Music

Lupe Fiasco stands by calling Obama "a terrorist," boycotts voting

by Ciaran Thompson

Earlier this week we reported that rapper Lupe Fiasco called US President Barack Obama the “biggest terrorist” in the country during an interview with CBS. And since then he has stood by his remarks, claiming “he has nothing to clarify. It’s Obama and the U.S. government. [It’s] every president that came before him and every president that comes after him.”

“It’s funky because everybody’s pulling soundbites from this one interview that we did, but they don’t talk about anything else from the interview,” Fiasco told Billboard. “So it’s really about, ‘What do people want to listen to?’ It’s not what I want to talk about, cause I want to talk about all types of shit… there wasn’t the same reaction about me having a book club… about me trying to promote literacy in a country with 50 million functioning illiterates walking around, because we have a failed and flawed education system.”

During the interview with CBS’ What’s Trending, the outspoken artist also touched on the issue of voting and how he boycotts doing it because “it’s meaningless.”

“Voting doesn’t work, because everybody who voted, voted for the same people who are in office right now that are actually allowing these policies to go forward,” he continued. “You have to educate the populace — the masses, the voters, the people who don’t vote, the people who pay taxes.

“I think once people educate themselves and open up their minds to understand that on that really basic level, then you’ll have some type of change in the way that Americans associate themselves and participate in their own political process.”