Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco, is an American rapper, record producer and activist. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor, he performs as the frontman of rock band Japanese Cartoon under his real name. As an entrepreneur, Fiasco is the chief executive officer of 15th Entertainment. Raised in Chicago, Jaco developed an interest in hip hop after disliking the genre for its use of vulgarity and misogyny. After adopting the name Lupe Fiasco and recording songs in his father's basement, 19-year-old Fiasco joined a group called Da Pak; the group disbanded shortly after its inception, Fiasco soon met rapper Jay-Z who helped him sign a record deal with Atlantic Records. In September 2006, Fiasco released his debut album Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor on the label, which received three Grammy nominations, he released his second album, Lupe Fiasco's The Cool, in December 2007. The lead single "Superstar" became his first top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

After a two-year delay, Lasers was released in March 2011 to mixed reviews. His latest album, Drogas Wave, was released in September 2018. In addition to music, Fiasco has pursued other business ventures, including fashion, he runs Righteous Kung-Fu and Trilly & Truly. He has been involved with charitable activities, including the Summit on the Summit expedition, in 2010 he recorded a benefit single for victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Fiasco is noted for his anti-establishment views, which he has expressed in both interviews and his music. Fiasco was born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco on February 16, 1982 in Illinois. Fiasco is of West African descent, one of nine children of Shirley, a gourmet chef, Gregory, an engineer, his father, a member of the Black Panther Party, was a prolific African drummer, karate teacher, operating plant engineer, owner of karate schools and army surplus stores. Fiasco was raised Muslim on the West Side of Chicago on Madison Terrace housing project. At the age of three, Fiasco began taking martial arts classes.

His parents divorced when he was five, he went on to live with his mother, but his father still remained an important part of his life. He described his father's influence over the family by saying, "After school, my father would come and get us and take us out into the world—one day, we're listening to N. W. A, the next day we're listening to Ravi Shankar, the next day, he's teaching us how to shoot an AK-47, the next day, we're at karate class, the next day, we're in Chinatown...". In sixth grade, he went to live with his father full-time in Illinois, his father lived next door to a crack house and taught Fiasco to use guns to defend himself from drug dealers. Despite his unstable upbringing, Fiasco states that he was well-educated as a child, asserting that his parents exposed him to a diverse array of subjects and that reading was encouraged in his household; as a teenager, Fiasco participated in Academic Decathlon competitions. His mother described him by saying, "He was a great spirited child.

Smart, a bit complex. He always had the glasses. Always had a book bag over his shoulder and some type of a writing tablet." Fiasco disliked hip hop music for its use of vulgarity, preferred to listen to jazz. His struggle to learn to play an instrument led him to create poetry instead, which led to his interest in the lyrical aspects of music, he began rapping his poems in the eighth grade, upon hearing Nas' 1996 album, It Was Written, began to pursue hip hop. While attending Thornton Township High School, Fiasco met gang member Bishop G; the two became friends due to their shared interest in music. Fiasco's father allowed him and Bishop to make mixtapes in his basement, the two gained notoriety at the school for their music. However, they were kicked off stage during their first performance because their eclectic musical style was not embraced by the hip hop community. Early in his career, he went by stage names Little Lu tha Underdog. Growing up, Fiasco was given the last part of his first name, by his mother.

"Lupe" is an extension of this nickname. "Fiasco" is a reference to The Firm song "Firm Fiasco". He said of his name, "You know how rappers always have names like MC Terrorist—like they're'terrorizing' other rappers? I knew fiasco meant a great disaster or something like that, but I didn't realize that the person named Fiasco would be the disaster, that you should be calling other MCs fiascos—not yourself...it kind of humbled me in a sense. It taught me like,'Yo, stop rushing, or you're going to have some fiascos.'" When Fiasco was 18, he began creating music as a solo artist in his father's basement though his parents were not keen on having their son be a rapper. He scoured flea markets and secondhand stores, where he was able to find an old mixing board and a record player, stacks of vinyl records, mic stands. At age 19, Fiasco joined a group called Da Pak, influenced by other California gangsta rappers such as Spice 1 and Ice Cube. Da Pak released one single before splitting up. Fiasco described the experience, saying "We had a song out about cocaine and women, I would go to a record store and look at it and think,'What are you doing?'

