Lupe Fiasco recently appeared on SiriusXM’s Sway In The Morning. While speaking with SiriusXM’s Sway Calloway, Lupe Fiasco discussed what happened to his supergroup with Pharrell & Kanye West, Child Rebel Soldier, his career success and more.
Sway Calloway: I always wanted to ask you about Child Rebel Soldier.
Lupe Fiasco: Why you keep bringing up these contentious-
Sway Calloway: Is that contentious?
Lupe Fiasco: It’s kind of contentious.
Sway Calloway: I didn’t know that was contentious.
Lupe Fiasco: Not for reasons that you think. Me and P are cool. Me and Ye are cool. It’s just that the fans feel betrayed.
Sway Calloway: Because the project never happened?
Lupe Fiasco: Yeah, but then they blame me and it’s like, it ain’t my fault. It’s the two richest niggas in the group. Y’all putting it on the poorest nigga in the group to bring this across the finish line. Right? P eating caviar, golden sandwiches. Ye is stitching up two different Rick Owens coats to wear in the shower type shit. I’m trying to corral these two. God damn. Your question though. I cut it off. I’m sorry.
Lupe Fiasco recently sat down on Sway In The Morning on Friday (October 4) to speak on this history of the supergroup Child Rebel Soldier. For those unaware, the trio consisting of Lupe, Kanye West, and Pharrell released their first single “Us Placers” in 2007, had a few more tracks, and then disbanded in 2013 due to scheduling issues, per Fiasco. They loved to flip Radiohead samples and others from the band members’ solo catalogs, with the Food & Liquor MC even reviving this ethos for his recent “SHRINK” single. When Sway asked him about CRS, he went through many moments across their history.
First off, Lupe Fiasco made it clear on Sway In The Morning that he, Kanye West, and Pharrell are still on good terms, and that “the fans feel betrayed” by the lack of material from them. He also joked that “the two richest n***as in the group” are the reason why they didn’t keep things going. “P’s eating caviar golden sandwiches, Ye is stitching up two different Rick Owens coats to wear in the shower. I’m trying to corral these two.”
The CRS comments begin at around the 23:20-minute mark.
Then, Lupe Fiasco started to talk about the good old days. “There [was] a lot of fan momentum around [Child Rebel Soldier’s “Us Placers”] as a movement,” he remarked. “We always talked about [the group, but] it kind of fell to the wayside… And then again, n***as get rich and crazy and s**t goes left.” However, Lupe also attributed the group’s enduring legacy to how it’s impacted fellow artists. “That whole time, it’s incubating with people like Tyler [The Creator],” he shared. “One of the talks was like, ‘Yo, we old n***as and rich and doing other s**t. Why don’t we just get the dudes who would be us now, and just give them CRS and let them do it? What if CRS was the hip-hop Exile?’”
Sadly, Lupe Fiasco says that prospect “went nowhere.” This year, he put out a solo song called “SHRINK” that revived Child Rebel Soldier without Kanye West or Pharrell, rapping over a sample of Radiohead’s “Optimistic.” “Radiohead was like, ‘F**k all that,’” Lupe joked about the band’s “biggest cease and desist” against CRS. “I tried,” he concluded about the supergroup. We’ll see if they try again in the future…
Child Rebel Soldier is a lost relic of the 2000s. The name was applied to a supergroup that only worked on two songs. The thing is, the members of the supergroup were so famous that fans continue to ponder what a full album could have sounded like. Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West and Pharrell was a dream lineup for any hip-hop fan, but their different career paths made the prospective album an impossibility. Lupe Fiasco wants to reboot CRS for modern times, but his vision may not be what fans had in mind.
In short, Lupe Fiasco wants to transform the supergroup into a solo venture. He recently talked about Child Rebel Soldier during an interview with Stereogum, and delved into the brand’s potential. He even provided a time table on when fans can expect new CRS music. “I’m gonna reboot CRS in the next six months, maybe next year,” Fiasco stated. “Tyler, [The Creator] has one of the CRS records. But it’s gonna go back to the original energy, which was me rapping over Radiohead beats.” The concept of “original energy” was enlightening for readers, as the rapper detailed how CRS first started.
Lupe Fiasco Wants To Rap Exclusively Over Radiohead Samples
NEW YORK CITY, NY – FEBRUARY 15: Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West attend Y-3 Fall 2009 Collection at Pier 40 on February 15, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by DAVID X. PRUTTING/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Evidently, Lupe Fiasco wanted to rap about the dark side of fame, and Kanye West and Pharrell were so intrigued by the concept they offered the Chicago rapper beats. It snowballed into songs in which all 3 artists rhymed. “Us (Placers)” and “Everybody Noze (Remix)” are the only official CRS releases in which this happened. Fiasco has had a bit of a renaissance in recent years, however, so dusting off one of his biggest “what if” projects makes sense. The rapper’s love for Radiohead is what initially sparked his desire to rhyme about darker subject matter. He conceded, though, that a full-fledged collab with the British band would be difficult.
