Lupe Fiasco High School Graduation Rant: 'Food and Liquor' Rapper Bashes Chicago Public Schools In Speech

Lupe  Fiasco may be looking for new alternatives to reach people with his message (since his last album received reviews like "Fiasco turns Food & Liquor II into one long tirade -- everything sucks and no one's going to fix it"). His new medium? High school graduation speeches. The rapper was asked to attend a celebration of black high school graduates in Chicago, where he proceeded to drop some truthbombs, according to the Sun-Times.

"Transition to manhood is the most important thing that's going on right now. The caps and the gowns and your tassels and your honorary blah blah blahs don't mean nothing. That's just dress. That's just some clothes. Meaningless clothes, too, because they have no real purpose in life. They don't keep you warm. What do they do? They just represent to someone else that you've achieved something. But then when you look back at it, what have you achieved?" 

The rapper claimed that manhood is something that the grads have to strive for saying "for young black men . . . it is one the last things that we have . . . and one of the last things that we can control. Manhood is connected to humanity." 

He also took time to bash Chicago's public school system (which Fiasco and all the men gathered are a product of).

"Congratulations, you have graduated from one of the most terrible, substandard school systems in the entire world. You have just spent the last . . . 12 years receiving one of the worst educations on earth. You are at least four, five steps behind people in other countries that are younger than you," said Fiasco.

Phillip Jackson, whose group organized the event, told the Sun-Times that he saw nothing wrong with Fiasco's speech.

"He gave the young people their first real dose of reality," said Jackson adding that the young men were "about to enter into a new reality, and that new reality is a world that is traditionally not kind to black men."

Fiasco pledged $100 for every graduate in attendance.

What do you think of Lupe Fiasco's high school graduation rant?

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