Lupe Fiasco's Lasers - The Story So Far

The hype and the anticipation for Lupe's 3rd album "Lasers" gets bigger and bigger every day.

Here's what we've heard about the album within' the last few months:

It all started at the end of March with Lupe saying that "LupE.N.D." and "The Great American Rap Album" wouldn't happen and instead he'd call his 3rd album "Lasers". At this point he stated that the album was already 60% done.

In the weeks after that we got some live snippets of 2 new songs (Shining Down & Army Girl - you know...the one where he sings "here comes my army girl", don't know if that's the official title though) and after that the LASERS Manifesto was put up on the FNF Army Site. B.o.B also put up 2 clips of him and Lupe on youtube and he said that they're working on a track together. Just a few days later Lupe decided to stream that track and the full version of Shining Down on uStream.

Shortly after that Lupe went to LA to work on tracks with The Neptunes, Krayzie Bone/Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, 1500 or Nothin' and Pooh Bear x King David. (the Bone Thugs track will most likely end up on their upcoming UNI 5 album)

Furthermore the following people (or people who know them) stated that they would or already have worked on upcoming projects with Lupe:

Le Messie (Submitted beats for Lasers and said that there could be a Lupe collabo on his upcoming EP), Matthew Santos (is featured on 2 tracks on Lasers), Soundtrakk (produced several tracks for Lasers), Ian Astbury (is working on a project influenced by Japanese street culture with Lupe), Soulja Boy (said that he's working with Lupe, probably producing), Charles Hamilton (said that he's involved in the Lasers project in one way or another), B.o.B (recorded one or more tracks with Lupe but it's not known if those will end up on Lasers), Bam, drummer from 1500 or Nothin (said that we can hear him on Lupe's upcoming album), The Knux (said that Curren$y & Lupe will be on a remix of their track "Fire")

In the earlier stages Lupe also said that there could be collaborations with Bun B and Kid Cudi on "Lasers". Shortly after that some rumors were circulating, saying that Kid Cudi and Lupe worked on several tracks together in New York....but we didn't hear anything else about it.

On June 16th an unfinished version of Shining Down leaked onto the internet. Lupe responded to the leak with a comment that he posted on this blog . He also stated that the album was 95% done at that point.

On June 19th Lupe's official website was updated and on June 20th Lupe performed Shining Down for the first time live at the Bun B and friends concert. However he didn't perform the full track (he left out the 2nd verse).

The full track was performed live for the first time at his concert @ the Chicago Theatre on June 26th. So far Lupe didn't perform the track together with Matthew Santos though.

As you (should) know by now, Shining Down will be officialy released through i-tunes and all other digital outlets on Tuesday, July 7th.

Earlier this week 2 snippets of 2 new tracks hit the net (2 Ways x Ladies and Gentlemen) and they are supposedly part of the album (Update: 2 Ways is the Bone Thugs-N-Harmony track and will most likely end up on their upcoming album). Besides that the site wearenotlosers.com which features a promo video for Lasers went online.

3 days ago we got the last update about the album so far... - @ Summerfest Lupe announced that "Lasers" was finally finished and that it will most likely drop by the end of this year (December)....


Love Always Shines Every-time Remember 2 Smile!


(Could be that I left some parts out..yeah..but this should be enough for now. I especially put this together for people who maybe haven't followed the progress of the album as much as some others did, I hope you're as up-to-date now as possible. Also, all of this was posted on the blog before, just not in one entry. You can use the search function if you want to find out more about certain things. And don't shoot me if some of the above mentioned collabo's won't happen..lol)