Charles “Chill” Patton, Lupe Fiasco's longtime business partner and co-founder with Fiasco of the label 1st & 15th Entertainment, has a ton of unreleased music in his vaults, dating back to the label's founding in 2001. Now, Patton has decided to share some of those gems with the world via his upcoming “Chill's Spotlight” playlist. The first release from that project is a song by a young Lupe, “Run Game.”
Fiasco told Complex that he's happy the track, which was recorded well before he hit stardom with his debut album Food & Liquor, is out there in the world.
“We recorded this single back when I was just starting out,” he said. “Chill was heavily involved in the early days of my career, and I’m glad he’s highlighting it with this new project.”
Patton shared how the song came about.
“I first started working with Lupe when he was about 17, I had just gotten off the Up in Smoke Tour and he was hanging with some cats I knew,” he explained. “I heard Lu in the studio and it was some of the hottest shit I ever heard. I immediately grabbed him and put him in some cyphers, and everything took off from there.”
“We recorded ‘Run Game’ a little later,” Chill continued. “Right now I’m working on some new projects, and whenever I work on something new I look back for inspiration. When I rediscovered this track, I knew we had to release it from the vault for the 'Chill’s Spotlight’ playlist. Each month we’ll be dropping more tracks from Lupe and other F&F-affiliated artists as part of 'Chill’s Spotlight,’ so stay tuned for more dope music that hasn’t been heard before.”
“Run Game” comes with a video, which you can see above. The clip finds a teenage Lupe surrogate gaining an intriguing, but ultimately horrifying, glimpse of future rap stardom.
