After recently releasing his new single "Around My Way (Freedom Ain't Free)," which samples Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s classic track "T.R.O.Y.," Pete Rock took to Twitter to express his discontentment with Lupe utilizing the instrumentals. Shortly after that, it was then rumored that the two had reconciled their differences, but apparently that is not what happened. Fiasco spoke with MTV's Sway earlier today, where he said that the issue has yet to be resolved and that Rock was not supposed to reveal their plans of working together. Check out a bit of what Lupe had to say below.

"We wanted to rap over the original. The original music. We were trying to get the original files, the original sound, you couldn’t find that shit no where. When we rapped over the original instrumental, we sent it to go get cleared, Warner Chappell tells us – now this is the publishing company – they tell us, ‘You can’t clear that. That is unclearable. They have portions of that song that have never been cleared ever.’ You have to remake, right? You have to remake it. These are the people that are supposed to clear it, and they telling us we gotta remake it. We being told from Pete Rock that we got his blessing to go rock with it."

"Then he comes on Twitter the day after the joint released, on the same day it is released, and bodies me like that? And my team? Bodies my crew like that? And just shits on us like that? That’s foul. And then when we got on the phone, we didn’t have a conversation. We didn’t go on the phone, ‘Oh, I love you Pete.’ At the end of the day, I was hot. My crew was hot. The people who put it together was hot. The record company was hot. He wasn’t just on the phone with me; he was on the phone with six people. Like Pete what’s wrong with you? We are trying to pay homage to you."

Source: Rap Radar

Pete Rock's reaction to the sample work on Lupe Fiasco's new single “Around My Way (Freedom Ain't Free)“ has been the talk of the past 48 hours. Now, both men seem to have reconciled via phone last night as a couple of tweets indicate.

Lupe Fiasco

"Shout to the Friends&Family for bringing some internal closure to this...all g on this side Pete...Big Chuck whaddup... #MyGodFoRealListen"

Pete Rock:

"I just got off da phone lupe, we worked out our differences and we bout to get it in. Gonna be epic and we gonna give Troy and hev the proper respect they deserve and make history with lupe."

All is well that ends well.

Following the debut of his new single "Around My Way (Freedom Ain’t Free)" earlier today, Lupe held a conference call with Atlantic Records which was moderated by DJ Whoo Kid. The song samples Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s "T.R.O.Y.," but Pete Rock did not take the sampling in a good way. The famed producer took it to Twitter to communicate his discontent with the song.

"No disrespect to lupe fiasco and i like him alot but TROY should be left alone. Feel so violated,the beat is next to my heart and was made... Outta anguish and pain. When it's like that it should not be touched by no one!" he wrote. "It's so hard for folks to make original music, I possess that, but these dudes are scared of that and this is supposed to be HIP HOP?

"Man I'm a lupe fan and everything but TROY was my homie man. I think about him and Hev every fucking day!!!! Smh," he continued. "Who ever Re-created that didn't do a good job @ all. #nohate."

"This business can be so lame, sometimes I make beats blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back and still these cats can't be original to," he wrote. "So untalented and unoriginal. Makes me feel like I'm truly the best that ever did it. Yo hev and t-Roy I love and miss da shit outta y'all."

Accordingly, Lupe discussed the controversial sample but also delved into Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album Part I and Part II. The first installment will not host any rap features but only guests providing hooks. The tentative release date for the first is September 26 with the second part to be released a little bit later. Read excerpts below.

On the Pete Rock sample in “Freedom Ain’t Free”:
“All the credit goes to my partner and manager Chill, he just felt like it was time to bring back a joint… Go back and take one of the iconic records of Hip Hop and put a new spin on it and put it back out there. I spit on it a couple times before, some mixtape stuff back in the day, Chill felt it needed a bigger look than that.”

Jay-Z and other features on the new album:
“It’s Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album Part I. Part I, which “Freedom Ain’t Free” is the single off of, is coming in the next few months. It really ain’t got no features on there. It got a few people on the hooks and stuff like that, but no other real features other than myself. But that’s part one. It’s a double album. We’re probably 80% finished with part 2, which is going to come out a little later. It’s not finalized. You don’t know who’s going to be on it… Part 1 is done and there ain’t gonna be any features on there, but part 2, it maybe somebody coming at the last inning to drop a verse. We’ll see.”

The New Album As An Interpretation of America:
“The album is meant to be my interpretation of America. Politics, society, religion, class, race, food, all across the board. It was only right that we had to have a song that was a collage of that so people got it from the door that all these different things, topics that make up America, that make us Americans, the things that influence us and the things that we influence. You needed that first record to be the embodiment of that whole piece, the whole direction that we’re going in. This record is a collage, but it’s a more like an introduction. As you get into the album, as we release new records, and hopefully we’ll release the album in a few months, you’ll see that we focus on particular issues on particular songs. We will expand on something that may have came up in the second verse of “Freedom Ain’t Free”. There will be a whole song that speaks about this particular relationship in American society, or this particular phenomenon in American society, so people can get a good direction of where the album is going. You get it all in the first joint. But it’s not necessarily angry. The whole record’s not angry. It’s not coming from an angry place, it’s coming from a serious place.”

