The Westside of Chicago’s God-MC Lupe Fiasco graced the stage at Howard Theatre recently on his Samurai Tour, supporting his most recent release of the same name.
In a way that Lupe could, the concept album is inspired from a small snippet from the 2015 Amy Winehouse documentary, “Amy.” In the clip, Winehouse speaks on the phone to producer Salaam Remi about these ideas she keeps having of “really neat, very beautifully alliterated battle raps” and how she’s a samurai, ready to battle him the next time time they see each other.
Somehow the mad genius Fiasco took this 30-second snippet and built an entire album loosely based around the concept, even using the quote for the chorus of the album’s title track. Lupe Fiasco solidified himself as one of my personal G.O.A.T’s way back in high school as I road-tripped with my mom visiting colleges listening to The Cool album back to back with Kanye West’s Graduation. Now getting a second chance to see him live and cover him this time around at the Howard Theatre only locked that position in even more.
At Howard Theatre on Nov. 16, Lupe strolled on to the stage with an all-red wired microphone in one hand and a white bandana tied around the other as he scat sang the intro ”No. 1 Headband” before stopping dead center of the stage as the beat dropped and turning his attention to the crowd and taking control. Fiasco proceeded to rap and sing with the unparalleled procession of a Shogun samurai the entire night from that point on, never once missing a line or falling off beat.
The only times he let up were to interact with the crowd, transition to the next song or for a water break. He proceeded with “Palaces” before getting into his “Mural” series (“Mural,” “Mural Jr.,” and “MS. MURAL”) and then circling back to “Samurai,” even performing the secret third verse that’s only available on the album version of the track.
Check out the official music video for Lupe Fiasco’s “Samurai” on YouTube:
From that point, Lu went all the way to where things started with his first big single “Kick, Push,” making everyone in the room put their phones in the air to take home a little bit of the nostalgia home with them as they recorded the performance and sang along. For the rest of the night, he continued to bounce back and forth to records from all over his discography making sure to do all of the hits, while also performing every track from the Samurai album.
Listen to Lupe Fiasco’s latest project, Samurai, on Spotify:
Fan favorites like “Hip-Hop Saved My Life,” “Little Weapon,” and “Go Go Gadget Flow” had all the Hip-Hop heads nodding along as they tried to keep up with his surgical flows. He even took out time to do loose records like “Channel No. 3” and his feature from the very first song most of us ever heard his voice on, Kanye’s classic “Touch The Sky.”
The more melodic songs like “Daydreamin,” “Paris, Tokyo,” and “The Show Goes On” had the ladies in the crow dancing and singing along with the choruses. Lupe even made friends with a fan in the front of the crowd named Catalina joking around with her between songs before calling her up to tango on stage with him during the outro of “AUTOBOTO” before sending her back to the crowd smiling, telling her “I hope I didn’t get you in trouble,” as he laughed.
Lupe closed the night out with the new album’s outro track “Til Eternity,” before thanking everyone for coming out and showing love. He told us that DC was the last stop on the east coast leg of the tour and definitely the best crowd so far before taking a bow and exiting the stage.
Lupe Fiasco’s Samurai Tour only has a handful of stops left, wrapping up in Cleveland, Ohio, on Dec. 21.
Be sure to grab your tickets while you can.
Below are some more photos from Lupe’s amazing performance at the Howard Theatre on Nov. 16, 2024. All photos copyright and courtesy of AJ Waugh (wauffleznotwaffles.com).
