Lupe Fiasco Aimed To Pull Back Curtain With 'Show Goes On' Video

Lupe Fiasco ran into a few road blocks while he was putting together his third studio album, Lasers. From his manager's imprisonment to a public spat with his record label, the Chicago rapper had a lot to reflect on.

So when he fully launched the project — after a fan-fueled protest pushing for an officially release date — he led off with the string-heavy "The Show Goes On," an introspective number that finds the Chicago rapper narrating his plight and highlighting his eventual resolve against it.

It only makes sense that the video matches the track with its emphasis on Lupe Fiasco the man over the Lupe the MC.

"This one seemed fitting in the sense that [the director] wanted to tell the story about what goes on behind the scenes, which, I think, was so much a part of Lasers, the album," he told on Monday (March 7). "Why it is, how it's manifested, the songs on there, all have these massive amounts of story lines of behind the scenes. This is what happened; this is what happened with this record. Even 'The Show Goes On' has a story to it that some people, when they hear it in its completion, their jaws drop."

In the clip, directed by Hiro Murai, Lupe is shown making his way from his dressing room to a performance area. It's symbolic gesture, meant to illuminate all of the mechanisms involved in getting the star to the stage. Fiasco told us the visual strikes a chord that resonates throughout the album.

"We already know what the performance is, we already know [who] you are, let's give it a little more of a personal feel, so we can see the route taken behind the scenes, literally, from the dressing room to the stage," he explained of Murai's approach to the clip. "We already know what is onstage. We already know what the public life is, so let's see what goes on behind the scenes. And [the video] speaks to a lot of the stuff on the album, beyond 'The Show Goes On.' "

What do you think of Lupe's video for "The Show Goes On"? Tell us in the comments!