Making People Change Through His Music:
“Over the past couple years, in the midst of being on tours and doing L.A.S.E.R.S. and doing all that kind of rapper, professional stuff, I’m a human being too. You study, read, hear different people speak, come under the tutelage of certain people, and expand your mind. That’s nothing to do with music, or trying to make money later on, just for me personally. You start to come up and start to realize certain things, which are just gonna be what they are. It’s just human nature. We’re pre-conditioned a certain way, conditioned to act a certain way, conditioned to consume, and walk, and talk a certain way. There’s a lot of things that we may personally hate, but we professionally support. We may hate that the environment is being destroyed. We may want our kids to have a certain environment, but we don’t buy Prius’. We’ll go buy the muscle car that will spit out all the oil, and damage and destroy the environment and what have you. We don’t necessarily see the connection of what we actually do and how it effects the rest of the world. For me, I’m not even on that anymore. I’m not even trying to get you to change anymore… There’s people who don’t want to get beat over the head all day with lyrics and crazy wordplay and metaphors. There’s people that just want to sit down and listen to music for what it is, and not feel like they’re taking SAT’s every time they come to a show.”

Connection to B.o.B., Pharrell, Kanye West, and fascination with space:
“It’s just a mode. There’s a certain things, you look at them in the sky.. It all depends on where you come from. The album cover for my first album, Food & Liquor, where I’m floating and got all the stuff around me, It ain’t that deep. That album cover came straight from a comic book. I was looking at a comic book that I had as a little kid and was like, ‘I want my first album cover to be like that, so there you have it.’ It’s not that deep. There’s definitely some things though in the music that’s less about me trying to tell you something brand new, but moreso trying to reinforce something that we already know. We already know we’re being watched or controlled in some way or another.”

After receiving the cover art as well as getting an audio snippet, Lupe delivers the full drop to "Around My Way (Freedom Ain't Free)." The heavily sampled cut is an undeniably smooth delivery, which expectantly highlights the political artist speaking on some heavy matters. Regardless, Lupe's flow is on point, but we have a feeling that some people will not be too happy with the reworking. Do you think he did it justice? Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album comes later this year.

After presenting the official artwork for his new single "Around My Way (Freedom Ain't Free)," Lupe Fiasco delivers a much too short snippet of the tune. The Pete Rock-sampled cut also serves as the first single off of Lupe's much anticipated Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album double LP. Tune in below and expect the full version to drop real soon.

With Lupe Fiasco confirming last week that his upcoming Food & Liquor 2: The Great American Rap Album will be a double-disc, he also continues to hold true to his announcement about fans receiving a new single on May 22. The first single from Lu's forthcoming album will be titled "Around My Way (Freedom Ain't Free)," and based on the artistic bar-coded cover and title, it looks like we're getting the old political Lupe on this one. Not much more information was made available about the track, so we'll just have to wait until next week's release of it to find out more.

Big news from Lupe Fiasco come along our way today. In a conversation with fuse during yesterday's Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis, the usually secretive emcee has unveiled some information on the much-speculated Food & Liquor 2 offering. Lupe confirms that his fourth studio album will be a double LP and also announces its first single which will arrive May 22. In addition, one of the tracks will be called "Form Follows Function."

Looks like we get to keep Lupe Fiasco's name in the news as his featured track with Bassnectar "Vava Voom" has just received some visual love. After pleasing many of his fans with the announcement of his completion of Food & Liquor 2, Lupe hooks up with California DJ-producer Bassnectar and give fans a tripped out video for their hip-hop meets dubstep experimental track. Directed by Joey Garfield/Ghost Robot, the video is one non-stop hypnotic ride. The song is featured on Bassnectar's Vava Voom LP, which also released today, and can be fully streamed and/or purchased by clicking here. Enjoy!

Source: Rolling Stone

Lupe Fiasco has turned to social media to inform fans that he has completely recorded and turned in his upcoming album Food & Liquor 2: Great American Rap Album Pt. 1. He also shared via Twitter that he has previewed his followup album to Lasers for Atlantic Records in New York at a listening session. While Lasers was fell victim to delays from its original release date, Lu says that the only thing that could keep Food & Liquor 2 from releasing would be whether or not it's going to be a double-disc album. Lupe is aiming to have the album release sometime in July, so we'll have to wait and see what comes of it in the future.

This year is slowly but surely turning G.O.O.D. After the announcement of the new single "Mercy," and the new Khaled-assisted "Theraflu" by Kanye West, Florida's production duo Urban Noize sends out a first taste of their upcoming project Mr. West. Below you can stream their interpretation of Yeezy and Lupe Fiasco's epic "Touch the Sky" song and added the soothing vocals of Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine. Enjoy.