Lupe Fiasco and Kaelin Ellis Share New Collab EP ‘HOUSE’

Thanks in part to the acute creative inspiration brought on by COVID-19 shutdowns and an inspiringly goal-oriented tweet, Lupe Fiasco fans have a new five-song EP to devour on Friday.

“Everything is manmade, and what’s more dangerous than that?” Virgil Abloh says at the end of EP opener “HOMME MADE,” which—like the entirety of the project—floats through the listener’s brain atop production from Kaelin Ellis.

As studied Lupe fans already know, the producer tweeted about Lupe back in May, ultimately leading to the Grammy winner freestyling over one of his beats before sharing the results mere hours later. From there, the two continued their back-and-forth on Twitter before the complementary collaborations started building into what would later be polished into the HOUSE EP.

The striking cover art is a painting by Peter Gellatly of the famous Glass House. Gellatly, the father of Lupe’s friend Sky, recently died due to the coronavirus and is commemorated in the EP’s liner notes.

“Music colored my father’s life, and so did it mine … The grace of God brought music into my family,” Sky Gellatly says in the liner notes, embedded below. “The love of music from all walks of life kept it there.”

Below, stream HOUSE in full via Apple Music. Abloh also appears on “SHOES,” which references the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.