Lupe Fiasco Wants To Quit Music Biz, But Promises More Collabos With Kanye, Pharrell; Fabolous Makes The Band: Mixtape Monday

'Nuff respect to Lupe Fiasco. Usually, we take his word as bond, but when he starts talking about his next album being his career finale, that's something we refuse to believe. Maybe it's just denial that one of the most promising young superstars (pun intended) would retire before he even reached his prime. Recently he told MTV Base that he was 85 percent sure his next LP would be his last full-length solo set.


"I don't want to say I'm 100 percent sure, like, 'Yeah, this is it.' But 85 percent," he revealed. "That 15 percent is the X factor. That could be bills. Like, 'Lupe, you got to pay the bills.' 'Oh, man, I got to put out another album.' "

Fiasco says that the wear and tear of the music industry has taken its toll on him, physically and mentally. But he insists that he hasn't lost the passion for making music, just for the business of putting it out.

"There's all types and parts of the music business," he said. "There's the studio, record-store music business, and then there's the performing music business. I love the performing, I could perform forever. I'll be on stage until I'm 90 doing 'Kick, Push' and all that stuff if I can. But it's the whole process of it that wears you down. I actually got sick right before the Grammys. Never got a chance to go to the Grammys. I was running so hard doing music, and then when I got to the pivotal moment where you get the accolades for it, I found myself in the hospital and the doctor telling me I can't even go. I had a long conversation with the doctor, and he doesn't know me from Adam. He just came in and said, 'This is your life. This is how hard you're going. What happens when there's nothing there, and you drop down again?'

"When I came in, I was like, 'Yeah, I want to be a rapper, and I want to make three albums,' " he added. "But we'll see. It's amazing. I'm going to go away with a bang. Ahh, so good. I don't want to give too much away, because it's later. We're still just into The Cool project and still got more stuff to come out of this, but I am thinking on it. I'm already building it out, starting now, because it's massive. ... I'm treating it like I'm filming 'Lord of the Rings.' ... They had to film [that trilogy] over four to five years. It's going to take me about two years to put [my last album] together right. I'm 85 percent sure that my next album, LUPN, will be the end-all."

This is where we insert a big Flavor Flav "Wowwwwww!" Hopefully, he'll stick around a little longer. Besides, there's still the matter of the super group Child Rebel Soldiers, or CRS. It's comprised of Lupe, Pharrell Williams and Kanye West.

"Pharrell came up with the idea — 'Let's do a group, Child Rebel Soldiers,' " he recalled. "So, I did a song. Took Thom Yorke's 'Eraser,' cut it up, put 'Us Placers' on it, because I was going to do a mixtape called Us Placers and remake Thom Yorke's album [The Eraser] and Radiohead's stuff. I sent the record out, and it was initially supposed to have Kanye, and I wanted [U.K. artist] the Streets [on there]. The Streets, I got no response. He asked me to do the song for one of his artists. Then Kanye jumped on it and was like, 'I'm going to send it to P.' Then P sent it back, and it was like, 'This is the first song right here. Let's do it.' That was, like, a year and a half ago, and the whole time we've been figuring out what to do."

Since all three will be on 'Ye's Glow in the Dark tour, Lupe promised we could expect to see that performance soon.

"We don't know if there's going to be an album from CRS, what CRS are going to be," he said. "All we know is we're going to debut a piece of CRS on the Kanye tour. You have to come see it." ...

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