I’ve been on a Lupe Fiasco kick this week after yesterday’s CRS post. Today I bring you Lupe’s first mega hit in the rap world with Kick Push, his ode to rebellious youth in the form of skateboarding. Lupe dominated the mid-00’s with his albums Food & Liquor in 2006, The Cool in 2007, and probably his most commercially successful album Lasers in 2011. The Cool is without a doubt my top Lupe album, but it’s hard to beat Kick Push in terms of individual tracks.
Before he knew he had a crew There wasn’t no punk in they spitfire shirts and SB dunks They would push till they could skate no more Office building lobbies wasn’t safe no more And it wasn’t like they wasn’t getting chased no more Just the freedom was better than breathing they said
Without a doubt, the most underutilized rap group of my lifetime. CRS aka Child Rebel Soldier was made up of Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, and Lupe Fiasco. Us Placers was released in 2007 and that was just about all we ever heard from CRS. To be fair this came out *right* before Kanye’s Graduation, and Lupe’s The Cool, which are two of the best rap albums of all time, so I can see how this may have gotten put on the back burner.
However, Kanye is known for collaborating with all kinds of artists, but is also infamous for boasting about forming rap super groups that never come to fruition. Some of these groups turn into classic platinum records like Watch the Throne with Jay Z. Another is just beginning as Ye has most recently teamed up with Kid Cudi to form Kids See Ghosts. Others result in an absolute fire single only to never be heard from again like CRS.
Kanye, Pharrell, and Lupe were also credited on the 2008 N.E.R.D. remix for Everyone Nose as CRS, which still bangs to this day, but is definitely more of a N.E.R.D. song than anything else.
Technically CRS had one other song that came out in 2010 called Don’t Stop, but it was a G.O.O.D. Fridays release so I don’t really count it. If you remember, G.O.O.D. Fridays was a free weekly music drop back in 2010, which was a godsend in college, that Kanye launched leading up to My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy. Kanye utilized the full roster of his label GOOD Music to release music every Friday for several months, including hits like Power, Don’t Look Down, and a number of tracks that eventually made their way onto MDBTF like Devil in a New Dress.
The 300s 