Known for his layered metaphors and perceptive point-of-view, Lupe Fiasco often sounds happiest when he lets loose and spits. Giving the visual treatment to one of the verbose tracks from his new album DRILL MUSIC IN ZION, Lupe shares the music video for “AUTOBOTO.”
Released as a single last month, “AUTOBOTO” is a mischievous, playful, and deceptively dense single that finds Lupe weaving his precise barbs around Soundtrakk’s arpeggiating guitars. In the hook, the Chicago emcee compares himself to a Porsche Carrera, a finely-tuned, performance-focused sports car that tears up the road like Lupe tears up the mic. In the “AUTOBOTO” video, Lupe drives around his hometown of Chicago in that vehicle, before parking the vehicle in view of the city’s iconic skyline.
For the song’s final minute, Lupe beams out of frame and cedes the spotlight to Nayirah, who closes the clip with her melodic mastery.
Released last week, Lupe created DRILL MUSIC IN ZION in just three days from beats sent to him by Soundtrakk. The album, which is his first album since 2018’s DROGAS WAVE is home to highlights like “NAOMI,” in which Lupe fuses playful political analysis with poignant emotional resonance, and “MS. MURAL,” which continues a series of songs that started on 2014’s Tetsuo & Youth (“Mural”) and continued with his last album DROGAS WAVE (“Mural Jr.”), and the jazz-inflected title track, which slyly comments on how art created amidst strife becomes commodified entertainment for the masses.
“Your whole life you’re physically growing, and as an artist, I feel like I’m taller now,” says Lupe. “Not that I’m at a higher place of morality, it’s that my vantage point and perspective is higher. I can see further.”