Yes! Yes! Yes! Guess Who's On Third... it's Lupe Fiasco! Lupe was the third performer at Memorial Stadium on Monday, and those familiar with his work know the opening sentence of this post as Lupe's first lines from his verse on the song Touch the Sky by Kanye West. I remember back in early 2006 watching the video for Touch the Sky and thinking that Lupe Fiasco was one lucky guy to be featured on a song by a superstar like Kanye West. From that time on, Lupe's career has taken off and is now pretty much "sky high." In June of 2006, Lupe released the song Kick, Push which gave him crossover appeal to the skateboarding community.Then two weeks before Lupe dropped his first album, Food and Liquor, Kanye brought out Lupe during Kanye's Bumbershoot performance at Memorial Stadium. When Lupe returned to the Bumbershoot stage on Monday he really was "looking extra fly" — Lupe wore all white (except for his black aviator shades) with a polo shirt and the requisite popped collar. He played Kick, Push (see video) to the delight of all the fans, and to my delight he performed a rousing rendition of the song Daydreamin.

Lupe brought out double threat rapper and singer Gemini to perform a couple of songs, and one of the songs was so good that I had to wonder if it might be Gemini who continues the cycle and returns to Bumbershoot next year as the headliner. There were two fairly interesting moments worth mentioning. The first occurred when Lupe made an anti-Bush statement and the crowd cheered louder for that line than just about everything else in Lupe's set. Still influenced by last night's local hip-hop moment, I thought about what the crowd reaction would have been if event planners could have finagled getting local rapper Geologic AKA Prometheus Brown up there to collaborate with Lupe on Kick, Push (Prometheus Brown has a variation of Kick, Push called Kick, Bush (Out) up on his myspace). The second was when Lupe played the song Us Placers which features Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, who, together with Lupe, are rumored to make up the super group CRS. At other acts I attended, crowd reaction diminished noticeably whenever an artist performed new material. However, judging by the fan reaction to Us Placers, it seemed like a lot of fans were already familiar with the song. The song was released, not on an LP, but as part of Kanye's Can't Tell Me Nothing mixtape. Perhaps the enthusiasm for Us Placers indicates how the internet has really increased the power of the mixtape as a marketing tool. Like the crowd, I was enthusiastic to hear Us Placers, but the song is kind of lacking without live verses from the other superstars. I couldn't stay mad for too long though $#8212; I got to see another super group, Wu-Tang Clan later that night.

Kate Carosino