Lupe Fiasco Says Atlantic Bought the "Kick, Push" Sample So They Could Own His Track

Lupe Fiasco has never shied away from discussing his distate for his former record label, Atlantic Records. Back in 2014 he famously said he "couldn't wait" to get out of his contract, eventually dropping his last project with the label, Tetsuo & Youth, the following year. In an Instagram Live stream with Joe Budden, Lupe opened up about his experiences with Atlantic even further, detailing a bizarre story on how they delayed the release of his breakthrough single "Kick, Push."

He said that some of the team at Atlantic had "actively slowed down" the record because they didn't entirely own the rights, prompting a particuarly sneaky move on their part. The beat for the track is built around a sample of Filipina singer Celeste Legaspi's 1982 song "Bolero Medley," so Atlantic allegedly tracked her down to buy the rights to that track so they could get the rights to "Kick, Push."

"You know what they did? They flew down to the Philippines to find the woman who we sampled the record from," he explained. "And bought the entire record from her. They actually own the song 'Kick, Push' is sampled from. That's what they did."