"Sailing Flavor" is one of the first songs American rapper Lupe Fiasco recorded for Ghotiing MIT: Public Art (2025). The recording took place during the summer of 2022, in McDermott Court, on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. He was inspired by the 1965 painted steel sculpture La Grande Voile by Alexander Calder.
Lyrics[]
[Intro]
And they say, and they say, and they say
And they say, and they say, they say
And they say, they say, they say
And they say and they say, they say
They say, they say, they say
They say, say
[Verse]
Black structure, steel plates riveted real great
In the eye of the beholder
Rivets and welds done well to tie iron to a sculpture
Looking like a siren in the silence of the culture
Looking like a drunkard in a scientific sober
Four-legged, war-headed
What type of book is this?
Overworked and under Smith
Tourists on their summer trips give it okays like the number six
Walk around alongside or up under it
Or ignore it
Like can't see the trees, 'cause the forests
Or adore it and explore it
The grand sale send your fan mail to the warship
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Pitched in the middle of the MIT
In the center of the lime like a tick
In the eye of the apple like a pit
Beguiling little statue in the midst full mass, half myth
Looking like math
Looking like geometry
Looking like jazz
Looking like a craft
Looking like it crashed
Look how your imagination took it like a bath
Let's have a splash
Get daft with the labeling
Sable-colored angel wing angled thing, huh
Alex probably made it with a bomb
Collector trying to tell you that he made it with a wand
What if he made it for his mom?
Over the top present just to celebrate her charms
Not relegated just to decorate a lawn
Displayed on a well-educated promenade
[Bridge]
Oh, Lord, sell again
Put me right back where the well's ascend
[Outro]
Come back. The wind tunnel problem is that they built this triangle sculpture thing, and so they thought that this triangle sculpture thing would block all the wind. And so there would not be any problems anymore. Some students pretty skeptical about this because they were like, this is a little too far away from the building to actually work properly. So they actually built a mini model of it, and they put it into the wind tunnel on campus. And they found that indeed it does absolutely nothing, but it's still here, and it's a pretty little triangle sculpture.
[Laughter.]
So this building has also been home to some interesting things that other students have done.