Lupe Fiasco is releasing a new album, ‘Tetsuo and Youth’. Nothing strange about that, you might think, but the story behind the album’s release on 20 January 2015 is an intriguing one, involving online activist collective Anonymous. One of its Twitter accounts demanded that label Atlantic Records set a release date for the album. “We demanded a statement from the label within 24 hours to release a date or we would unleash the complete and utter fury of our collective on their company and executives. 21 hours later they released a short Tweet citing the album and it’s release date,” claims a statement, in familiar po-faced style. “At this time it can be concluded that we have proved our point. We wish music that is educating the masses to keep being released. We will fight for that. Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Common and others are the moving force behind conscious rap. This is music we will fight for.” And in a further spooky note, this all happened on the fourth anniversary of another fan protest, “Fiasco Friday“, based on the non-release of another Lupe album. We’d be tempted to call marketing shenanigans, but corralling Anonymous for marketing purposes would be like herding hundreds of furious, won’t-be-herded-by-THE-MAN cats. So probably not.
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