Wasalu Jaco p.k.a. Lupe Fiasco is a rapper, producer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, (martial) artist, (and more), and is spending the 2022-2023 school year at MIT as an MLK Visiting Scholar. He was kind enough to take some time to talk about his goals for the upcoming year, where he envisions rap going and its interplay with academia and institutions, and the fundamentals of his craft. Talking with Lupe was incredibly on many levels, and I look forward to connecting with him again at the end of the year and re-examining this discussion then.

| Topics |
00:00 - Rap is a Lossless Data Compression Algorithm
2:20 - Lupe's Upcoming Year at MIT - Class and Research
6:20 - Evolution & Rap Mechanics
31:35 - Teaching Rap and Rap Technology
48:04 - Explicit and Implicit Benefits Between Rap and Hard Sciences
1:00:20 - Merging Rap and Institutions
1:05:52 - Rap Degree from MIT
1:10:40 - Importance of Rap at MIT, not Berklee
1:22:34 - Fundamental Laws of Rap
1:27:13 - Rap as a Lossless Data Compression Algorithm
1:31:28 - Rapping with Emojis
1:42:55 - Lupe's Language Fluidity
1:53:24 - Reassess Your Constraints to Be Better than Lupe
2:02:12 - Makings of a Rap Grandmaster
2:11:05 - Citation and Conservatory Mechanisms for Rap
2:17:20 - Cuz I Love It
2:28:10 - Part 2 - Graduation 2023

---- Relevant Links ----
Lupe's Youtube:    / @lupefiasco  
Lupe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lupefiasco/...
Lupe on Twitter:   / lupefiasco  
The Trope Tank: https://tropetank.com/


---- Paper / Video References ----
Extended Phenotype: https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10...
How much music is possible:    • Will We Ever Run Out of New Music?  
Math not a language: https://www.mathnasium.com/blog/why-m....
Computerphile episode on memristors:    • Brain-Like (Neuromorphic) Computing -...  
Numberphile: https://www.numberphile.com/
Lupe Shares His Writing Process:    • Lupe Fiasco shows his writing process...  
The A train: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_th...
Great Fourier Transform Video:    • But what is the Fourier Transform?  A...  
More sources and embedded image links: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14...


** NOTE** If you find the audio to be too quiet, as a hack you might get better results if you can use head/earphones, otherwise, please find a maxxed out volume version of this talk here:    • [VOLUME BOOSTED] Lupe Fiasco's MIT: A...  . I am working on trying to get better microphones, and will have better audio in the future. Sorry about this.

** Thanks to reddit user u/jwin2321 for the great picture of Lupe which is used as the thumbnail for this video **