Chicago

Chicago is a city in the U.S. state of Illinois. American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur Lupe Fiasco was born and raised on the West Side of Chicago on Madison Terrace housing project. Fiasco has been involved in community events and philanthropy work, including with the foundation M.U.R.A.L., which strives for food justice and supports youth in inner-city communities. He has also showcased a series of his acrylic canvas paintings, titled "Beta," at the Ed Paschke Art Center.

Specific songs that give tribute to his home city are "Go Go Gadget Flow," "This City" with Patrick Stump, "City of the Year" featuring Rondo, and "100 Chicagos." In promotion for the 2011 Pepsi Max NFL campaign, he performed with Nick Javas on the song "Packers vs. Bears." In 2014, he collaborated with Fall Out Boy to create a remix to the Chicago Bulls' anthem. The song, "Jonylah Forever," remembers Jonylah Watkins, a Chicago baby who was fatally shot in the Woodlawn neighborhood. The title of his debut studio album, Food & Liquor, refers to the corner stores in his hometown, while its intro song, recited by Ayesha Jaco, describes the city to listeners.^[1] He has his own day in the city, celebrated on November 10, 2024.

History[]

Wasalu Muhammad Jaco was born on February 16, 1982, in Chicago, Illinois,^[2] to Shirley and Gregory Jaco. During this time, the city was named the most segregated metropolitan area in the nation and faced significant poverty.^[3]^[4]

In a 2008 interview, he said on how his hometown shaped him as an artist: "To get the hell out of there. Prostitutes on the corner, people getting shot in your hallway, you don't want to be around that. You look at the avenues that you really have out: to really go out. Not to be somebody's lackey or nothing like that. It's that kind of cliche 'get out the hood' situation. But more so to change it. Like, what can I really do to change that or change the perspective of that? Even if I can't go there and build up a palace and have everybody live in palaces, how can I make people change their perspectives of the system and to making the best of what they have?"^[5]

In July 2012, Sway Calloway played a clip of MTV's "My Block: Chicago." Seeing the old footage caused Fiasco to become emotional, where he said, "It's some of them dudes is dead […] You're just tryin' to make it better and come up out of it. […] Some of them kids ain't gon' make it out of there. And you feel so helpless."^[6] He continued, "Chicago's the murder capital. The dudes in that video are in prison, a couple of fed cases, and then there's ghosts. You see people that, that ain't there. […] You gotta get out. Stick to what you know and get out. Because if you stay here, you gonna die, and you not gonna die for anything heroic, you not gonna die for anything meaningful. You gonna die for something that is worthless and nobody is gonna remember your name." He told Sway, "To see that so real, it hurts, bro. I ain't gonna front. It hurts; it hurts a lot to speak to ghosts."^[7] His sister Ayesha Jaco noted, "There was always duality in our lives. Where we grew up, outside of our window, there was a prostitute on the corner. Down the street from us was the infamous stadium where the Bulls won their numerous championships. But there was a lot of murder and drugs. Our older brother, over a ten year period, lost twenty-five friends. That's not normal, but to us, that was the norm. But the duality was the household that my mother kept. There were National Geographic magazines. We watched Carmen Sandiego. Then we had our dad who lived on the Southside who took us beyond the Westside. 'Go to the Northside, Southside, and Eastside. Know your city because this is a world-class city, and you belong here.' We had that duality that allowed us to survive, but the death was real. In Lupe's interview on MTV, he breaks down because he was sad that young people that he saw in his videos were now like ghosts. That's heavy. Granted we're all going to make a transition at some point, but not at the rate young, black men in Chicago transition. And if you didn't die, then there was the cycle of being in prison. So that was just a way of capturing that reality for us."^[8]

In 2013, when giving a speech to the graduates, Fiasco stated, "Congratulations, you have graduated from one of the most terrible, substandard school systems in the entire world. You have just spent the last … 12 years receiving one of the worst educations on earth. You are at least four, five steps behind people in other countries that younger than you. Transition to manhood is the most important thing that's going on right now. The caps and gowns and your tassels and your honorary blah blah blahs don't mean nothing. That's just dress. That's just some clothes. Meaningless clothes, too, because they have no real purpose in life. They don't keep you warm. What do they do? They just represent to someone else that you've achieved something. But then when you look back at it, what have you achieved?"^[9] This thought was mentioned in his verse from "This City," 'Actually, mine is a bad education and gentrification' and "Words I Never Said" with 'The school was garbage in the first place, that's on the up and up.'

In 2016, he appeared on Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown in the Chicago episode, where he discussed the area. He said, "It's a beautiful place. It's a genuinely beautiful place. You have to redefine what beauty is to you. When you go to different neighborhoods and it's really bad. And even in that there's still a beauty in the people." He continued, "Then just from a cultural front we got everything here. If you want capoeira, we got capoeira. If you want house music we got that too. If you want straight finance and you want to just be a stock market baron we got that too. If you want some of the best food you'll ever find we got that too. So we're a crossroads, and we've picked up a lot of little DNA and things from different places on all fronts."^[10] From September 23, 2016, to December 23, 2016, he held an art exhibition of his acrylic canvas paintings at the Ed Paschke Art Center.

On March 2, 2017, Fiasco performed at halftime of the Bulls-Warriors game at the United Center. On December 24, 2022, he performed at the halftime Bears-Bills game at Solider Field.^[11] On November 10, 2024, he was presented by Deputy Mayor of Business and Neighborhood Development Kenya K. Merritt his own day. Signed by Chicago's Mayor Brandon Johnson, it acknowledged his "artistic contributions, dedication to social justice, and his continuous efforts to elevate and empower communities in Chicago and across the world and inspire future generations to pursue change through art, innovation, and community engagement."