Lupe Fiasco | Stardom, Semiotics & Soul-searching | MindTrap#56 | Mufti Abu Layth al-Maliki MALM

connection yep okay all right people alright are we live or are we live talk to us hello hello are we back all right so let me just see what is happening what is happening people might what is going down can you guys hear us we can hear we can hear yeah look at that

look at that you know you know what it is people you know one of these people lupe's voice was coming through loud and clear all along it was you someone bookman you people you can't hear the voice of guidance that's your problem i had a really dark joke about it but i'm not gonna say it

look at that see people look at that you've got lupe holding back the legend himself holding back because of you people allah once again i introduced the man the myth the legend lupe people right before you today an award-winning internationally acclaimed distinguished artist and a man of

profound wisdom allah that's just that laughter is just out of just being humble that's that's what i'm telling you first and foremost i won't say uh uh honor to be a part of your uh mind trap um i've tuned in to i think a few um but i i definitely watch uh religiously

i religiously watch uh the the shorts and from the uh the broadcast where you're sitting at the in the library yeah you know for my for my daily dose of fear i'm honored honestly i'm deeply honored by that man that's uh it really means a lot wow ah lupe what for for many of you that of all of you know come on i don't need to go into some all of you know the the the incredible journey

that lupe has been through is that from the i take it from the arabic root to connect wassal to kind of is that what it means so sort of you know let my father tell it uh my dad named me after uh one of his army buddies so the only other wasalu that i know or know of um was you know my father's army buddy

and he named me kind of after well he named me after him um now what i was told is that wasalu means warrior right but i have yet to substantiate that in any language anywhere in the world so i've been told that it's it uh i've been told that it's a city somewhere in africa called wasalu i've also been in a restaurant actually what kind of restaurant was it it was like a i don't think it was turkish they don't do belly dancing in turkish

there was a guy there uh who was like entertaining and kind of like a dj and he played this song that had wasalu in it and i remember trying to do my best to like figure out like yo where'd that song come from what's that mean so through my life i have yet to have find a a truly substantiated meaning of what my name means so i'll take whatever you got because i mean wassala generally means to connect in arabic and i i'm assuming if it's of some urban arabic origin it's connected and that's what that's what you do you connect to

millions how do you how do you spell it how do you spell it in how to and so it'd be like wow that would be the root wasala in english if you had to like translate that into english what the what with the letters so it'd be like uh so as in transliterate so it'd be w w a

that's what i do i do connect a lot of i'm definitely the middle man in in more than a few situations for sure that's definitely part of my my peace but uh the muhammad of course comes from prophet muhammad saw yeah um but my my dad we're not african you know we're not like immigrant we're not like migrated from africa we're like the descendants of like slaves like my mom um was from mississippi uh and my dad was born in chicago um but there was no like we're from senegal we're from this place or for that place it's like proper american uh kind of piece and my

dad actually converted uh to islam uh i can't remember when mom he he converted and my mom converted then they met at the mosque and got married like two weeks later or something like that that's and then every all the kids in that in that situation that were born were born muslim so i was born muslim this life chose me i didn't choose it look at that that's a wrap right there people

oh man no and um speaking of your your childhood your father i mean he was a man of great discipline i take you much into the martial arts and it kind of set you on that path i heard you had like uh you're on your third black belt by the age of 10 or something [Laughter] um yeah if i had to pick um a family business the family business would not have been music but in in a way it may have been music so my dad we're probably gonna reference my dad a lot um my dad he was he was he was you know in the military

um he was a musician he was an engineer like his main job was an engineer so he worked at a hospital um as an engineer building and fixing i guess some running machines and stuff like that and he was also into music and into like uh musical instruments so here's my dad so black dude you know grew up in the projects in chicago right he played no lie the bagpipes [Laughter] wow we had he played the african jimbei drums so like

i don't know if he played this but they were in the house and there were multiple of them he played he had the sitar no there were multiple multiples actually my actually my brother's name is yusted and he named him after usted alden khan so i think the sitar player the musician yeah and he also played uh like just there was a clarinet in the house there was some xylophones in the house like he was a music music dude um a musician proper musician playing playing instruments um and then the martial arts so he had you know been trained in martial arts i think since he was like 14 and had martial art schools all over the

city chicago all kinds of students and so if i had to pick like a family business our family business would have been martial arts wow and i did martial arts since i was like three years old since i was a baby baby probably probably before i was before i was even born in my mom's stomach was probably so i was born into a martial arts family uh born into like a muslim family born into like music born into like technology and science and like all these different myriad of things but all like in the ghetto of chicago you know all in like the hood so to speak you're willing to chase as well

as as a as a child is that you know what i'm we're gonna we're gonna have a lot of like hot takes about my relationship to islam and hadiths things that are super strong but i was playing chess like i was i in high school i did uh um i was into theater but as a technician so i was like the sound engineer and like stuff like that yeah um sorry i probably didn't show it with our sound issue but i was in town um theater program so i did i did theater

uh and we did theater competitively so we would take plays and compete with other players i was on academic decathlon so i did like basically like jeopardy okay like at a high school level i guess wow um and i did chess club so i was in the chess club but i wasn't really that good in chess i wasn't like chess as well chess is life it wasn't like that was like here's another nerdy thing to do and i actually kind of stopped playing chess kinda kinda because of that the hadith that of like uh playing chess is like bathing in pigs blood or something like that and i was like

what i like [Music] what that's hot take number one yeah and i kind of stepped away from from chess for that reason but i was never really that deep deep deep and i have a friend actually who uh who plays chess a lot now and wants me to get back into it he's like look you should just get into chess star plans in your mind like you'll be a master in 20 years and i don't think so i mean so all of this whilst in the in the hood like you're saying i mean these th these parts don't seem to be something you'd assume to kind of to really cross you know you've got you've got this

because you're describing you know this this discipline of martial arts uh the mindset that comes with that um the kind of philosophy that comes with that things like learning this keen interest in even whether you know you don't have to be an expert chess player but still a passion uh it doesn't seem to you know it's not very stereotypical of of the hood i mean so and so what's uh talk to us all this wisdom all this uh they're just i mean they're just like

activities they have i think maybe uh maybe unduly um that all this weight gets attached to like you know classical music you know so i used to listen to classical music yeah yeah i actually actually just actually just recently went and repurchased because it was on vinyl yeah all right repurchase i'm actually looking at it right now there's this vinyl set that came out that i remember having as a kid that i probably pulled either from my dad's record collection or my mom's and i would sit and just play classical music and listen to it as well and you prefer beethoven and and and

this kind of classic music to the contemporary kind of music yeah and this so this is like when i was a kid it's like the late 80s maybe maybe early 90s but 80s so it wasn't like it wasn't like hip hop was everywhere type thing right right okay you know there's it's just music and my mom listened to jazz and like soul music my dad listened to everything so he would listen to like rock and roll and queen and like you know and then like in the midst of that you get you know either from watching cartoons and a lot of cartoons the soundtracks were jazz and classical music you know so as a child you're probably

already keen to this type of music because it's in all the cartoons or like times but i always want to do i always wanted to do jazz so as i look like i'm looking off in the distance of my living room um there's this you know this tchaikovsky record set that uh that i just purchased that i used to listen to when i was a kid and then a bit of benny goodman record where he's the benny goodman was this clarinet player and i wanted to play like benny goodman i wanted to be like a clarinet player and the reason side story the reason that i started kind of rapping right so the myth goes is uh

i went to my uh in high school i went to my to the band in high school i was like hey i want to play the clarinet can y'all teach me how to play the clarinet because that's how i thought it went i thought you went to school to learn stuff and i was like i'm gonna go to the band and they're gonna teach me how to play the clarinet and i was like oh no brother we can't teach you how to play clarinet you have to do that back in junior high so i said go to music school and kind of like dreams dashed and i already had a clarinet i had my dad's clarinet and uh dreams dash and i was like oh well maybe maybe i'll be a rapper you know

[Music] that's the myth story that may not all be true but that's it that's it people circulate it circulate it yeah i mean and you know you've gone on to have an incredibly distinguished career uh as an artist i mean you've worked alongside uh some of the greatest names in that industry um kanye west jay-z you've gone on to be nominated for many awards and achieved awards it was this something you know going back to you were saying your teenage years your childhood was this something you could

see as a trajectory or was it now in in hindsight how do you how do you how did this play out was it like i gotta stop laughing i'll find you i like i got to stop laughing just so i'm just so serious um this is actually like a fiasco like my name speaks to it right like but i was supposed to do like you know science i want to be like a rocket engineer you know like a rocket scientist like for real you know like wow um went to kind of like like it's not necessarily aviation school yeah but like kind of like

you know pre like if you're interested in becoming a scientist and you're 10 or you're nine here's a program you know kind of like a space camp so i was going to like this aviation camp um to learn like aerodynamics and like stuff like that you know really basic primal stuff um but all into like you know and on the weekends with my dad i'm like flying rockets you know like the little yeah okay homemade kind of rocket with the little engines and you shoot them up and the parachute comes up so we're in the park like shooting those up and like for for science projects um i got like rockets literally like with different

you know this payload goes here this is where this is like these little things show and tail type stuff um and then like robotics and stuff like that so that's what my my my young mind was right like i'm going to be a scientist i'm going to do robotics but the one thing that i didn't that that people failed to mention about science is math and at math i am a doofus when it comes to math so i can understand that the theory i can understand some of the mechanics um but i can't the math just loses me right um and i was just never good at math and it was like i don't know if i i'm gonna

i don't know if i'll be able to accomplish that i might have been able to kind of overcome it but in the midst of that you get into like oh i can also tell stories you know and i'm also into you know this and there's also the martial arts and there's also this and there's also that and when i kind of landed on you know rap uh i got my i got my i got like my quote unquote first kind of real professional look at rap when i was still in high school you know so it was like before i'd even had time to think about like okay college where am i gonna go what is my career gonna be i already had like rap as a real serious professional opportunity um and i took it you know

