With over two decades of tenure in the rap game, Lupe Fiasco is a savvy hip-hop veteran, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t take the time to hone and perfect his craft at every turn. Today, the Chicago MC unveils his latest album Samurai, a smooth yet cerebral, 8-track album brimming with ideas that radiates Lupe’s pure love for the art of emceeing and committing himself as a servant of the rap game. ‘The word ‘samurai’ means to serve,’ Lupe says on the album’s title. ‘My relationship to that word has always meant that you need to be at the service of other people, either in the overall community, or in this instance, the rap community at large that Ive been a part of for years.’
Samurai, Lupe’s ninth studio album, is produced in full by Soundtrakk, making it their second full album collaboration following 2022’s DRILL MUSIC IN ZION, and the first album that Lupe and Soundtrakk worked on with their longtime manager and 1st & 15th co-CEO-Charles ‘Chill’ Patton, since 2007’s The Cool. Patton also serves as the album’s executive producer. It’s home to recent singles such as the title track, ‘Samurai,’ praised by Rolling Stone, HYPEBEAST, Clash and Complex plus the lyrical beatdown, ‘Cake,’ which shows off Lupe’s supreme ability to attack the beat with poetic and energetic bars.
Samurai tracklist:
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Samurai
Mumble Rap
Cake
Palaces
No. 1 Headband
Bigfoot
Outside
Til Eternity