LupEND

LupENDStudio album by Lupe Fiasco
Released	N/A
Genre	Hip hop

LupEND was going to be American rapper Lupe Fiasco's final project with Atlantic Records. It would've been split into a "triple-disc album," where 'END' stood for "Everywhere, Nowhere, Down here."

In January 2022, he addressed to Twitter the status of his unreleased works, "LUPEND was canceled because the label didn't want to do it, ROY just wasn't turning out good so I pulled the plug [and] SKULLS exists I just haven't recorded it yet BECAUSE I kinda really don't want to release it as an album."

Background

Fiasco informed Billboard in December 2007, "'LupEND'—that's going to be my last album's title. When you play a video game, you can only put in three letters for your name, and when the game's over, those three letters and 'END' pop up. My next record might be my last one."

In January 2008, Fiasco told Entertainment Weekly that he was around 85 percent committed with the plan, where he was contractually obligated to do a total of five albums, though LupEND would've satisfied the agreement through renegotiations. He added, "I'll pay Atlantic back or whatever. It's like a student loan," and how he would prefer to retire early due to the industry's mental toll on him: "This game wears on you. It tears you down. […] It's like they're paying you, but how much is your independence, your soul, and your sanity worth?" Following his performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on September 7, Fiasco admitted to staging-rapup.kinsta.cloud, "I just don't really feel like rapping anymore. I'm going to write a book and put out [other artists'] albums like Matthew Santos." At this time, he hadn't even started recording the new album yet. On October 31, 2008, Fiasco told the Chicago crowd at Congress Theater, "The name of the next album is LupEND. That's Lup E-N-D. So, if my mathematics serve me correct from a fabulous Chicago public school system, it's not one album ladies and gentlemen... it's three." He continued, "Let's see, E, we'll call that one Everywhere. N, we'll call that one Nowhere. And the last one D, we'll call that Down Here. So, LupEND is actually a triple CD."

On January 30, 2009, plans of his retirement have been retracted, where he took to his blog to report, "Due to circumstances beyond my control…the album roll out has changed radically…LUPE.N.D. has been postponed indefinitely!!! As a matter of fact consider it cancelled until further notice!!! See ya'll in June and again in December and again next June. LupE.N.D. right after that…when the liberation comes!!!" He clarified in a 2011 interview with British magazine, Loud and Quiet, "I had four more records with Atlantic Records, and my thing was that I was gonna do an album that was three records released over a period of time, but all under the same title, like Star Wars. This was 'LupE.N.D.'—Everywhere, Nowhere, Down Here, was going to be the thing. It's something that got canned, but it was going to fulfil a majority of my contract, and then I could have done a greatest hits record or whatever, and then I'd become Lupe Fiasco 2 or something like that. So it was never that it was going to be no more records, just that I would be out of my agreement with the record company."

In January 2022, he confirmed that LupEND was "100%" canceled.

Concept

Regarding the title, 'LUP' was what he'd submit on leaderboards once he finished playing Street Fighter or video games. The acronym 'E.N.D.' represented the completion of these video games, and also stood for 'Everywhere, Nowhere, and Down Here,' for each disc. He added, "Each album was supposed [to be] fully produced by my favorite producers. I forget which [one] was Soundtrakk but "Nowhere" was James Lavelle (UNKLE)." The following tweets outlined the ideas behind each:

Everywhere was about a lil boy whose dad gave him a short wave radio for his b-day that started picking up signals from the future

"Nowhere" took place in the future on the other side of the radio. The world and everybody in it was dying from this disease.

In "Nowhere" their was this big building/hard drive that was going to be used to store the life stories of everybody who was dying

What the lil boy was hearing on his radio in "Everywhere" was all these stories being broadcasted back thru time but 1 specifically

"DownHere" takes place in the after life of the guy in "Nowhere" it was going to be very ethereal and spacey musically. That's it...

Also musically "Everywhere" was gonna be music from all over the world because thats what the little boy was picking up on his radio

In August 2021, he supplied more information to fans:

Lemme just say this and it's 100% true. The concept for cAncelled LUPEND album was about the end of the world where everybody was dying from a mysterious disease. So people started to keep digital diaries of their lives and uploaded them to a single gigantic server #10YearDelayPe

Once all the diaries were uploaded to the server and the last person died the server began broadcasting all these people's life stories throughout space (AND TIME!) as kind of like a eulogy for an entire dying world.

The funny part is…Even though it's not coming out and I never completed it. It started coming true. 🤯…right? So actually we are kind of living in it. Kinda freaky…

Atlantic didn't want to do it and all the shenanigans began. It was supposed to follow up The Cool. A three album concept and then I was gonna retire. Everywhere, Nowhere & DownHere. Then drop a greatest hits to finish my contract and ✌🏾