIN, Lupe tweeted, “U should b proud @notrivia I mean look at how ur words got ppl 2 exercise their 1st amendment rights! Today Spin 2morrow maybe world hunger!”
Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album is in stores September 25th. This story will continue to develop.
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Photo: GQ
