Lupe Fiasco is done with features. In fact, he never liked hopping on other emcees' tracks in the first place.
Asthe Source points out, when one fan prodded the “Superstar” rapper about collaborating with Nas, he drew a line in the sand: he will never do another feature ever again. “Lol I don’t like doing features and I’ve done all the features I wanted to do it’s done, it’s done, it’s done,” he tweeted.
This is no knock to Nas, whose Illmatic album Lupe calls a “fundamental & foundational element of hip hop culture.” He’s simply no fan of doing features.
Lupe reminds fans he never wanted to be included on Kanye’s “Touch the Sky” off 2005's Late Registration, one of his most famous collabs to date. He’s mentioned this in the past, noting that his business partner Chill convinced him to do it. “I didn’t even wanna do ‘Touch The Sky.’ I didn’t wanna do that. That wasn’t my piece,” he said back in 2014. “It was like, ‘I’m over here, I don’t do that.’ My partner was like, ‘Nah, you gotta trust me. You gotta do this.’”
The conversation about features launched a series of tweets, where Lupe listed his favorite rappers of all time. JAY-Z takes the crown, but Nas, Biggie Smalls, Eminem, Prodigy, Busta Rhymes, André 3000, Jay Electronica, and a few more are included. He also points to Yasiin Bey, Talib Kweli, and Dead Prez as major influences. Some of today’s chart topping rappers, like Ye, Kendrick, and Drake, get honorable mentions, but aren’t on Lupe’s GOAT list.