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When Lupe Fiasco released his mixtape Enemy of the State on Thanksgiving Day 2009, while in the mix of label drama with Atlantic around the release of Lasers, he announced the complimentary mixtape Friend of the People would come out that Christmas, but was set aside for his Mount Kilimanjaro voyage to raise awareness of the global water crisis, in which he successfully completed.

Lupe would go on to release it in Thanksgiving Day 2011, months after the release of Lasers. While Enemy of the State sae Lupe spitting over beats from Hov, Diddy, Lil Wayne, Slaughterhouse, The Clipse and Travis Porter, he switched it up on Frien of the People spitting over M83, Justice, John Coltrane, Ellie Goulding and Skrillex.

Consequnce of Sound said: While he doesn’t nail it in each track, Lupe Fiasco’s daring enough to explore realms your regular chain-swinging rapper is not. Who else out there could get away with both an M83 sample (“The End of the World!”) and a John Coltrane sample (“Life, Death and Love from San Francisco”) and pull it off?

Friend of the People included the classic barfest SLR and the creative Double Burger with Cheese where he references a lot of the hood movies he grew up on.