Instead, Lupe Fiasco wants to turn Child Rebel Soldier into a solo album driven by Radiohead samples. “I’ll just go back to that original [vibe],” he told the outlet. “Just go back and find those dope loops and samples from Radiohead or their solo records. Loop the sh*t up, and make little beats out of it, and crush with some dope ass lyrics.” Fiasco has done just that on fan favorite songs like “The National Anthem” and “Animal Pharm,” so there’s no reason to think he can’t do it now. That said, fans will never get a chance to hear what a three-man CRS album would have sounded like.
Arguably one of hip hop’s greatest supergroup moments was Child Rebel Soldier, consisting of Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and Pharrell Williams. Unfortunately, the trio’s run was short-lived, releasing only two songs and a remix as a group in its three-year duration. Though each carried on to achieve great success following their dissolution, the idea of Child Rebel Soldier still was exciting for fans. Before joining together, each of them had previously worked with one another on various tracks. Kanye featured on Pharrell’s “Number One,” The Neptunes produced Lupe’s “I Gotcha,” and Kanye and Lupe teamed up on “Touch The Sky.” While we did not get much music from them together, the group marked a promising union between three of hip-hop’s most creative and eccentric minds that helped shape the genre. Today, we are looking into a brief history of the promising supergroup that was Child Rebel Soldier.
Child Rebel Soldier first emerged in 2007 with “Us Placers,” their first song as a group. The Lupe Fiasco-produced track was included on Kanye West’s Can’t Tell Me Nothing mixtape that preceded Graduation. Originally intended for a Thom Yorke-inspired mixtape, Lupe sent the beat to Kanye and The Streets, who never responded. Pharrell eventually hopped on the track and Child Rebel Soldier was born. Lupe told BBC News in 2008 that forming the group “was Pharrell’s idea one day in the studio ‘cause we’re all similar. Same likes and same dislikes, same goals and aspirations. So on that level, we wanted to create some music.” Pharrell also came up with the name Child Rebel Soldier.
A Short-Lived Run
Following “Us Placers,” Child Rebel Soldier toyed with the possibility of an album. Lupe Fiasco and Pharrell opened for Kanye West on his 2008 Glow in the Dark Tour. That same year, Pharrell’s band, N.E.R.D. recruited Child Rebel Soldier and Pusha T for the remix of “Everybody Nose.” Rumblings of a potential album continued into 2010. Lupe Fiasco told DJ Green Lantern that Pharrell hit him up about finishing the CRS project, with 4 songs completed.
That same year, CRS’s last song, “Don’t Stop” arrived as part of Kanye West’s “GOOD Friday” series in promotion of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Upon its release, Lupe Fiasco spoke to MTV News about how the song was an older recording and an experiment in pinpointing their group sound: “That song is like a song that we did in the midst of being CRS. When we were actually going to put out an album and just really wanted to test records and see if we should do more records like that, or should do more records like ‘Us Placers.’ We were just trying to figure out what we should do and that was one of the experiments that was bananas.”
Despite positive reception and support for their music, Lupe told MTV that it is the fans are responsible for the materialization of a Child Rebel Soldier album. “If people want it, then we’ll do it. But if the demand is not there, it’ll just be as we get to it,” he said. Lupe also elaborated that he, Kanye, and Pharrell were prioritizing their solo works. “It’s going to take a lot of time to come off our schedules,” he explained. Unfortunately, the Child Rebel Soldier album never came to fruition.
The CRS group is cancelled. Done. Not happening. Stop asking
— CHECKIN’ Out Now! #APTMC (@LupeFiasco) July 25, 2013
You know what. You right.
LUPEND: 100% CANCELLED ROY: 100% CANCELLED COOL 2: 100% CANCELLED SKULLS: TBD DMIZ: IN MASTERING, RELEASE DATE VIA @ThirtyTigers CRS: TBD MIXTAPES: 100% NO MORE WILL BE MADE LOOSIES: SPORADIC via YOUTUBE OR IG
After years and no updates on Child Rebel Soldier, Lupe Fiasco officially declared that “The CRS group is canceled.” “Done. Not happening. Stop Asking,” he said in a 2013 tweet. He later specified in a 2020 tweet that he thinks that Kanye and Pharrell have moved on from the group. He proposed a new idea. “I think a new trio of young MCs/producers should pick up where we left off and do it. CRS re-casted. I’d support that,” he said.
For many years, there had been no developments in the Child Rebel Soldier saga until Lupe Fiasco placed the group album as “TBD” in a 2022 update of all his upcoming releases. Sounding too good to be true, a fan tweeted Lupe for some old CRS music in 2023. Lupe replied with a screenshot of a text conversation between him and Tyler, The Creator, sharing some “rough demo sketches [he] did for CRS.” “Tyler has them,” Lupe said in the latest update about the group’s future. Overall, Child Rebel Soldier was a promising supergroup that never fully materialized but gave fans glimpses of their full potential over the years.
