Since his last album, Food and Liquor, received critical acclaim but few album sales, Lupe will take this time extra measures to avoid any bootlegging pitfalls.

"The timing is gonna be pop, pop, pop," he explained. "There’s gonna be a lot of setup and a lot of preproduction on this album, so it’s gonna be in pieces. But the pieces won’t come together, seriously, until like three weeks before it comes out. We’ll probably record everything in, like, a week. So we’re just gonna get it all together, map it out, have it done to a T, and then go and record. Then fresh from the studio, fresh to mastering ... so it eliminates a lot of time and error that was surrounding."

Aside from changing his marketing and promotion plan, Lupe also hinted at a few more changes. The skateboarding MC said not to expect any high-profile collaborations this time around — like production from the Neptunes or a guest verse from Jay-Z — save perhaps a beat from Kanye West. According to him, his next album "The Cool" will be handled all in-house by his First & Fifteenth Entertainment producers and artists.

One thing the rapper won’t change when it comes time to record, however, is the characters he said he slightly introduced on his debut. He expressed delight that most of his fans didn’t notice certain characters on Food that he plans to bring back throughout The Cool. "It’s gonna be weird," Fiasco said of the idea. "People are gonna see it and be like, ’Wow, ain’t that the dude from this song?’ I’m building concepts now for the album," he continued. "I got the title, and I work top down. ... This album is gonna be a bit more streamlined and a little bit more focused, I guess you could say.

"Not a concept album," he continued. "But I been wrestling with how to make the concept about what I want to make the album about fit but still have enough room where it’s just not a full-on story about somebody else. Where you still get all the — what I think are — necessary ingredients to do a good, good album."