Lupe Fiasco Samples Radiohead, Jay-Z on "Enemy of the State"

Lupe Fiasco celebrated Thanksgiving by unleashing his new mixtape Enemy of the State: A Love Story as a free download. Enemy, the precursor to Fiasco's next album Lasers, finds Lupe taking on a pair of Jay-Z tracks, a Lil Wayne cut and, most notably, Radiohead's Kid A song "The National Anthem." With its menacing bassline and moments of hovering Ondes Martenot, Fiasco goes into full The Cool mode to keep pace with the unorthodox sample. Grab a listen to the song, and the entire mixtape, over on Nah Right.

This isn't the first time Lupe has metered his cadence to the music of Yorke: Fiasco, along with fellow CRS members Kanye West and Pharrell, used the Radiohead frontman's "The Eraser" as the sample for the rap supergroup's "Us Placers," a song Rolling Stone placed on our Top 100 Songs of 2007 list.

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Enemy of the State also features Lupe rapping over backbeats from Slaughterhouse, Timbaland and Clipse, who previously sampled Lupe's "Dumb It Down" on their own Road to Til the Casket Drops mix tape.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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