and i kind of got my first record deal i think like in like i graduated in the year 2000 and i think i had my first record deal later that year like i remember like going to summer school to finish a course and then coming back to pick up my diploma in the summertime and then getting on a plane and going to miami you know to like do some rapper stuff right that sounds real cool that does i'm just here to get my degree but i've got a plane to catch i gotta be in miami

so i'm like i saw them so this is um this is not like oh man 20 years ago so some of it may be cloudy but that's kind of the general like ideas like i wanted to be in this very technical path um and you know had to you know my dad my dad was build things was an engineer all the stuff so i felt like i had the chops and it was in the family but also in the family was music also in the family was martial arts also was in the family was this this this opening businesses being an entrepreneur stuff like that um so i kind of like fell into what made sense to me and what i what i found myself doing every day you know i found myself coming home writing raps like every day thinking

about rap thinking about words thinking about this think about that thinking about telling stories and so it just opportunity came where it was like do you want to do this for a living and it was like yes and so the rest is history you know well do you you know you said about words and because you your rap is concept rap you're a conscious rapper you know you're not just and you were you were very um i mean you were very clear on that as well from what i understand that you know you didn't want to just take your music down a particular road of just you know what everybody else was doing whether it's just

you know gangs and violence and and you know the usual sex drugs rock and roll kind of stuff you wanted a message do you find that words they just come to you do they just come to you naturally i mean is this something how is this intuition how that's going on what what's going on here give us the insights the secrets first first i mean i went down that path of sex sex drugs and rock and roll you know like as you're as you're in the space and you're trying to figure out market you know where you fit and you're just like maybe i'll do this maybe i'll do a little bit of that and then again being from the hood like

really from the hood i mean that's part of it so like all my friends were like well i don't say all so different levels of friends but i had a set of friends that were in gangs you know that were the dudes in the street you know and it was something like okay let's let's that conversation is happening but then i also got friends that are like building their own computers and friends that are doing this and friends doing that so my social space has always been very vast and speaking to different crowds so one day i'm with the gangsters the next day i'm with the nerds you know and then the next day i'm with the the the mullahs and the imam right and then the next the next day i'm with you know

the strippers and the prostitutes the next day to dispel that myth that has just been this pure path of me being a saint and i want to make contact music and it's like i think just on a side note that's actually one of the most incredible things about udp is that you come across very real you know even on this when it comes to this when it comes to faith when it

comes to your art when it comes you're just being real just you know as you know you're not it's not sanctimonious it's not kind of trying pretentious it's not like you're owning the reality as it is because even uh you'd named um was it your label or your uh you named it food and liquor was it the my first album album right you and that was to represent realities in the real world whether it's going to be you know where you're from the streets but but not trying to be uh just sanctimonious or self-righteous just being real and i have to say that does come across very hard hitting

um speak speaking of words i don't know what sanctimonious means that dovetails very nicely into the into the question right was the words and i had to i literally had to work for the words you know so like there's always this uh this anecdote of like a ronaldo and uh i think messi and people say that messi is natural like he's just a natural football player right where ronaldo had to work right to get and if you look at him on the pitch you know they're they're equal right they both are

ridiculous but one had to really really work one was it just kind of came naturally to them so for me when it came to words you know i had to work so i would go um we had a pharmacy up the street from our house um and what we would do is after school i would go to the walgreens i would go to um walgreens and uh go to the magazine section and then what i would do is i would look at a magazine and i would take words off of the magazine cover no not the top shelf i take it is that the the naughty stuff at the top

right there [Laughter] it was it was whatever it was right um at walgreens they didn't have they didn't really have naughty naughty stuff like that um but it was uh whatever it was popular mechanics whatever magazine right race car magazine whatever the magazine and i would just take words the literal words that were on the cover and then kind of write them down and then i would like make myself put those in a wrap so i would take those words go home and i'll put those words in a

wrap and if you look at my old rap notebooks like some of my very first they're all destroyed unfortunately but well i hope they're not maybe it'll pop up later but it's just lists of words so you would think that it would be like verses and like you know song ideas and stuff like that but it's literally just like a list of words and then i would go and like okay i'm going to use this word i'm going to use transmission you know or i'm going to use um mephistopheles or i'm gonna use whatever right something like that and then that that graduated into you know building a vocabulary then that graduated into okay now whole sentences or metaphors so now this word builds

into this sentence or builds into this this metaphor and now i got a list of metaphors right and then it's okay i'm gonna use this this metaphor for this so i'm gonna use this simile for that or this simile for that so it was a process that actually had to kind of like work and work and work and work and then it became like just natural you know where i could just sit and then you know things would happen in my mind like okay that's clever i'm gonna keep that okay that's clever i'm gonna keep that oh that's and then it and then it kind of graduated from uh just metaphors and and stuff like that like punch lines into like images you know or like concepts of wow wouldn't it be interesting to take this

and then pair it with this and then it creates this new homunculus or something like that and it's like ah a chimera ah great put that into a rat see how that works so it kind of go from words to images in that way that's that's interesting that is because you see that because it's interesting that there's been a discussion amongst psychologists that is thought is it in images or is it in words how do how do how how what i know we think of words and we think of things but what is the root of thoughts because ultimately they will say from infancy

a child doesn't have words but they would say he has iconic thought it's in kind of images and these serve as the kind of building blocks so that's hmm and and pictures obviously and pictures can be a lot more symbolic as well and that's that's something you've had quite an interest in as well as a symbolism a metaphor and so what what's i mean open up to us on on that what what what yeah what's up what's this i study uh so bringing things back to like science yeah i go through i go through the arts you know i get to to where i am today and then it became

you know well what uh what am i doing yeah what am i actually doing i know on the surface i'm rapping what else is happening so i started to kind of get into linguistics and semiotics you know and i looked at okay what is this instead of chasing the science you know chasing chemistry like what is the science that i'm doing right now right and so it gets into kind of cognition and uh psychology but most more so the the uh the semiotics and the uh the linguistics of words right that that that science right um and so i've been deep diving into that for like the past few

few like years um and so you know you become like a a master rapper right and then it's like okay well what else is there for you to do and say oh there's there's a ton of like uh literature and education that just deals with rhetoric and speaking and language and language studies and language sciences so i've just been diving into that and you get to to your point about like you know what is the root of you know human human thought and you think of words well what are words you know words and themselves are shapes you know and it's really the shape of things right um and and we all possess shapes in one way or another words are just

more defined refined shapes right but could you could you live without text semiotically speaking like the world is a text right okay a building is a letter you know um how refined in it how defined is it what is the use case for it could you could you make a sentence out of buildings say yeah you know like if you really applied yourself to it and created a lexicon to do it yeah you could make skyscrapers stand for this and maybe make you know how uh uh two flat stand for this and condominium stand for that and mansion stand for this and palaces stand for that and such represents that and could you create an alphabet out of that

sure you know what is the goal could you tell a story with that right uh sure do they tell stories in and of themselves these shapes sure is that anything different from just having words and from that point of view i don't i don't think i don't think so so i think it comes back to more uh less what is more fundamental than words um what is more fundamental than pictures would just be shapes you know primal shapes primal primal primal shapes the shape of things in this world um one one one quick kind of anecdote about that is like uh thinking about babies again um and like aliens right and like

the shape of aliens right and they say like you know why i thought i got abducted by aliens just fyi i don't think so anymore i thought i did at one point okay and i kind of had to go through life debunking like meeting up with things to debunk my alien abduction story um and uh and uh uh one of the things if you if you ever ask like why do aliens all look the same like why did we get this image of big heads with big eyes and and everybody sees that why is it always you know

they're looking down on us right you think yourself laying on a table and that's what people remember and uh one theory that i saw which actually i think is the theory is that aliens are our mothers right yeah our parents okay well what what what we're doing is or people who have that type of experience or recall that type of experience they were calling back to a time when their eyesight was really fuzzy right okay just just after after birth for a few months yeah and they're generalizing these shapes right but it's their mother right and they can't understand anything right and that those are those are some

of our most primal memories so those are the things that get fastened you know to our cognition firmly uh it may get lost in subconscious you know as things pile on but the idea is that you know what you're witnessing when people describe an alien abduction they're describing them being in the crib and their mother looking over them and then manipulating them you know taking off their diapers that's that's fascinating fascinating because that's also the stages those are the stages at which they say the ego development takes place because the child you see he can't distinguish between his own state and the state of the other and assumes

i mean especially psychoanalysts and others they they argue that the child assumes that they are one but as as the person kind of goes away they're kind of thinking what's going on and it's it's creating this it leads on to the ego split and and other issues but um i've never thought of the alien thing like that but that's uh the point is the point is not the aliens the point is this like uh shapes yeah i see what you're saying it produces a shape and it it gets kind of defined to what we look at today as the shape of aliens today

you know big heads big eyes when it's really just an abstraction or a failure to have a certain level of visual refinement of an experience that you had when you were a child right you know the words thing that you were saying words being reduced to shapes fundamentally these kind of primordial shapes and you see what's fascinating is that this is a world in which words in many ways they are so expansive that we can elaborate on ideas we can like i can i can express something which by you hearing it or reading it it may evoke a similar kind of either a concept or an

emotion in you and and this uh i mean the miracle of it like you know even in the quran that allah the kind of paradox is words are equally reductive because as you're trying to express something so profound you're having to limit it to words and and we in most of our communication still is non-verbal and the verbal part is actually usually the miscommunication i mean

there's there's a there's a i don't know if it's called mirroring or uh it's definitely like a sinking that occurs that if you if you uh um a story is is really just you fundamentally again and and these are kind of the theory there's some there's some aspects to uh to uh to objectivity to them but it's you know when you tell a story fundamentally what's happening is you're transferring your mind into somebody else yeah and it's happening um like not just on like a a image level but it's reshaping to a degree like the mind

your brain has to kind of like biochemically resemble the mind of the person telling the story and there's like a sinking that that happens s-y-n-c-k right s-y-n-c um that happens with a storyteller so if you think the the whole uh fundamental process of a story or the action that's taking place is you're basically projecting your mind into somebody else's for that period of time for mary had a little lamb right in order for that person to really to to actively be engaged with you not and i don't i don't even think it requires a certain level of intentionality it's something that you can overhear

