Lupe Fiasco has shared ‘Shrink’, a previously unreleased Child Rebel Soldier tune that includes a Radiohead sample – check it out below.
‘Shrink’ features a sample of Radiohead’s ‘Optimistic’, taken from ‘Kid A’. The song was written with Child Rebel Soldier (CRS), Lupe Fiasco’s former supergroup with Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. ‘Shrink’, however, does not include Kanye or Pharrell, and instead sees Lupe re-record the track with his vocals.
Listen to ‘Shrink’ below.
It comes after Lupe Fiasco revealed to Stereogum in July that he’s aiming to reboot CRS as a solo project that focuses on him rapping over Radiohead samples, as was originally intended before Kanye West and Pharrell got involved.
Fiasco said of the state of CRS: “People kept putting it on me, and it’s like, ‘Hey, it ain’t me.’ Pharrell is at Louis Vuitton, Ye is in some fucking factory somewhere pumping out socks. So [now], I’m like fuck it, I’m gonna reboot CRS in the next six months, maybe next year but it’s gonna go back to the original energy, which was me rapping over Radiohead beats.”
![](https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/lupe-fiasco-tim-mosen.jpg)
Prior to ‘Shrink’, CRS had released two songs: ‘Us Placers’ in 2007 and ‘Don’t Stop’ in 2010. ‘Us Placers’ saw the group sample Thom Yorke‘s ‘The Eraser’. Lupe Fiasco has also in the past sampled Atoms For Peace‘s ‘Ingenue’ on ‘Animal Pharm’ and Radiohead’s ‘National Anthem’ on ‘National Anthem Freestyle’.
However, ‘Shrink’ won’t be the last bit of CRS music to include samples of Thom Yorke’s projects. He explained to Stereogum: “You can take those records, the ‘National Anthem’ record, ‘Us Placers,’ and ‘Animal Pharm’ as the first three singles. You’ll probably get another five or six. We’ll see.”
Lupe Fiasco recently released his latest album ‘Samurai’ in late June.
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