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Lupe Fiasco: Fan petition ensured album release
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 14 February 2011
Rap man Lupe Fiasco has said that fan petitions did help in persuading his label, Warner’s Atlantic, to finally release his new album ‘Lasers’, the long awaited follow up to 2007’s ‘The Cool’.
Originally tipped for release in late 2009, the rapper told fans his finished album was with Atlantic last July. Eager for its release, but with the label seemingly in no hurry to make the album public, his fans staged an online petition last summer, and subsequently a protest outside Atlantic’s New York offices. Fiasco subsequently told fans a March 2011 release date had been set, and that now seems likely to go ahead.
Speaking about the long awaited album to Undercover, the rap man said: “If it wasn’t for the petitions and it wasn’t for the protests, this album probably still wouldn’t be out. It’d probably still be ‘Yo, Lupe, what’s up with the record, what’s going on?’ We had all but given up on it, like a ‘Let’s just call it quits and go our separate ways’ situation. In the midst of that you get the petition and you get the fans coming out and protesting and whatever they’re going to do”.
Implying Atlantic wasn’t 100% happy with the album, or the idea of releasing it, he continued: “[The petition] motivated both parties to say ‘Let’s look at this from a different way: you don’t want to ostracise your fans, we don’t want to be demonised in the press as being bastards. Let’s come together and compromise and just put out the music’. At the end of the day the best that we could do for both of us was to put this music out, and that’s what you get: ‘Lasers’”.