um and again speaking to the power of storytelling that person brain that person's brain becomes your brain right for a moment or if it's 500 people or a thousand people whoever however is hearing it um not to say that it's going to stay that way right but for that period of time while that story is being told there is this sinking right uh up of mines right and then it's kind of a telepathic way but in a real but without the without the hoodoo voodoo and space technology like in a just very direct way your brain is becoming my brain right i'm it's really super duper no because i because i've uh often said

that i feel i don't know what your thoughts are on this lupe but i feel that consciousness or this mind which is linked to consciousness in not just being conscious as awake but consciousness is synonymous with the rule i felt that these are kind of synonyms and and that there is a kind of connect i'll be at a low level it may be a low level connect but people do have some kind of you know you get these stories with loved ones or other people or siblings or parent child and and they'll be so distant and something's happened and they'll get

suddenly some kind of anxiety and they feel that something's wrong and they feel you know and and these kind of things are above probability they're not just you know to be just simple coincidences and and i felt that that is the you know the connection it may be a weak connection but of the arah of the rule of the the kind of soul and this what you're saying that you know in a moment there is this kind of um this kind of i don't know this kind of locking in of these minds that's um it does it ties into i don't know i don't know if your thoughts on things like on the soul and

what are your thoughts on the soul talk oh man oh man we delve into the religious nuts and well not the religious nature but just it's kind of my outlook right now so you know we were born muslim right but we weren't raised muslim you know and it's it's it's very interesting um and i've come into uh muslims of all calibers right throughout my life um and more so with the advent of technology and youtube and all these things you can virtually meet different cultures and stuff like that um so it's a great time to have a study of any particular there's always a like they do that like i just found out about

like chechen dick vicar like like two ramadans ago and now i'm like fascinating i'm like what i want to do that you know um just different cultural practices down the rabbit hole um but you know not being not being raised right or maybe there was that period of time where it's like you don't have to take it seriously until you're 13. right and in that in that time period i'm being introduced we used to go to church so my father's friend had a church that we would go to and you know go to sun not all the time but you know i was in church you know and like what's going on in here right and then at juvon it's like what's going on in here but then i'm at

a jumar where's nothing but like palestinians and it's like oh okay what's going on in here then a jummah with a bunch of black people and then a jumaa with a bunch of indians and then like just different like okay all right all right each with a different level of you know and then i watched the the the mosque there's a mosque in chicago on 47th and woodlawn um i kind of on the southeast side of the city um and it went through kind of like a uh like multiple transformations in terms of not necessarily the i don't know if it's as cute as like a meth hab like they went like shift completely different methods but there was

definitely like at one point i remember like a picture of elijah muhammad in the mosque right i was like oh okay all right but we're going like all right i don't know all right fine then then kind of like that picture is gone okay and then i was just kind of like okay okay casual normal all right cool then it's like the bathrooms are outside now it's like oh okay okay all right and you just see it get more and more kind of like strict you know now now i think it was like babies aren't allowed oh wow because they wear a pamper and stuff like this they've not been they've not

been baptized i think i think it was because they wear like pampers yeah yeah they wear pampers they might take a poop in the mosque and you can't have that but it was just like to see the building kind of retain itself but then the software of the building will change over time um i say all that to say that i was introduced on top of that i'm zen buddhism and studying the martial arts and all these different things and all these different interpretations and points of view and then friends who are like super christian and it's just kind of like okay talk to my friends the super christians friends that are like super jews then sins then friends who are like kind of like jews but still eat pork jews and i'm like okay

like oh how does that work and then you travel the world and you see you know just different incarnations and different interpretations of people's uh uh interface with the spiritual whether it be a religion or be just a practice or whatever intensity level and it it it it changed me you know if it if it didn't um cause me to kind of like totally abandoned it definitely brought into context the potential um for variation and theme variations of understanding and i even see it more so when i study

you know brothers like yourself uh brothers like suhab webb who's kind of like one of my one of my homeboys yeah i'm sorry but it's doing it it's the man right yeah and just like being around these different folks but also you know like seeing that there's different even within islam there's different sensitivities in different relationships certain things more rational stuff more irrational things stuff like that and i'm still kind of like floating you know i still don't feel like i've landed you know i still feel like that that i'm still in the pursuit of trying to contextualize certain aspects so when you bring up something like the soul yeah right

and it's like you know my mind tells me that you know the soul is a title for an accumulation of different functions within the body right um and is there connectivity to things outside of the world of course do we have a relationship to radiation yes do we have a relation relationship to vibration yes do we have a relationship to quantum mechanics yes do we have these relationships that at scale we can't really not necessarily be aware of but it's at such a scale where it doesn't have an effect on us right but when we when this body starts to deteriorate in the grave right it are quantum things taking place within us that we'll have a relationship too

absolutely we'll be we'll be able to see them probably not because we don't have we won't have eyes like the worms have been oh a long time so but is there other sensory parts and aspects of us that once we reach certain scales or reach certain certain points of view um you know will will the the circumstance and the context change and we'll be allowed to be to purview certain things and other things close down so with all that said um i don't know you know like i'm comfortable in my i don't know but behind my i don't know is a whole bunch of

you know what you said this state of flow this kind of journey being on a journey like i'm still um you know like i'm still absorbing things i'm kind of just just just going through and developing is that i mean isn't that really just faith and life that's and how it ought to be i mean that it's because it's not faith really just ultimately a lifelong journey i mean i don't know you because there is this expectation from people that you know if you adhere to a religion you have these set codes these parameters you're done you know we've boxed you and that's it

and you can't never you know there's no very little room to maneuver and you know that's what you are where really it is a journey of humans of man to discover god it's you know you're going through life you're developing i mean isn't because that's how i see iman really i see iman not as this kind of static this kind of mold that people want to you know super fit onto everybody but it's an organic journey and it's going to you know it's going to go here there there's going to be like you said you know like at one point i don't know you know i i don't know what i am

i don't know where i i'm just i'm just going along it's it's this journey yeah um i mean do you feel do you feel that especially today uh or maybe actually that's the question if more so today that religion being hijacked this institutionalized uh religion what are your thoughts on oh man the the the best you know like

like is islam is interesting i think it's i think islam is cool um but but islam is kind of boring compared to what's happening in china right the chinese interface with religion as a whole is it's the cutting edge of like just like i don't want to call it absurdity but and when i say it when i say islam is interesting i mean in that in that sense yeah a lot of the uh a lot of the discoveries of of kind of islam and um the back and forth is is like the same conversations that's been

kind of exactly and at the end of the day it's like do you agree with this or not but even even some of the innovation uh that we consider to be innovation in islam is not really innovating innovation it's like it's just a reprisal of some old point of view or quadri just you know just something that no they were doing this this was one movement from this period of time and they just kind of regained a certain research and so it regained a certain popularity or a vice video came out about them and it's like oh did you know about these guys i said oh i didn't um but you look into the research and it's like they've been doing that for a thousand years right but in china um and i've been studying this

you know haphazardly i was i happened to be in singapore and uh uh my friend um uh taoism is very heavy in singapore right so yes muslim right but there's also you know taoism there's some other things some some other aspects going on down there um and i remember we were down there it was super smoky super small this was a couple years ago super smoky smoky smoky and we were driving past this temple and uh there's this big basket out and it was just on fire right now smoke smoke and i actually i was like yo like what what uh i was like what is that right yeah and uh my friend was like oh man they that's

they uh it's it's like uh they're burning um items you know to send into the afterlife okay okay okay like what are they you're like do i take the shrooms now or do i take the shrooms later on i mean you see this this way this way get interesting and it may be interesting for me you know yeah uh because things like this in islam is like what no way right so anyway i'm you know like what are they burning you know it's like oh they're burning like this fake

money okay i was like fake money it's like yeah okay and it's like okay what else are they he's like yeah but you know sometimes they'll burn like little fake houses right right and also they'll burn like fake laptops and like fake rolexes it's like a symbolic kind of uh sacrifice of but but not because it's really meant to materialize in the next into the other world so you can have a imagine and a mercedes and an ipad and maids and it got to the point where they would burn uh little paper dolls of people

right and my mind was blown i was like oh my god right and started to research what it was the tradition's been around for for a while um it's not nothing like super controversial but one of the things that came up was that uh and i went to one of the stores in chinatown in singapore where they were where they sold this stuff and it was for real it was like legit you could a car wow okay an industry on the back of all of this a whole industry of this right paper these things billions of dollars and that you can like burn and and send to people uh they called it hill money um is this also muslims there as well

part of this culture or i mean when you think of singapore yeah you just think yeah singapore has a muslim population a lot of that but it also has you know it's mixed it's kind of an open society um but you think you know malaysia is right there indonesia is right yeah exactly very heavily muslim countries but so so anyway i go to the store i buy i like i got to buy some of this stuff as fast but they they called it they called it hell money okay um because uh the christian christian kind of missionaries were trying to like demonize it right and it was like oh so we call we call that hell money right but anyway so anyway my mind is blown right and i'm read the whole now this whole time i'm

in singapore my whole world has been hijacked because i'm get i get introduced to this this concept of burning not just i understand uh libations and stuff like that and and and and uh elder veneration and things that they even you might even see it putting uh uh offerings out and sacrifice even sacrifices when you think of like uh uh eid right um but this was took the whole this this this this is a bit a bit almost furonic like from the egyptian that's passing on to the afterlife yeah this is this is fascinating and so so in that so the whole not the time i'm there i'm just researching research and

researching and uh it comes up in in in china right in modern times and there was this uh one of the one of the examples that came up in like the wikipedia was there was this super huge uh television show in china called uh i think it was called like cow yogurt supergirl or something like that but just kind of imag imagine like uh the voice or like uh uh america's next uh star whatever that is right one of those shows people come and they sing and you know the audience votes and

