Lupe Fiasco and Orlando producer Kaelin Ellis recently released their collaborative EP HOUSE via 1st & 15th / Thirty Tiger. The EP came together by chance — on May 5th, Lupe was tagged on Twitter in the replies of a Tweet from Kaelin Ellis, a rising producer who had been posting clips of himself creating beats in lockdown. Reading "Get this to @LupeFiasco somehow,” Lupe listened, liked the beat, screen recorded Kaelin's video, dropped it in GarageBand, freestyled over the beat, exported it in Quicktime, then Tweeted the song just a few hours after he first saw the mention.

The two then began interacting over Twitter, Kaelin sending beats to Lupe, who rapped over the tracks he liked. A few weeks later they had a 5 song EP titled HOUSE, referencing that the two had created the collaborative EP locked down in their respective houses.

For the album art, Lupe and Kaelin were inspired by iconic Columbia Records jazz album covers like Dave Brubeck's Time Out and Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um. The art on HOUSE features a painting of “The Glass House” painted by Peter Gellatly, the father of Lupe's friend Sky. Peter recently died of COVID-19 — in the album’s liner notes, Sky Gellatly eulogizes his father, and includes a story about how Peter was a Merchant Marine who once sold a boat to the government of Nicaragua, then rode a motorcycle through Central America back to the US, returning with the money he’d use to build Sky’s childhood home.