Lupe Fiasco: “Pop Pop” (2003 promo single)

I was pretty excited to go out yesterday and buy Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor. Coincidentally, the CD/record/DVD haul I brought home from Los Angeles included a promo 12″ from Lupe for the song Pop Pop. I can’t reveal my sources of this vinyl donation, but it was the first thing I put on the record player when we walked in the door.

All I could find out about the song came from the Wikipedia entry on Lupe, which says Pop Pop was the only tangible output from a short stay at Arista in 2003. It also might have appeared on the Lupe the Jedi mixtape, though I can’t confirm that. Can anyone help out?

Dearth of information aside, it’s a little surprsing this track didn’t find its way to mainstream ears (or maybe it did?). At the very least, the club-friendly beat covers some of Lupe’s lyrical inadequacies of his greener days: “I’m knowin’ I ain’t the hottest nigga out / got that fire though / you gonna have to put your hottest nigga out.” Shouldn’t rhyming the same word – or in this case, the same three words – in a verse be outlawed at this point?

Lupe Fiasco | Pop Pop
Lupe Fiasco | Pop Pop (instrumental)
Lupe Fiasco | Pop Pop (acapella)


Also, Rogue Wave is holding a benefit show Sept. 30 at the Independent in San Francisco for its drummer, Pat Spurgeon, who needs a kidney transplant. According to a MySpace bulletin, there will be performances by Rogue Wave, Ben Gibbard, Matthew Caws (Nada Surf) Ryan Miller (Guster) and John Vanderslice.Buy tickets here. Or you can make a donation via PayPal through the group’s Web site.

2 thoughts on “Lupe Fiasco: “Pop Pop” (2003 promo single)”

  1. i was looking for this everywhere!!! (well, wherever i thought i could find it… it’s a very different Lupe from the one we hear today.

  2. I produced Pop Pop for Lupe in 2001. I still have my vinyl copy as well. It was supposed to be his first single, but his manager and my manager had personal differences that kept my songs of the project. I produced “What It Coulda Been” as well, which got Lupe his first record deal.

    Marble

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