they win or they lose so anyway um the show is super popular right to the point where it was like it was almost being considered kind of like democracy in in china right because so many people were voting right so it's probably like the first time people were you know voting even though there is voting in china but yeah anyway we'll get into that yeah but some type of voting anyway so anyway the show's super huge super super popular to the point where people were making uh dolls out of the the the more popular contestants to be burned to send them into the next world as in in a good way or a bad way in a good way

in a good way right okay in a good way not like but like you know the same process of okay you know modern times this is what people want the show super popular let's send these these people over there and uh the chinese government started to kind of like look at it as being like that's absurd right like this is getting out of hand you know people are sent burning mansions and burning watches and all these other stuff that's in over there and so the chinese government kind of clamped down on this on the practice and was like look you can burn like the money and

more traditional stuff but all this new laptops and televisions and all this other crazy stuff like i gotta cut that out um the the ccp is very much so secular right and yeah you think about and this is our relative because it leads us into like shinjan and stuff that's relative to the muslim community today um into the world at large but china's relationship to religion and the government's relation to the religion and the institutions relationship to religion is super strange so they reference that okay this this this act of the chinese government kind of clamping down on that particular aspect of that practice

is relative to a campaign that they had in the 80s where was like they're trying to um you know you know marxism and and you know it's debate and marxism of like humanism and what does that mean for people to have like certain liberal ideas about what humanism is or conservative ideas very very kind of academic stuff but it was kind of spilling over into you know how much access do we allow the country to have to western media or to have to this or to have to that's after that um and so there's a big campaign called the anti-spiritual pollution campaign right

because china really is quite um it's quite an enigma when it comes to faith and religion because on one hand they don't really have a state religion or and are seen by certain people to decry religion whereas simultaneously on the other hand they are incredibly superstitious incredibly beyond i mean beyond reason you know the whole thing of good energy bad energy chi the direction you know whether your front door is facing yeah feng shui whether you know your sunlight is coming in through this window that window

this number the number eight bar you know it can also mean death it can also mean i mean it's like uh it's just whoa the whole life so on like a big level so i bring that up because you may think okay that's an isolated thing that's just one interesting quirk in history and then you fast forward to again pulling us closer to like sinjan right is the way that the chinese government looks at tibet okay and how the chinese government you know and and and buddhism you know reincarnation things like that [Laughter]

they they actually uh created like you know government policy to legislate reincarnation no okay i like that one you know like to be reincarnated you have to have xyz like you got this here's the application you have to fill out for da da da da da da right this is in tibet is it this is in this is in tibet i think they were doing it in in mongolia because mongolia kind of had a similar tradition or something like that but tibet most often so it brings into things like the dalai lama brings into all these kind of big macro

uh things that we even as muslims kind of come into contact with like huh what's going on over there right and uh one of the things is that the you know the the the dalai lama is faced with you know he he left china um left tibet and went to india right and it's kind of held up in india um and there's kind of two steps to the next dalai lama right it's like one is there's a guy who has to be born and i i don't want to misquote but that guy has a role in either choosing the dalai lama right or starting the process to go find the dalai lama because when when the dalai lama passes he gets reincarnated

um and they kind of have to but they don't know where of course but they gotta look for like signs to see like maybe it's maybe it's that guy and then there's a process to go and like once they establish they'll go to a village look at all the newborn kids right and then put them through these tests with some of the dalai lama's possessions like do you recognize this do you recognize this do you recognize that do you recognize this and if the kid passes the test then they'll then they'll start to train him in his past life right so they'll bring him up to speed across all of the teachings of buddhism and all that stuff so he can be the leader of the nation um and the chinese recognize that and say look we need to hijack that

process so we're gonna we need to establish first this guy who picks the dalai lama so to speak and then we need to be able to kind of like i guess motion him to pick our version of the dalai lama so we want a dalai lama who's like cool with the chinese government and so it's like a spiritual coup d'etat super duper you know kind of fascinating in a government which is some people consider if not secular atheists or supposed to have atheistic kind of like ideologies but how are they interfacing with with not only islam but buddhism christianity this

standard third and what are they demanding as the head of state as the head of society the politic from their religious you know uh function of functionaries or organs in their country um and what are the lessons that can be like taken from that or what's happening and so i find that to be like super interesting when you're related to like muslim countries or related to islamic countries you see is you see the same as much as that sounds absurd yeah you see the same thing or pieces of it kind of yeah okay this is of it in pakistan you see pieces of it in america you see pieces of it everywhere where there's this

this this if it's not secular it's a different uh uh sect or version or family or ruling class um who has a certain relationship to the religion in a direct or indirect way uh coming up with how to use the religion how to present it how to to use it to promote itself how to use it to capture the the minds of the world or something like that so as much as china may seem like a basket case yeah once you learn the extent of how they go and you start to map that onto other places it seems like oh this is the thing with religion right religion is has always been used but seeing that you find that very

interesting uh lupe just to you know like these practices these kind of like strange wow kind of you know they peak curiosity what are your thoughts on what are your thoughts on psychedelics and things like mushrooms and dmt come on talk to us you know what it's again another hot take yeah you know in my relationship islam you know never as a disclaimer i've got a video

saying that psychedelics are not haram you can watch it people how convenient you know i always kind of put all that stuff in the same bucket as like alcohol you know i looked at marijuana all that stuff the interesting part is that my mom drank you know mom yeah i think she drinks my mama smokes a little bit um and so again being born muslim not being raised muslim you're going to open up the refrigerator it's a 40 ounce in there right and my mind is like that has to be delicious because the way that they drink it it has to be delicious my mom was like i'll give you a sip of some

non-alcoholic beer some old duels which is like this is trash like y'all sit and drink this and then you realize no we're drinking it to get drunk like that's the point that's not how it tastes um but i always bucketed everything in that so i never smoked um never drank um you know then didn't find any motive to experiment anything uh psychedelics or anything like that i'm still a little bit on the fence about the the ethics and the morals behind some of that stuff too because um this stuff more than you see because there's this right okay there's certain things that are

like intoxicants or just drugs or you know something to to kind of just drown the personnel of this world in reality to kind of numb them out and whether it's numb the pain or numb you know people and they take drugs and things but here this is more about a kind of um a curiosity of of kind of disc of just discovering the realm

[Laughter] i mean i i hear i hear all that i've always been one to you know this world is to be used um you know it's good and bad there's things in this world which will harm you and harm others um there's things in this world that will benefit you and benefit others and sometimes the signal gets mixed about what is beneficial what's not beneficial um i always look at it as just kind of like the medicinal line you know like if it's medicinal and it's in it's it's you know most drugs

even pharmaceuticals they still start in nature in some capacity it's the bark of a tree it's the you know that this flower is this root or something like that just in pill form or a synthetic version of that to isolate certain behave certain aspects of it and effects um so i don't really take that like it has to be natural or i don't take that piece but i do think that there's a certain um you know um just chemical stasis that you need to maintain yeah and it might be different for different people but if you're hurt and you're in pain you know that's why i look at it like i'm glad i didn't smoke weed because i know when my hip starts to go or my my arthritis starts to kick in

that first hit of like weed brownie is gonna just be the best high of all time right i'm gonna i'll probably go i'll probably die for my first bite i have to say people before we went live i tried to tempt lupe into breaking this fast i said i said have you got a drink do you want to go get a drink and i'll look at the sun but he passed the test that was me lucifer trying to

yeah you know lupe the whole with the faith thing and the industry i mean that just seems worlds apart but yet you know you've you've obviously navigated through that industry you've worked with like you know bleeding artists within that how has that been then how has has it been uh as as a muslim i mean is it just you know people there's this thing that these kind of industries you they take your soul or this kind of you know there's this kind of notion out there and um how has that been as as a muslim as an you know as a distinguished

artist that's kind of gone through very successful being yeah um i mean i always i get combative you know sometimes and i when when people come to me and it becomes like man you're in the music business yeah you're surrounded by all of this fitness and uh jen's and just and i was like all right all right um what what's the difference right you go to this madrasa right you're just madrasa you become the huffis and you're doing the the hafez bop right and you're learning all the hadith you know i beat my heart right and like everything is that right right and then you get on up

you you you get uh you get uh hyped up to go on a bus and stab 80 people right or but you had a gleaming example of you could probably win quran competitions and like all this other old stuff but you directed your whole life literally your life uh into hurting and harming other people right and maybe even some muslims in the midst of that right yeah like what the madrasa industry might be a little bit more dangerous you know a little bit more evil i agree with you if it's turning out folks that are yeah venomous you know committing acts around the world but they're probably someone they could

probably you know pray they could probably they probably i say that to say that the the scholastic aspect of islam right and all of that deep uh scholarly aspect of it if you ain't gonna do nothing but use that as energy to go oppress someone or to blow something up not saying that that's the the the norm but that's a part of it you know and there's people who sit on the edge of that and and look at the world through the lens of of a madrasso out the window of a mosque um and it's like that's not the world you know the world is filled with people um who are trying to figure things out trying to find themselves

even in the music business trying to figure out their voice the stories that they want to tell that are kind of being influenced and forced um or are running from situations where it's like look that kid could actually be in the streets killing people right literally being the streets like selling drugs being the streets robbing people um but he's he's taken a step out to like turn it into a song right and then it becomes like okay well what's the next step well maybe he's not finished he's in the midst of his his or her journey with that said there's muslims all through the music business you know of all different walks of life um from all different points of view who came into islam from all

different angles from prisons um from immigrants from having from from genuinely being they might be the most ruthless killer that you've ever seen um but something about the koran has softened that person right but when they're in the streets they're in the streets right the quran is like in the back because i have to go kill this dude if he looks at me the wrong way type situation but i'ma make sure that i kill him in time that i can go do you know my good right so that something to like the you know how much do we want people or industries to be reflective of the of the religious connotations and

context in which they're in or we want them to be so i mean but with that said i mean it's a lot of things that go against every religion right there's things that go against buddhism there's things that go against uh christianity there's things that go against judaism and these are folks who are in the business who are jews folks in the business who are muslims folks in the business who are christians folks who are who are you know faithful practicing in the in the in the path that they follow go to church prac do easter do this do that and they'll they have no problem putting out the most violent vile record that you've ever heard you know and and support it and and figure out ways to sell more records and

