by Jon Blistein. N.Y. | June 09, 2011 5:10 EDT
Atlantic
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Lupe Fiasco caused a stir this week when he called President Barack Obama a terrorist during an appearance on CBS' "What's Trending." His exact words? "To me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America."
Billboard.com's The Juice has since caught up with the Chicago rapper to discuss the controversial interview, and it appears he's standing by his statement. "I've got nothing to clarify. It's Obama and the U.S. government," Lupe said, echoing his comments to CBS. "[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," he continued. "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."
Elaborating on another point from the interview that's raised ire -- that he doesn't vote in elections -- Lupe said his reasoning is simple. "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... You have to educate the populace -- the masses, the voters, the people who don't vote, the people who pay taxes."
"You have educate the masses to exactly what their tax dollars are going to pay for," Lupe continues. "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."
Since his controversial interview, Lupe has spent much of the week brushing off criticism via Twitter. "The Morning Hate...Ready...Set....Go...," he tweeted today (June 9), in addition to retweeting several negative comments. After posting one in particular that read, "If President Barack Obama is the "biggest terriost to America" @lupefiasco is the "biggest terriost to the hopes of Black people," he wrote, "That is by far the best negative thing I've ever seen/heard someone say/write about me ever!!!"
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