The music Fiasco has created since joining MIT helps to promote the school’s percent-for-art program, which commissions new permanent art every time there’s a major campus construction project.

“Once it’s given to the curators, and they decide where to kind of put and place, you realize that, ‘Oh, there’s a wider story that’s being told on campus, a very quiet story, but big and loud,” he explained.

Fiasco songs like “Funhouse Flavor” and “Molecule Flavor” are inspired by sculptures on MIT’s campus by sculptors such as Alexander Calder. Lupe hosted his first viewing alongside the MIT Jazz Ensemble earlier this month. Fiasco was also inspired by impressionist painters like Monet and Cezanne, who would paint the same scenes over and over, but in different settings and contexts like varied times of day.

“You don’t need to be the same as everybody else to keep up,” Fiasco says. “You just need to be your asymmetrical self.”

Lupe Fiasco’s forays into higher education aren’t limited to MIT. Back in January, he announced via Instagram that he would be a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

“Thrilled to share that I’ll be joining the faculty at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in fall 2025 as a distinguished visiting professor, teaching rap as part of the groundbreaking new four-year hip-hop degree program,” Lupe wrote, adding that the program is led by Wendel Patrick, who was previously a Nasir Jones hip-hop fellow at the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute at Harvard.

“The Peabody Institute is one of the oldest music conservatories in America,” he continued. “World-renowned for its rigorous training and for producing some of the world’s greatest musicians, and I’m honored to contribute to this legacy doing what I love most, rap.”