then make a t-shirt out of it and then do this and do that um so i've seen you know i don't i try not to judge the capacity of a person based off the religion that they follow right because sometimes they use you would it i think religion needs to be separated from the actions of man right because if you use man to kind of judge the capacity and validity of a religion is always going to look crazy because if the religion was so strong this person should be doing this the person shouldn't be doing that and i think it's more the question of like who is that person you know what are their what are their what are their whether what are their capacities how do they deal with society what was their origin story and what are they trying to complete

where are they trying to go in life um no matter what industry they're in so somebody going into the music business versus might come out the other side of better for the world you know be able to build a a school and have a philanthropic effort and feed a bunch of kids and do all this other stuff with that person who chose to go to the mosque um they're just waiting on iftar right they're just leeching off the mosque right and i've had circumstances like that where i've met brothers at the mosque and kind of been duped into certain situations and found myself feeding somebody's what i thought was their drug habit you know or feeding somebody's really weird thing but it's presented as like oh that guy was an angel like i was in

my mind literally like oh this dude had me and i found myself like why do i have to keep giving this angel money like if you're an angel like you should be able to just you know just generate some money um and you come to these conclusions that everything isn't everything that in the mosque everything that's in the mosque um isn't halal yeah wow no that's that's incredibly profound and it's so it's so uh hard hitting in its reality lupe that just you know the way you're saying because i i feel that that is the struggle that a lot of regular people have in

you see the religion or faith or just the you know it's allocation it's it's it's buildings let's say the masks and these don't reflect a reality to them it's too you know it's almost like artif it's i don't mean it's artificial but it's almost like it's artificial it's not real it's not like like they go to a mosque okay they pray but that's not the real world they don't see that and and this is why they can't relate sometimes to whether it's going to be imams or whether it's going to be because they they think well come on but in the real world this all this happens and you know that's

so you or another people who are let's who are putting words together putting poetry and music and and inspiring people uh making them kind of reflect but in a way that they can relate is so much more powerful than just somebody saying well you know i i know you should just go to the mosque and pray or just saying you know just just be good it doesn't quite cut it it's not real yeah i was i was i was uh reading i use ramen i use ramadan to kind of just study uh religion

um and i came upon um interested in poets and it was weird every time when i was when i was when i was younger and even now not so much now because i kind of gave myself a break when i was younger when i read the quran i thought god was talking to me it was like you're the poet and i'm when i'm i'ma see you in hell boy don't worry about it i know what you did last week right i was like yo i can't read this book because it's scary right but i say that to say i always i always try to use use ramadan to get into you know the nooks and crannies in the context of religion i actually bumped into this uh this piece about poets um during the time of of prophet muhammad

saw islam right like who were in a period of time where they were considered to be pre-islamic yeah right in the jahilia and were converted into or brought into the time of islam and kind of live through it as poets yeah right and there was a study there's a a a journal interest i still have i'm still kind of working through it on my phone but it was kind of like the gist of like these these poets who were kind of like it wasn't this big deal you know it wasn't like this big relevatory thing it was just like here's the sign of the times okay and they they weren't they were

kind of agnostic to it you know and i'm sure because it was probably some other social context or or or things going down where conversion was just like okay all right you know and it wasn't like a critical thing but they did still have critiques on the macro and their critiques were like and again bringing this back to me as a poet in these times and being a social criticism and and consciousness and stuff like that one of the critiques of the poets back then and this is during time muhammad saw islam was you know the the youth are kind of being told what to say they're being like restrained you know there's this restraint that's

happening right this freedom of expression is kind of being clamped down right and that was one that one of the poets kind of critiques um where it's like you know they're from an age where it was about you know expressing yourself and you know having a certain level of of shame but not guilt yeah and it was like yeah we had shame we had like you know restrictions and stuff like that but it wasn't like a guilt thing and it wasn't like we could we can write a poem about whatever we wanted um not to say that there was there was censorship but they felt like in the youth that they were that were being born during that time

apologized no you know coming up coming up in a society um where they were kind of just being controlled you know their their expressions were being constrained um and if you think like that's happening and being recognized and witnessed um in the time of prophesy islam right um was everybody cool like i don't i don't believe everybody who who was either born into born into islam during that time or converted to islam didn't have critiques or real world situations that they had to deal with you know that that the spiritual couldn't solve

you know that prophet saw islam would would be like i don't know what we gonna do you know what i'm saying like we don't have we figured this out together or something like that the same way you see it today with people seeking counselors or seeking guidance from a man or a multi like yourself or different folks in the community you know and maybe having to kind of go out of that to realize like look this isn't compatible you know with the life that i was used to or this is incompatible with the life that i want you know and how can we kind of align these things um and and what are my you know i don't want to go to hell like i don't want to be damned in this i don't want to be taken over by the gin i don't want to i

don't want to be uh executed for heresy i don't want to be considered an apostate i don't want this i want that so what are the reconciliations and the compromises that can be made um for me to you know feel valuable you know to feel like i'm actually you know living right you know by god you know living right by other folks you know um but still you know getting my rocks off you know as a human being and understanding i'm a sensory person i want to experience things and do that so it's interesting that i think that a lot of a lot of the times there's a sanitation that takes place you know and if you don't fit

anything that comes out it's considered to be haram or whatever really there's aspects of it that you know there has it's always been this kind of rocky road and turbulent people trying to figure their place out and having critiques about it because i because i've said i've often said that the dean is something that ought to complement your life and not complicate it it's not something which you know this is it's meant to be something organic something which flows with you not like just just like hurdles that you have to keep trying to and i and what's happened unfortunately over the

centuries and and institutionalization as well i guess it's just made it so difficult for people that it's just a list of don't do's you know like don't don't don't don't don't and and it's it's taken the spirit of the faith out of it like it's kind of it's lost that message along the way you know speaking you mentioned about poets and pre-islamic poets now um this just just tying that into something uh that you've also worked on that it reminded me that there's a classical poet

and he has this text called resalatul and in this basically people in his day and age some scholars who were calling him a heretic and they were calling him a cafe and farseer and there's one particular scholar called ibn aparia he writes this story of ibn kare who's this who's the actual protagonist and he's at the gates of heaven and he manages to sneak in and he goes into heaven and and this story goes on to inspire dante's uh inferno later on i mean his divine comedy later on but uh in heaven he meets all these different people and he meets people he didn't expect we're going to be in heaven and he meets the jahilia poets that you were saying

he means asha he meets saheed he meets and he meets prophets and he meets other and he asks them questions and and he asked some of these poets how how on earth did you get here he asks them that what the hell why did god let you hear for god's sake and it's and it's fascinating because he expresses the reply that the poets would say well it's not because of necessarily religion because they may have predated islam but it was just maybe a poem they said so some of them they said you know some poems that they said

in it they expressed humanity and they expressed these kind of things and and how god favored them based on that but that uh i mean that's a whole kind of a tale that he has a saga that i mean you've uh one tying into what you're saying about poets but there's something also in some of your albums uh a kind of story of my cool the cool a character who who has these different this he goes through the vicissitudes of of this you know the turbulent turbulence of this world and even gets to heaven and he's kind of sent back rejected

[Laughter] what's the inspiration but behind this this character and this story it's an it's an entire uh like a greek tragedy in and of itself i mean the whole the uh the cool it's my it's my uh second album um but the story actually started on my first album um and i actually think it started off of that well i just started to develop these characters and and actually inspired by michael jackson the thriller right wow and i had this notion that you know what is what one genre uh in the human

you know narrative space is uh consistent and it was like zombies right so i was like oh i need to have a zombie i need to have a zombie theme for real and i was like oh man night of living dead walking you know thriller walking i was like okay all right cool i need a zombie um and of course my spin on it in my take um and it's basically this this hustler um who who you know goes into the streets uh and literally the streets becomes a character so she's personified um as being the you know the the war path you know it's not the street or the when it was the streets the back alleys

the you know personification of the the the dark sides uh and the temptations right of the world and she's so on her on her body she has tattoos of like you know alexander the great and genghis khan so she's responsible for kind of motivating them to to certain actions and activities um and and uh uh scarface and you know alcohol and all that stuff so she sees the streets and then you have the game which is like this super almost uh just demonic figure all the ills and all the bad you know that of this of this world um and so it's these three

characters and kind of playing off each other so he meets the streets you know gets into this life um and then eventually gets you know you know gets into the game and gets kind of led astray then he dies right but then he he comes back to life right and you know digs himself out of his grave and it's all it's all kind of like pointing to like the day of resurrection you know like resurrection day so it has these these these tones of like massive macro narratives that we all kind of embrace um or or aware of or privy to whether we're practicing religions or not right this idea of the

word come to end and people it's kind of these archetypal myths that are in our subconscious yeah so he he kind of comes back to life um and it's really kind of it's really kind of anti-climactic you know um i'm working on a i'm working on a a follow-up to it so i don't want to give it i don't know but he uh i mean and you have to kind of go to my first album to get his resurrection and his life is on my second album so i'm gonna go backwards yeah and when he comes out of his grave um he doesn't know what to do he's just kind of like standing in the graveyard

and it's like there's nothing really for him to do you know so he kind of goes back to his old neighborhood you know it's very kind of like you know the expectation that he's not going to be dancing in the street with zombies and doing you know zombie dance moves you know he just kind of comes back to the world and it's just past them by you know nobody really cares he doesn't he doesn't raise too much apart from his physical state um and so yeah i've always played with you know themes of like life and death um you know in my music if not so memento mori

um but just coming to terms with death there's another record that i did called drogoz wave um which is somewhat related to the cool uh in the sense that the cool uh when he was resurrected uh again going back to these things the libations or even bringing it back to that uh burning the mansions into the next world um this idea of pouring out a little liquor for my homies you know this one out for my homies you know yeah it was really reaching them you know that was the other piece so all his friends were pouring out alcohol to him or pouring out drinks to him or toasting him drinks or whatever to his memory and uh you know it would end up in his

