Lupe Fiasco dropped the first visuals from last year’s Drogas Wave, Fiasco’s seventh studio album, which was a follow up to 2017’s Drogas Light. Since then, Fiasco has left Atlantic Records and thus spawning new material in the form of his latest music video for “Cripple.”

The video, shot in black and white, has the Chicago-native conscience rapper lyrically spitting rhymes all while walking the streets of New York. This seems fitting as Fiasco is known for being a lyrical virtuoso. Always challenging himself, he has taken some bold risks as well as being politically outspoken with his views. The look and feel to the latest music video for “Cripple” seems to spark an essence of taking it back to hip hop’s purest form. What better way to celebrate the sentiment then highlighting some thought-provoking lyrics, setting them in the backdrop where most consider the Mecca of the hip hop music genre to be, New York City. The jazz-infused beat for “Cripple” was produced by Soundtrakk and the music video was directed by Vann Fulfs.

According to the latest Vibe article on Fiasco, the artist has been in talks about releasing visuals from last year’s, Drogas Wave earlier this year. Fiasco went in-depth behind the concept of his seventh studio album saying:

“DROGAS Wave is based on a story about a group of slaves that jumped off of a slave ship transporting them from Africa,” Fiasco said while explaining the idea behind his seventh studio album, released last September. “The slaves did not drown, and instead somehow managed to live under the sea. They spent the rest of their underwater existence sinking slave ships. ‘Drogas’ is the Spanish word for drugs. I made it an acronym which stands for ‘Don’t Ruin Us God Said.’”

Although the music video for “Cripple” was released this past Friday, this comes just shy of a year since the September 2018 release of Drogas Wave. The vibe article goes on to explain that since Fiasco is now an independent artist he is working on his own terms, “Earlier this year he released the video for an unreleased song called “Run Game,” and he’s also been dropping episodes of Beat N Path, a docu-series that sees him traveling to Hong Kong to pursue elevation in his martial arts training.”

According to an NME article, the follow up to Drogas Wave will be an album titled Skulls the final entry to the planned Drogas trilogy that”‘…Lupe Fiasco is planning to release on his own label, 1st & 15th/Thirty Tigers, after parting ways with Atlantic Records.”

To listen to “Cripple” stream the music video below, via YouTube.