Meh, Lasers is trash and the songs that Atlantic wanted to push were pop soft but they did numbers. The thing is tho, the songs that they wanted him to use would have blew up. Nothing on you and I believe Airplanes were Lupe's songs until he was like no, and they moved on and gave them to B.o.B.
Lupe was coming off of 2 highly rated and critically acclaimed albums with F&L and The Cool. Had he played the game with Atlantic and went along with that, who knows how big he is right now. But on the flip side... look at B.o.B's career since that? They basically made him their pop happy go lucky rapper for years and now when you hear his music it's clear that that shyt took a toll on him.
Yeah but the difference between lupe fiasco and B.o.B. is vast.
B.o.B. is cool but IMO he's on that Charles hamilton/Childish Gambino/Chance The Rapper tier of rapping.
Competent enough to put a song together but not an exemplary talent putting together great albums.
B.O.B. admitted himself that he was focused on getting to the money so he took whatever Atlantic was
sure was going to do well on radio. And for a while that worked however when you can't
or won't do much outside of that, your career is guaranteed to falter.
Lupe already shown that he could put albums together but his ego from what I gather
got in the way of his label doing their job, which is helping to keep him in the spotlight and
move records. He was nice enough to score some hits on his own but in comparison to
Kendrick, he couldn't and hasn't pumped out singles that can appeal to a wide group of people
since his first two albums.
I'm pretty certain that if Lupe fiasco could've moved a million records once or twice
the people above him wouldn't have said shyt because they're getting their money back
a couple times over at that point.
Kendrick did that and kept his artistic integrity, that's tough to do and something to be lauded.
So yeah, Interscope might be all for him putting out whatever he wants on his albums to an extent when they know they are caking more off him. There was a clear difference in the rollout to TPAB and DAMN tho, and there were clear direction changes made and just listening to that album it's clear that the label wanted him to drop something that would be more trendy and catchy than TPAB was.
That's the thing though, I don't believe that was a "label decision".
Kendrick Lamar from the jump has kinda clowned underground pretension
and judging by what he says on his records and who worked with he's thus far he clearly has no
issue with trying to get a single to hit or writing something more "accessible".
He'll gladly work with 2Chainz or Travis Scott then hop on a song with Jay Electronica.
And if I'm being real nothing on DAMN is really that far from TPAB or GKMC, the singles fall in line with
what he already did on those albums. And the concepts pertaining to his views on violence or god or
any of that have been there since the Kendrick Lamar LP and Overdose.
Those aren't "direction changes", that's doing what you've been doing and what he's been doing
has been working out.
People forget that TPAB Ultimately moved at least a million units same with GKMC and DAMN
while still being thematically heavy in comparison to alotta cats.
Interscope likely isn't looking to jump and screw that up so I have a hard time believing some
interscope tents pumped out some hits for Kendrick like atlantic had to do with B.O.B. and Lupe fiasco.
Lupe ain’t built for it
but I can dream right ? 
?
. I don't want to hear about how Lupe never comprimised,and there was a clear direction change with Lasers but they label said they had nothing to do with that