grave and it eventually flooded his grave and he kept he came back to life and that's what kind of brought him back to life these libations so anyway droga's wave is built on a similar premise um but it's about slaves so slaves were who were thrown off the slave ships or jumped off the slave ships um on their way to america um and they didn't die um they they were able to survive underwater you know they were revived underwater via drowning right they wouldn't come back to life and then they would um they would hunt slave ships you know like rewriting the past you know trying to terms or give a

extend the life story of folks who died so tragically um and for no reason to give them a new role at least mythologically in today's era you know through hip-hop you know so you get these like these stories whether they're heroes or anti-heroes the cool is kind of like an anti-hero but these people are heroes um you know coming back to fight you know doing their part to sink slave ships wow you know yeah sorry i see your mind i see your eyes glazing over no no no i'm just nah that that's very very powerful no no no absolutely i'm uh that's

no not at all lupe that is honestly that's what not at all that's absolutely seriously that's just that's so just wow overwhelming you know what what are your thoughts lupe somebody who's you know who's who's walked this walk of life and you've also gone through i mean there's been you know in the past few decades just with technology alone the world has just gone through so many transformations uh within a short span of time really what do you think when it comes to issues like

morality and stuff like this do you feel humanity is i mean is it is it kind of is it on an incline or a decline what what do you think wow oh we're going to resolve them all tonight tiny the tiny questions um i mean you know as i look back as best we can right i don't really trust history you know but it's kind of like all we got you know trying to piece things back together and do you do you look at it through archaeology do you look at it through

um text do you look at it through oral tradition like you know do you look at it through uh i guess geology or geography right um what are what what is the situation that set the tone for the morality of humanity right and how has that fluctuated and changed in the face of crisis in the face of uh plenty in the face of famine in the face the feast right um in the face of uh uh uh uh uh innovation but not not they don't call it innovation disruption right um what happens to the social fabric and the conditions and things of that nature and then what happens when you try to apply

uh archaic or uh incompatible social social strata strategies in an era where it just is it's it's it's past it it's done like you can't keep bringing that back like it's done all right that zombie is dead right it's back to the cool like this guy comes back to life but he has nothing to do you know he's just kind of floating around in the world getting on the train it's like what it's serving no real purpose um so i think with that kind of in my mind um i think morality morality gets made you know day of yeah you know

like and it just so happens that there's everybody has the capacity when they wake up to morning to like have a new thing like i'm going to treat this person this way i'm going to treat this person that way and you're going to have a certain reaction and a response that person's going to you know have his morality or ethics adjusted um or again disrupted for that period of time um maybe there's some mind sync and then it tapers off because you get into something else you know you you're on on your way to see a film or you're on your way to see a concert or go to the mosque or go to the temple or whatever um and you get a chance to reset and maybe it stays in your mind

um then you go to sleep and you forget it ever happened and you wake up to something you know humanity do do you feel that's kind of by that do you mean it's do you feel it's kind of getting we're getting better as we're going along or are we are we getting worse i say that to say that you know i think it's i don't think there is any up or down wow and i don't think that there's a because there's so much fluctuation that it just tends to just spoken like a true quantum physicist people that's a

but no seriously i think that because there's so much daily daily and minute by minute change and update of morality right and i think that it's been that way since the beginning of math right i think it's been that way in the animal kingdom i think it's i think there's a certain morality that's there yeah certain people certain certain members of the animal kingdom transcend certain things on a certain day in the face of certain things in the face of this and face that fighting for the alpha position or trying to sustain a beta position in tribe or something like that um so i think that morality gets made day of yeah no i'm i'm with you i agree then

the next day it's depending on if it's cloudy outside or depending on what the conditions are morality is going to change again morality's going to change again and with that i don't think you can have a consistent definition right and maybe things meet that definition maybe they don't but i think there's a certain fallacy a certain artificiality in the definition itself right because this morality expands so many human behaviors and thoughts right but i think about it now right and maybe this is a question you can help me with out of the [ __ ] which is my favorite word

real talk you know i asked you interesting questions from time to time right of course i think about i'm making salat right um and for me salat has always been about a reduction of eliminating certain distractions you know putting myself in a position to be you know pure in that moment for that period of time that i'm in that right and so i got at one point i was voodoo obsessive okay right and i had to find a way to kind of come down from right okay um to minimize it again reduction right it's not it's not that important if you got if you just didn't do the ear just keep

keep going right um then it became you know uh ruku like okay am i hitting ollie did i bow three times or what's that two did i wonder that right you kind of figure out a way to do that and then what pops up is clarity of mind right and obscenities and my mind is thinking did i just say fu in my head and if i said fu in my head do i have to start over like go out is this ruined right or like and i find myself in certain cases like yep i got to do this over like my mind is way too obscene um but i'm speaking you know the prayer

correctly i'm reciting the verses correctly i'm going through the movements correctly but my mind is a circus right and it becomes like i feel like i'm not really present and i'm doing god a disservice even though i know he don't need these prayers yeah i at least want to be present in these prayers and even if um if i'm thinking about mcdonald's and thinking about other crazy stuff cool but if i'm thinking about like obscene things or obscene words or obscene gestures or even certain blasphemies kind of pop up from time to time it's like i don't really believe this you know because i don't really believe in gin i'm gonna just put that out there i don't believe in them um and so when i get to

when i'm saying surotunas yeah and i get to uh uh do not i'm like you don't really believe in that why are we saying that it's like shut up you know come back to you to make it real right it becomes this man i want to start over like i want to reset do this again because i don't feel like this is acceptable you know and like where do we sit and when we come into contact with those type of things throughout our day right those type of

moral decisions yeah right personally by yourself praying and you're thinking like this isn't good enough or i'm being immoral in this action even though i'm fully praying um of course of course the fact that you're even conscientiously kind of self-checking yourself is the greatest you know tell it is it is the it is the greatest sign that this is that it's it's that it's not something you need to kind of worry about or get kind of um i mean like you said i could find myself

almost going into this ocd level obsessive kind of like you know like oh my god like maybe why am i having these thoughts why am i you know did i just swear did i just think of something blasphemous did i think of something in fact there's actually a hadith yeah in this hadith the companions they ask the prophet these very words they actually say that uh when one of us is praying like when we're praying we have such thoughts

that is so like uh that we we don't dare express them to you because they are that horrendous and obscene and blasphemous and the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam's reply was that he said that that is the the pristine level of faith because the fact that you see it's it's only human to have thoughts you know and the fact that you're going into something your mind is going to you know sometimes it will kind of have these pop-ups like it'll be like oh what's this what's that

you mentioned about look you know certain concepts about islam or let's say the quran or certain meanings like the jinn now nobody knows what that means you know this kind of understanding that people have that are their demons this is just an understanding that people have kind of just just kind of put together as a concept that's kind of become popular the jinn in the in the actual quran the word jinn just means the unseen that's all it actually means now people have gone on to say well oh you know like oh well in another verse allah said something about oh the essence being from fire and the essence being from

but that doesn't mean they are how people conceptualize them to be these kind of demons and things like it could whether it refers to forces whether it refers to just entities that are invisible as in just invisible stuff that has how it operates in the cosmos we don't understand but it doesn't you know the way people understand it like these kind of like i don't know these devils walking around with i don't know possessing possessing people and and doing all that this is this is just folklore it's just kind of stories which people have just kind of passed down from generation to generation but you questioning these kind of things

it is to me it demonstrates an interactive relationship with the actual text with the actual scripture with the actual worship like you're not you see you see it's ironic that you said well i'm kind of i'm not present but actually you are present because your act the fact that you're even kind of you're becoming conscientious of thought is is is to be very present now i understand you you want to go to a state of being mindful this mindfulness of kind of serenity and you know this kind of like i i want clarity of thoughts

but obviously that that is the journey that's going to that's that's the man at the top of the hill don't just land there he had to he had to climb up but but i wouldn't i wouldn't kind of feel that um i wouldn't be hard on myself i wouldn't be kind of like for thinking you know why am i having these thoughts just just dispel them the fact that you have these thoughts the hadith says that that is iman that is an uh a reflection of faith that you're having that but yeah but i you know it's it's amazing because a lot of people

can you know this it's actually so common you know i get asked this by so many people as well about this very similar uh you know whether it's thoughts whether it's ocd with wudu like you mentioned previously and getting caught up on that and and it can just rob the spirit of that of what it means for that person yeah so um yeah man don't don't sweat that at all any any fair you feel free [Laughter]

what the [ __ ] you know speaking of um you you were saying all these messages you're saying your journey you're saying these things do you feel though lupe people who are younger today do you feel they've got it more difficult in terms of what in terms of this existential kind of crisis of you know this because there is this kind of existential crisis going around and people are you know like like you said like what is my purpose what is what am i doing here is it just nothing is it

and then faith you know using faith to navigate the world as well yeah i think there's a difference i mean even if even if even as i think about you know uh critiquing you know aspects of of islam i critique ask just as strongly aspects of like continental philosophy and modern thought and the words that we use right again being a person so uh intimate with words and using them for a living when you think of words like existential crisis right most people don't face an existential crisis right

i would say most people don't um they may face a purpose a crisis of purpose a crisis of meaning but not a crisis of existence right now there are people who are faced with a crisis of existence meaning they may not exist depending on the decisions that are that they make today and then the decisions that are made on their behalf they may not exist later on today right they're gonna die right and i think it's we do ourselves a certain disservice to project the gravity of existence

onto or onto what should i wear today or on what type of job should i get or what should i eat tonight or what you know things that are that don't necessarily correlate to you having life in your body or not right now there are places in the world where people's um existence is you know at at stake right today right now right at this moment that we talk right that there's a decision being made whether that person is going to live or going to die right and that we shouldn't pretend that the the the things that we're going

through in life are to that state of gravity right and i say this because i've i've talked uh a few people um into suicide right that you've talked them into they're still alive they're still alive but talking them into suicide right in the sense that okay but i'm if you're gonna do it make sure you do it all the way but do it in a way where it's like you make sure that you're gone right so when you jump off the building try and jump on to aim yourself so you land on the edge of the other building so you get two building jump