I felt like a hypocrite. I was acting like this rapper who would never be judged, I had to des

Nouvelle Planète is a non-profit organization founded on Albert Schweitzer’s examples and ethics. Nouvelle Planète grew out of the project to add an extension to the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné; the founder, Willy Randin, former director of the hospital, Maurice Lack, an architect specializing in bioclimatics, proposed a project based on renewable sources of energy. Research was conducted in this direction, but the people in charge of the Albert Schweitzer hospital were not interested by the project. Instead of abandoning their ideas and Randin wanted to develop the appropriate technologies with interested people in other parts of the world. To do this, they founded the Albert Schweitzer Ecological Centre and the Sahel Action of Schweitzer’s Work, Nouvelle Planète, in Switzerland. At the time, Willy Randin was working for a big development agency in Switzerland, he had been able to see the extent to which citizens had the desire to understand the reality of Southern countries, to mobilize themselves in view of backing small projects by establishing direct relations with the beneficiaries.

In 1986, given the success of Sahel Action of Schweitzer’s Work, it was decided to extend activities to Haiti to the Amazon, while continuing with Sahel-based projects with the CEAS. At that point, the name of the organization was changed to Nouvelle Planète. Nouvelle Planète is based on the ethics of Albert Schweitzer, who said: I am life wanting to live with life that wants to live; this ethical position implies a respect for all forms of life inasmuch. Nouvelle Planète embraces political and religious neutrality, it works with groups in the South and the North, starting from their own initiatives, from their knowledge and their know-how. The organization feels that the problems of human development and ecology have never been worse, the gap between rich and poor countries has never been greater, misunderstanding of these problems is growing. People in northern countries have difficulty mobilizing themselves and demonstrating solidarity with those in need. People who are prepared to invest time, skills or money do not know how to go about it.

Nouvelle Planète website

Olive Mary Shapley was a British radio producer and broadcaster. As an undergraduate at St Hugh's College, Oxford from 1929 she soon met her lifelong friend Barbara Betts, the future Labour politician Barbara Castle. After a brief unhappy period working for the Workers' Educational Association and teaching at several schools, she joined the BBC in 1934 as an organiser of Children's Hour programming in Manchester, but soon developed an interest in documentary features as an assistant producer; this was not without its problems. During a live programme called Men Talking, Shapley had to use placards requesting Durham miners "not say bugger or bloody", one incident of several which persuaded BBC Director General Sir John Reith to insist on broadcasts being scripted. Using a recording van, weighing "seven tons when loaded", Shapley recorded actuality, innovative at the time, but the broadcast of swear words could now be avoided, she thought a claim by Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff that she was an innovator as being expressed in "very flattering terms".

With Joan Littlewood in 1939 she created The Classic Soil which compared the social conditions of the day with those observed a century earlier by Friedrich Engels. Decades Shapley thought it "probably the most unfair and biased programme put out by the BBC". Other programmes from this period included the features Steel and Wool. In 1939, Shapley went freelance after her marriage to John Salt, the BBC's programme director in the North region. Salt, the BBC's North America assistant director and director, died on 26 December 1947. Following the war, Shapley became a regular presenter of Woman's Hour, a programme with which she was associated for over twenty years, producing the programme between 1949 and 1953. Meanwhile, she began to develop a career as a presenter in television. In 1959 she took the six-week BBC television training course, enabling her to become a producer in the newer medium. Though based in Manchester again, from where she broadcast on television, she commuted to London for some years.

In the mid-1960s, her Manchester home became a refuge for single mothers and in the late 1970s, for the Vietnamese boat people. Olive Shapley published her autobiography, Broadcasting a Life, in 1996. Coal, broadcast 17 November 1938, BBC Archive site We Have Been Evacuated, documentary recorded in September 1939 presented and produced by Olive Shapley, BBC Archive site Woman's Hour, 9 April 2010