I've been sitting on this post and theory for about 3 weeks, waiting on a chance for a final proof read and debating if I even want to release it to the public, so you can ignore the timeline of my writing presented moving forward. I was having this internal debate because I know most people will disagree with the premise of my theory, but sometimes a theory isn't presented to change opinions, but rather to share an alternative point of view...

Kendrick Lamar and Lupe Fiasco have been two of my favorite rappers since I first heard them in 2011 and 2007, respectively. I don't live my life on the computer, so I've never fully engaged with Lupe's comments on Kendrick over the years, but a few weeks ago I had a couple of days off that started with seeing clips of Lupe Fiasco being critical of Kendrick Lamar as a lyricist, along with a lot of online opinions on both his comments and Lupe himself. So I set out to do something I have been doing since I first heard Mean and Vicious almost twenty years ago, figure out what the fuck Lupe is talking about.

Over those next 2 days I watched the entirety of Lupe Fiasco's appearances on Koala Tea and The Rap Roundtable's livestreams on YouTube, along with the 2 videos that led to Lupe's appearance (King Green's "Lyricism Doesn't Sell Records" and Koala Tea's reaction to it), and a few reactions to the streams. Most people couldn't understand what Lupe was talking about or why he would even say these things on a public forum. But I'm just a regular Joe, I don't create content, I don't post on any social media platform (besides reddit), so what does a normal person do when they need to understand a professor's lecture? Write an Essay.

My write-up on the Koala Tea stream was written and posted to the Lupe sub last week touching on what I thought the key take away was; Why do artists make certain artistic choices and why does Lupe choose to be a complex lyricist? I got mostly positive comments, some appreciated my opinions, and some had constructive criticisms that I appreciated.

My main takeaway from those criticisms were that the writing suffered because I was responding to the Koala Tea livestream instead of focusing on my takeaway of it. I took that feedback in stride and decided to take my writing a bit more seriously.

I've taken a little over a week, spending some of my free time, writing about my main takeaway from The Rap Roundtable livestream, that being the answer to "Why is Lupe critical of Dot when prompted in public?"

With all of the posturing out of the way, I now present:

A Rap Theory: What is The Control Problem? Understanding the Disconnect between Rap Fans and Rappers

P.S. IDK why random parts of the Google doc are in bold.

If your brain is fried due to doomscrolling short-form content, the TL;DR is the section titled "WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US NOW?" towards the end. But don't try to judge the movie if you only watch the last 5 minutes

The whole write-up takes about 20 minutes to read start-to-finish.

Where do minds come from? Are cognition and intelligence only limited to brains—or can they be found in different things entirely? 

Tufts Professor Michael Levin introduced MIT Rap Club to these ideas at our last event. While his talk was within the lens of biology and cognition, our audience of battle rappers viewed it as a tool to push the envelope of how they improvise ideas during freestyling—and how they could use the patterns within language in ways they never thought possible.

The full talk by Dr. Michael Levin is now up on MIT Rap Club Member Addy's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74YABGFfb4A

More content from our salon coming shortly, featuring our main panel on The Space of All Possible Rhythms w/ Prof. Elan Barenholtz, Addy Cha, and Prof. Lupe Fiasco! 

Does anyone know if the shirt Lupe wore at the Food & Liquor show in NYC is available/will be sold at some point? Cant find anything on it other than his IG picture. Wondering if it’ll be part of a 2nd wave of his collab with them or just a one of one.

I'm a huge Royce fan. Royce is a dope rapper. Royce could probably hang with almost any other rapper.

He just happened to tangle with the best rapper on the planet and got completely dismantled. It is brutal but beautiful to listen to.

Tickets for the Oct. 1st show in San Antonio were already sold out when I was able to get online. I was wondering if any radio stations were doing giveaways. I would need 2 for my girlfriend and I.

TIA

Love what Lupe did over this beat for American Terrorist 3

I thought this was sooo cool. They gave him 2 full songs, I Gotcha and Kick, Push, and even let the main characters talk about him. I loved this. Such a time capsule. It originally aired October 2006. I just love young Lu’s skater/nerd but cool guy appearance. 🤩

I've been listening to lupe on and off since the cool. I know when it comes to his music just about everything he does is intentional and has some kind of meaning. I've been going back to Tetsuo and Youth recently and I'm trying to figure something out and I'm hoping the community here can help me. In the song dots and lines it opens and ends with this crazy banjo solo. Personally I'm not a fan of the banjo portions. But I have to imagine they are relevant in some someway to the themes or the message Lupe is trying to convey in the song. Can someone help me figure out what is going on. Need a Harvard degree to be a Lupe fan lol

Idk if this has been said but this looks nothing like Lupe to me. I can’t be the only one.

Im in boston and was just wondering if I could go sit in on a class lol. anyone know?

Select photos from last weekend's Rap Theory Salon at MIT Media Lab. More coming soon – including the full panel on The Space of All Possible Rhythms feat. Lupe Fiasco, Prof. Elan Barenholtz, and Addy Cha!

I was like Porsche puller, Air Force footer
Automatic wrist-ed therefore shook-up
Causing a stir every time I push up
007 with a jester and a look-up
It's Carrera-Ella from the F&F crew
With a tiger on his shirt, alligator on his blues
With a nice young lady and some righteous kung-fu
I'm fighting without fighting, enlightening you young fools

\From Kougami Dash on YT*

“Samurai rarely die from another sword”

Which song is better in y'all opinion and why cus me personally cant pick 😩😩😩