offs for one and then you bounce off that one and then i hit a car think about the physics right so let's get that out the way right but but before you do it right i'm sure that there's an old lady you know in your town or old lady who lives upstairs um who can't go to the grocery store right because she can't walk so you have a perfectly good set of legs your mind is destroyed okay yeah i agree your mind's destroyed you you don't have any reason like okay cool but look your legs still work and your arms still work right so if you could use your arms and legs to go to the grocery store for this lady

right and then when you're done with her i'm sure there's another guy across the hall then i'm sure there's a whole group of people who do this and go to africa and like donate your body you know to these kids who go to get water right so they spend most of their time their day going to get water from this place to that um not going to school doing all so or or that time that they're spending um going to fetch water um every day um you could do that right because you don't need school anymore because you're going to die right right you don't need this because you're gonna do this with that right and i'm with you like every this world's not built for everyone right some of us are probably accidents you know the r b got the flowing you

know the vento got the flowing and before you know it there you are right but you know and i'm real with people like this because i understand the reality and the gravity of what you're saying right and that there's a an injustice that's kind of been done academically where we we use this word existential very loosely right and it's not really meant to be used for crisises of thought or crisises of consciousness right it's meant like this is going to stop my heart from beating right this is going to make my brain fail right and that's where that has to be used but in terms of crisis is a purpose and all those people are still here

because once you present them with the opportunity to go donate you know their services for free to in a foreign country they immediately forget that they remember they don't have a passport you know or they you know they don't have this or they don't want to do that they just want to die and it's like well look we might as well go out with you know before he jumped before she jumped she she helped me with my groceries that was a great person right once you want that memory to be left behind too right so all that to say um if you are dealing with with uh with issues of suicide or you're dealing with those type of thoughts uh seek help um you know uh uh seek seek folks that uh that are egg to have expertise and a talent in that i'd i've had those

conversations because i know those people right so i know their tolerances and their capacities and we have fun and we joke and we talk of course get serious i get serious and when things are heavy so i think that people are having crisis of purpose i think people having crisis is a faith i don't think people are having for the most part having crisises of existence right for you to be able to even come and tell me that you're having a existential crisis lets me know that you're not having an existential crisis because people who have existential crisises they got minutes or hours right before they're gone right versus you who've been thinking about this for a week

or two months or a year so that's my that's my piece on that but i do i don't want to minimize or discount folks who are having real serious issues with how they interface with society how to interface with politics how to interface with the internet so the young kids today i mean i think that they're they're having a you know you're in a world where that doesn't really need you um there's nothing that you can really you know there's so much competition there's so many people able to everything's being automated um your services are kind of no longer required so i think there's a certain

kind of like rejection that's happening and the youth are trying to figure out a way to fit in and make themselves feel important and you know a lot of those things are just you know being big and bad or or being rebellious or being this or being that um but at the same time too i think there's a whole group of individuals and young kids are doing just fine you know figuring it out who find purpose to find reason um who find a rationale to maintain and they find the credibility generated from themselves you know they don't need a religion to make them credible they don't need they don't need me or you to make them feel credible about their life and their

relationship to whatever um and i think as long as we allow folks and and celebrate those folks and let them know like hey man you don't you don't necessarily have to abide by the the common classic rules of success in this world to have value yeah wow oh that's very i mean that wow that's there's a lot to take in there um i was i was going to say people if you've got some questions and you want to have them at the legend himself go on then fire away in the comments

the spicy spicy the masala send it send it go on then let's have some questions what did you want to ask lupe the legend himself right so people whilst you send in your questions so lupe a quick one that some people had already asked working alongside people as people had asked working alongside uh jay-z and kanye kanye west what uh your thoughts on on these people had asked how was it what's the uh uh somebody had also somebody had also mentioned about

kanye's rebirth and your thoughts on that in faith i'm i'm not i'm not so sure about that but myself but i just that was a question right i mean i don't want to i don't want to speak too deeply into into anyone else's kind of faith decisions um i can't say you know kanye made jesus walks you know so remember that like he's the same guy who made jesus walks a long long time ago right um it was part of his you know ascendance to where he is right now you know so i don't think he's ever shied away from kind of putting his faith out there

um and i'm not one to question anyone's legitimacy i question i questioned on a daily if i'm even muslim i'm like am i really muslim because i don't believe in jen's like i don't by the way saying there's no such thing as demonic possessions in islam so can and make eggs is that demonic um so like yeah some make me eggs the other day um but but in terms of just working with him i mean kanye is a he's a creative genius is he any more of a genius than anybody else that i

know no but what what he does have and i think that whether you're a genius or you're a fool is work ethic right kanye will work and work and work and work and work by any means necessary until he gets his vision out right um and completes his vision um sometimes by any means necessary but that's one thing that i've always you know admired about him and i've seen his career because you know we both from chicago so i've seen his career we've we've intermingled many times in our careers right um when i had a deal and he was trying to get a deal you know like and it's those kind of

situations and no matter what he always worked you know he always works so i always look at everything that he has i don't look at it as being like a gift from the devil right to that he's never going to make it into heaven right and like i don't look at it like that i can look at it as like these are receipts from a guy who really really works you know and a lot of the things that he has about and this isn't to be hero rise him or anything like as he has i have firm disagreements with him um but in terms of the things that he's gained and the position that he has um i do know that there's a work ethic firsthand that there's a work ethic behind that

and a sacrifice behind that that you don't see in other folks who are you know legitimate geniuses you know but they're working at subway you know or they're working down at the burger stand because they don't have the work ethic you know or the execution to execute on their ideas so i always give kanye that p's jay-z's just like a sage kind of hermit type dude you know um but he's absolutely he's an absolute genius in words like he's he's one of my mentors directly and then kind of indirectly creatively i pattern myself the way he uses words the way he raps the way he makes music and i have disagreements you know with with with him and some of his content and stuff like

that but at the same time too uh again work you know these dudes work you know i think that's what separates them from other folks is the work ethic that's that's that's inside of it there you go folks a question uh lupe what was your inspiration for words i never said oh man [Music] um we were i mean i've always had a dose of of disestablishmentarianism in my life um i i don't know if that

came from me trying to like impress my dad but i remember i got a song called american terrorist and i remember playing american terrorists for my dad right and i was like yo listen to that listen to this song i made it's all militant and in your face and it was like he's like right i'm like what this song is for you i mean you're the military man in the hood with the consciousness and the raps and the no not the raps but you know the karate you know and uh it's just kind of like drip and he's like put on a tupac with a tupac head you got some tupac man this is this is solid gold right here and uh so where's my words i never said

is an extension of that kind of tradition of me kind of um speaking truth to power you know even if i agree with it still kind of critiquing the status quo of certain things and standing up for folks um who don't have a a certain voice you know in the space and also being kind of vulnerable to to certain events and certain things that that happen and how they kind of craft um the narrative in the states this literally the states that we uh that we live in you know whether you're in this part of the world or that part of the world um there's some narratives and some story lines um which need to be critiqued which need to be addressed that need to be put into kind of the public purview and that when i had that moment

i'm not as famous as i was but when i had that moment you know i took the opportunity like i'm going to use this space you know to kick some political thought off yeah you know and challenge some folks so yeah i think it was around the time like occupy wall street and kind of other stuff like that so there was this sense of like you know there the the one percent is a thing it's real wealth disparities thing militarism is a thing all these things are things that are real um and rap needs to have a uh needs to speak on it just a little bit and not and i'm not the only one that that does it shout to immortal technique you know shout out to tyler quality most deaf all these different conscious rappers killer mike uh different folks who speak

truth to that power kendrick lamar et cetera et cetera there's been a question the question here lupe's thoughts on killer priest song bible oh the basic instructions before leaving earth right fantastic basis instructions before leaving earth have you ever heard that song have i no no i haven't actually oh man he he goes through like um his his religious journey um he that to me that's not the that's a great song but he has another song on it that i listen to all the time um it's a poem where it's a poem over like a didgeridoo i can't even think of the name of it right now

um but anyway he's he's like he gets into all of the nooks and crannies moorish and and and islam and christianity and all of these things and you know fortunately or unfortunately um the faith that we practice is compounded you know is is it's it's reinforced by judaism it's reinforced by christianity it's reinforced by there's other inputs to it um it's not just kind of a self-generated thing it references other pieces and for some folks when you start to do the due diligence of going backwards into the source material you know stuff gets wacky you know and i think anybody who studies the hebrew bible which i do

well i watch a lot of lectures about it but when you start to get into these stories and and the reference points and et cetera i mean it creates some some intellectual tension for you to kind of grab on to and i think that you know killer priest kind of went in like went in on it um and i think you see that kind of migration of folks coming into you know just being spiritual being raised in one thing it stops making sense they find something that's relative that makes sense then for a moment they're in it but then they start to see things in it that disrupt it you know and whether it be a valid innovation or be something

some nonsense some daif you know your word for it a piece i guess they they fall into some narrative that's like off-center or some weird you know uh misunderstanding of some text um and then they go off into something else and they become critiques you know of or criticize not to say that he did it in a way where it's like super bogus or blasphemous or something like that i just look at it as somebody on their journey but it's an amazing record like with all that said it stands as an amazing song somebody's asked that did you did you know dmx they've asked um i didn't know him like personally i feel like we've met we've definitely been in some of the

same circles um he had did an album he was working on i think a movie or an album or something in chicago um and we were kind of we're in the same circle in terms of studio and music folks in the city um but i haven't i didn't have like a super deep kind of relationship with him like that not as like how i know kanye or i know jason and similarly dave chappelle yeah i met david i met dave how many times do i met dave i can't remember most vividly was that a con my friend robert glasper is a jazz musician he does these jam sessions and he brings out everybody like everybody just come out and like dave

chappelle was just there like on the steps and we had a a nice little chat he's a he's a cool brother man he's a cool dude yeah i love his comedy i love it and of course oh man there was a question here that how did you how how did you come across me actually that's a a good question let me let me let me massage my ego hey get the biceps make sure you hit the foot and the trap stop

