Watch: Lupe Fiasco Recalls A Time When L.A. Reid Told Kanye West To ‘Stick to Making Beats’

Lupe Fiasco Recalls A Time When L.A. Reid Told Kanye West To ‘Stick to Making Beats’ A new interview with The Coda Collection, sees Lupe Fiasco recall a time in which L.A. Reid advised Kanye West to stay behind the scenes as a producer rather than segueing from that position into rapping.

A recent interview, conduced by Andrew Barber of Fake Shore Drive sees Fiasco remember a pre-fame West, and says that seeing his fellow Chicago rapper struggle is why he’ll always be in his corner. He says that he and West first met in 2000, a short period after Kanye served as the producer for Beanie Sigel’s debut album “The Truth,” which cemented West’s first credit for the Roc-A-Fella label. Lupe added that West would visit him to get his opinion on verses, and would also serve as a producer for some of Lupe’s songs. 

Lupe went ahead to provide an anecdote about the advice that would’ve absolutely altered music history had it been heeded. 

“We brought ‘Ye into Arista to showcase for L.A. Reid before Roc-A-Fella. Stack Bundles was sitting there… imagine it’s me, Stack Bundles, Kanye, and L.A. Reid in the office,” said Lupe. “When [Kanye] stopped [rapping], L.A. was like, ‘Yo you should stick to making music, stick to making beats.’ So that’s why I always honor Ye, no matter how crazy he goes. I’ve seen that man struggle.”Lupe continued saying that there was one point where he was set to sign to Roc-A-Fella before Kanye. 

In an unexpected turn of event, Kanye’s career would explode in 2004 with the release of The College Dropout, further sustaining tons of momentum with Late Registration in 2005. Since then a lot has transpired in his life that isn’t really necessary to sum up all of it in one post. Lupe, featured on Late Registration album via “Touch the Sky,” after which he put out his own debut album in 2006.  

Be sure to watch the entire interview which has been broken down into eight parts, here. (Lupe talk about the string of Kanye-related events at 0:32):