Despite the more harrowing racial depictions chronicled throughout Food & Liquor, perhaps the most digestible theme comes from the album’s biggest hit. “Kick Push” narrates a young man’s journey through life as a skateboarding fan, an activity not always discussed in the black community. The young man was “labeled a misfit, a bandit” due to his love of skating, yet near the track’s end, he finds both love and friendship with other black individuals who enjoy it just as much.

Especially with the invention of social media allowing like-minded individuals with similar tastes to connect both on and offline, we’re seeing a lot more individuality and acceptance of interests that aren’t highlighted all that often in the media, especially in the black community. For instance, Blerdcon is a three-day festival in Arlington, Va. that began in 2017 which celebrates black nerd culture, from gaming tournaments to cosplay. It aims to be inclusive, inviting members of the LGBTQIA and disabled communities to participate.

“I’ve never found [Lupe] to be someone who really wants to spend time talking about superficial things,” Anderson explains. “Some of the superficial stuff [in the album] are things that are left-field for hip hop, like Japanese culture and anime and things like that.”

In 2006, Lupe hoped for a brighter future away from mainstream influence, evident by the song “The Instrumental,” which tackles the American obsession with television and media. As we know in 2019, the infatuation has shifted to the Internet and social media, however, the lyrics still ring true. Television, technology and media are dismantling individuality through streamlining popular material (albeit unintentionally).

The Los Angeles Times published a report from Nielsen Media Research in September 2006 which concluded that the average American watched about eight hours and 14 minutes of television a day, up three minutes from the year before. While many believed that the innovation of Internet video platforms such as YouTube would abolish the amount of time people spent in front of the television, these stats proved those notions wrong. However, since social media has provided access to the world at the palm of our hands, phones have become commonplace.

Fiasco believes that it’s important to pay attention to things that keep us whole and self-aware, especially since in the end, people who give in to mainstream pressure can’t take the clout with them.

“You’ll always have a hurt soul that will never get healed, no matter what the fuck song you put on, no matter how many Instagram photos you take,” he preached while at the Red Bull Music Festival. “It ain’t gonna matter unless you activate and militate towards a goal, based on the mastery of the individual things you bring forth, with your own two hands… that is the key.”

While he’s coy on his beliefs regarding the album’s longstanding legacy, Lupe Fiasco’s approach to storytelling helped to open the door for several conscious emcees in the late 2000s and 2010s. Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Kendrick Lamar mused about his own experiences as a black man in Compton, California on the opus To Pimp A Butterfly. Southern spitter Big K.R.I.T. uses his platform and his sincere production and writing prowess to draw attention to larger topics in life and music, demonstrated in tracks like “The Vent” and “Voices.” Whether or not these acts were directly impacted by Fiasco’s method is up for debate. However, the impact and implications of Food & Liquor 14 years after its initial release is groundbreaking to say the least.

Hip-hop artists who opt to shed light on the world outside of the bling, cars and fame have carved out a lane of their own, and people have taken notice. Fiasco’s awareness of the world around him throughout his musical catalogue left behind an indelible stamp, thanks to content that is still good to the last drop.

“I just think that [the album] was such a product of the time,” Anderson says. “That album to me is so mid-2000s, and it was so different from the non-commercial radio hip-hop.”

“This album is merely motivation, it’s not the blueprint,” Fiasco noted during the end of his time at the Red Bull Music Fest. “It ain’t got the answers, it’s flawed, it’s imperfect… But it’s a fucking try. Hopefully a try that pushed some of you all in the right direction.”