getting trapped um again during ramadan man you get super sensitive about things and you want to find out you're wondering like man am i am i doing this correct right um oh oh i'm studying i'm in the weeds of study and uh for a long time man like i'm glad you're on the scene right now um because for a long time you would hit the same youtube wall you know you would hit the same uh uh kind of folks the same kind of salafi uh super like heart that like it's just like i because that's all you really got you know um and you don't really kind of get

that difference of opinion someone someone like someone like me who's not really in the music in a muslim community you know for some folks it might be they might have that same issue but for youtube muslims like myself um you're kind of at the mercy of the content that's there um and so you know i i was probably looking for something and something popped up um and you you had a video on it right and it's kind of like oh here's another point of view right and you get into your point of view and it's like oh so that's what the maliki's are all about okay

you find yourself like you know you you're aware of the meth abs um but i mean who has the time to get like super deep right you just kind of go off the super what's on the surface and so fortunately again fortunately glad to have you you know on the scene uh what took you so long to at least at least bring a little bit of like you know balance to some of the narratives that are going to get pushed out if you look at just kind of youtube or the social media space or even just google something right a lot of kind of like hardcore solo feed kind of stuff pops up and it's kind of uncontested yeah and you that becomes your thing and it doesn't and i don't want to say that that some of that stuff hasn't helped it

definitely did like watching this one salafi cat uh and not to disparage any salafists but it uh it it gave me a kind of protocol to kind of come off that voodoo obsession yeah you know and it was like bro like think about something else there's bigger fish to fry and it's like don't worry don't worry about whether you did it three times or two times or forgot to do your face or something like that right um and like if you want if it's really that bad do this if you're really that bad do that and it's just very practical and and done but then it'll be something else that's like i don't know if i believe that like i don't know that sounds a little that sounds a little medieval right there but i don't know so it's that's how i kind of got him got into with with you and i think we've

kind of been in like the dms over the past like a couple years or so yeah just kind of throwing questions and you were humbly able to respond i'm at your service i i mean look at that people if you've got lupe on youtube watching me oh my god you're part of the discord wow so one of the questions that what is what is your what is your journey here forward because you'd made an announcement about kind of putting up the gloves and and so what what is what is your trajectory uh conceptually moving forward

um i mean i'll still be we we're thinking about like what is retiring like what does that mean yeah i mean you're not going to be able to pay your bills anymore is that what that means i guess i can't retire retire i can like uh i'm really just kind of honestly i'm just organizing you know my life at this point i'm going to be you know humdilla i'm 39.

gonna be 40 40 inshallah life begins at 40 lupe it begins at 40 allahu akbar so um i'm trying to just organize things and like okay what do you want to do for your 40s you know you did this for your 20s you did this for your 30s um here's the here's the balance sheet of that period now you're hitting 40. what do you want to do for your 40s right and part of it is like you know i really kind of want to not do what i was doing in my 30s you know at least at the certain capacity or certain levels so i'm i'm introducing a new metaphor into my

life and trying to live off that was in this life is a garden right at a certain point life was a jungle right but now i want to have a little bit more organization a little bit more control a little bit more metrics a little bit more things in their proper place um in a little more order um because i know my body is going to start you know hitting certain walls and there's certain stuff that's happening literally right now with my hip man i wish these gems would get out of my hips

we need an exorcism [Applause] but like you know just looking at um existence you know and like you know what do i want the quality of my existence to be and how do i want to kind of use my 40s to define you know if you know inshallah i have 50s or 60s you know what do i want that to be and in the face of what's happening in the world you know all the technology all of these advancements am i going to get a newer link play mario brothers with my brain you know uh there's some real there's some real serious things that are coming down you know for humanity in terms of technology so i think literally in the next 10 years

we're going to be really faced with some life extension stuff some you know things that you know this generation will be and people that are alive right now we'll be able to take advantage of to be like you know what does it mean to extend your life another 30 40 years is that what does that look like you know um what does it look like to live in the live in the matrix you know to be fully immersed in the simulation to be and real you know for that to be a thing i think technology's heading that way so just trying to like simplify organize and get prepared for what's next and hope that the world doesn't melt you know

[Laughter] you know but lupe with your life do you feel ever that life is just is is it just a dream do you feel that sometimes i don't do you feel that is this just all a dream and i'm still somewhere back at the age of 18 and no man i don't i think that uh i remember you mentioned something recently um where you're saying you know it we we could be i don't know if you were standing on this statement but you mentioned it it was like uh are we just a dream in the mind of god right oh right yes

which is which is profound in the mind of god um and i i don't i don't think that i think we're real i think we're material i think we're here i think we have consequence i don't think we're coming back you know i don't i don't think we're coming back in the way that we think that we're coming back um if we come back at all um i think that there's you know the moment is now um and you got to make do with what you have uh and create things that you see fit as they are now um not not to not to kind of critique after life and all of that stuff you know those are those are

there's questions now where i don't even i'm not gonna ask you because it's just like i'm gonna just wait till i see god you know at this point i'm just wait til i get go see the man upstairs and then it's like hey can you please explain can you please explain the arc please like is that like what's going on with that youtube failed me i couldn't have no idea certain things was like i don't even worry about it you know so for me it's just like you know it's it's now here and now it's the consequences are now the material world is here and we have to navigate and deal with it you know the invisible is there too those unseen forces and things are there

as well how do we navigate through those the electromagnetic spectrum and all that stuff i think all that stuff is real and i don't think it requires fantasy or dreams or anything above and beyond or supernatural right i believe it's just natural right that is nature nature is this awe-inspiring fantastic amazing situation it doesn't need to be super yeah right i think super does us super does us a disservice again if you look at superstition and what that really means and superstitio and what was the goal of that um it was actually like to give to give too much power two things right it was the egotistical move where it was like if you do this

the gods will serve you right that wasn't the point right that was like what's super that's why they called the christian superstitious right because it's like god that's your whim you can do this and pray and god will forgive you it's like how dare you say that like god could do whatever you want right um and the definitions kind of change so when you think of supernatural you know it puts it it puts it in a space that we can't comprehend and i don't think life is meant to be like that you know maybe for monks or maybe for super spiritual ascetics who practice that level but for the common person i don't i don't think interfacing with the supernatural matters i think nature and there's enough beauty and

immensity and grandeur in just what what what was created here now yeah you don't need to get lost in dreams or fantasies wow somebody's asked that how how how has ramadan been going how are you finding ramadan i mean man this is easy you know what i'm saying i got abu nah man it's been cool because i do miss going to the mosque you know once kobe came in i'm i'm super serious on covet like if you can get vaccinated get

vaccinated social distance do all that um you know where it's like the mosque was done you know because i didn't want to be that person um you know understanding the way the mosque is built with at least the ones i go to it's very close like you know you're making wudu in the same spot like this is it's gonna be impossible you know to do this safely and at the mercy of like looking at the older folks you know who are in the mosque um and subjecting them to potentially having something that could kill them you know not just make themselves kill them all those dudes sitting in the front praying in chairs and stuff like that like you know give them these moments

to enjoy so i kind of backed away from the mosque but that took away taraweeh you know and in the way that i know taraweeh i'm not a hafiz right so it's like i go to taraweeh to hear the quran and do the prayer and go to that part so that part is missing fortunately when i do it it's super quick you know what i'm saying i got a couple verses that i got and i'm just repeating those we done oh yeah but it's been good humdillah man i say that with e i say it's been easy you know last month made it easy hopefully it makes it easy for everyone but it's been um it hasn't been hasn't been tough

you know my my fight doing ramadan isn't physical it's the more the mental coming to terms with certain things and trying to not stress out wow i know we've taken up so much of your time hours hours and hours of blueprint's time today epic epic epic right so shukren ideally do appreciate seriously taking the time out i know you're incredibly busy person and you know uh sharing your thoughts your perspectives this whole

just your journey it's been it's been emotional man it's been emotional [Music] a message that you would like to say to the viewers that that see this that watch this something that that you think that you know yeah take this away with you what would that what would that be ah ah ah it would be

shop.lupefiasco.com you know to get all of the nice lupe fiasco merchandise and albums and incense these shirts and hoodies coming soon we sell out we sell out of things for sure but there's some incense and some albums there right now um but yeah man let's leave it commercial and exploitative of course of course and i'll put a link in my youtube description by the way the wealthy wealthy fans and followers of mufiabullay go to shop.lupefiasco.com and spend some time people that that gold dinars get there and get

rupees and pounds and pens go spin that on some some lupe fiasco no but but but honestly man i just hope everybody who was a muslim or not um have a wonderful ramadan and i hope uh you get some spiritual insights or some intellectual insights i hope i've added value and if not forget everything that i just said um but you know i hope you do well and i appreciate i appreciate you uh move the apple life um and everything that you do for the dean and just for humanity in general man it's good trust me it's it's well received um for folks who who who aren't

who who want a a a balance right because they know it's just not all one way it's always two sides three sides four sides to the story and sometimes we only hear that one or two um so it's a breath of fresh air to have you out you know walking the walk and talking to talk like you do um appreciate it for sure i appreciate that man i absolutely i love you for saying that absolute love shukran before we just sign off i've just remembered one of our local dear friends who's been listening to you lupe since his teenage years faisal if you can give him a shout out faisal if you're watching oh i thought i

thought she was going to say that he's been tucked behind you this whole time and he's just going to pop over see this is no he's not here but shukran once again and much love people jazakum allah for tuning in what i'm going to do is because as always the show must go on people the show must go on i love that track man that track is epic i'm gonna bring that up as we sigh now people

so if you haven't already liked and subscribed then i'm going to send those gins the ones that don't exist your way [Laughter] ah right where are right people let me i'm just trying to bring this up i've got to this is epic [Music] all right i don't know if you guys can hear it should be feeding through i think they can hear it oh you can hear it all right i can't oh you can't oh you can't i can't i can't but it seems to be going on

output so i take it they can hear it people take very good care of yourselves and we're signing out