Co-sign .. I see that video too. Some other YouTube freak was saying Thundacat was fake crying and not telling the other dude what happened .. shyts laughable
I’ll never get over Nipsey being taken out like this
Nipsey Hussle August 15 1985-March 31 2019
- Thread starter Cladyclad
- Start date
Co-sign .. I see that video too. Some other YouTube freak was saying Thundacat was fake crying and not telling the other dude what happened .. shyts laughable
I’ll never get over Nipsey being taken out like this
Knucklehead
HMFIC
https://djbooth.net/features/2019-04-10-i-went-to-nipsey-hussle-memorial
It was crowded in the gym and my mind was elsewhere. Following the passing of Nipsey Hussle, I made the sudden decision to pay my respects after seeing a photo of the parking lot where his family, friends, and fans were leaving keepsakes.
With a heavy heart, I jumped in the car and started driving to The Marathon Clothing store. There was a traffic jam on Interstate 405, so I kept going east on the 10 and got off at Crenshaw Blvd. Excited about the prospect of driving down Crenshaw on a sunny Saturday morning, I played Victory Lap from the top.
It was just before noon when I met the traffic approaching Slauson Avenue. I turned right on 57th and made my way up the skinny hill made even skinnier by two rows of parked cars. I turned right on Chesley and found a parking spot. On the sidewalk, I was greeted by a cheerful homeless man. There was a cool, geographically unusual ocean breeze rolling through the neighborhood.
I hadn’t even made it to Slauson before I saw the first tribute: R.I.P. NIPSEY spray painted in blue on a stone wall across the street from an auto shop. The traffic was backed up for five or six blocks from the plaza on the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue where six days earlier, Nipsey Hussle was murdered in cold blood.
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Photo Credit: Mark Escalante
There were people gathering across the street from The Marathon Clothing in small groups. For how many cars and people were around, it was quiet. Victory Lap played from speakers inside the memorial and every 30 seconds or so, a car would slowly roll by with Nipsey’s voice rapping from the open windows. The harmony of the entire spectacle was surreal and pleasing. Time was standing still.
The entrances to the mall were blocked by police officers who presented as calm if not flat out exhausted. The memorial was the biggest public attraction in Los Angeles for the entire week. Thirty yards from where I was standing, more than a dozen LAPD motorcycles were parked at the Louisiana Famous Fried Chicken. Officers were collapsed in the patio furniture in the shade.
At the time, a few people were permitted to view the memorial. Inside, visitors were ushered and assisted by men in matching brown suits. A black armored truck sporting All Money In, Nipsey’s independent record label, was parked outside. The blue balloons and decorations were numerous and only partly in view from where I was standing. It was an outpouring.
“All it takes is one a$$hole to cause all this pain,” an older man said as he walked up and stood beside me for a moment. He was shaking his head; I told him it was sick. He looked me in my eye and grunted in agreement before continuing down the sidewalk.
Onlookers openly smoked weed in front of the indifferent officers who would now and again remind us to be careful as we waded into traffic on Slauson to take better pictures and videos of the scene. I took a few drags from a vaporizer I keep on my keychain. I wished I had a blunt.
I couldn’t figure out where people were gaining entrance to the memorial, so I kept walking towards Crenshaw and crossed the street toward Fat Burger. There was a line of about 100 people wrapped around the block and towards the alley being supervised by more men in suits. Asalamalakum, they greeted us. One communicated on a walkie talkie. I kept a close eye on the man to know how long we would be waiting under the 12 o’clock sun. It turns out, a while.
Photo Credit: Mark Escalante
Nipsey’s music was no longer audible, but that didn’t stop people from whipping out their phones and pressing play on various selections from his discography. Conversations on the sidewalk were hushed and periodic. The occasional burst of laughter would ring along the line that was slowly growing.
The Crenshaw Rams of the Snoop Youth Football League arrived in droves, kids proudly in uniform, adults sporting their children’s names and numbers on hooded sweatshirts. They walked through the Fat Burger parking lot to the front of the line where they were let in through the sliding back gate; other people who were granted immediate access carried bottled water, takeout food, and other supplies. Nobody in line complained.
I thought about Nipsey’s #Proud2Pay marketing strategy, and his extraordinary ability to get people to patiently wait in line. Unsurprisingly, this rang true in death as it was throughout his campaign for The Marathon. I smiled to myself. I noticed my lower back was beginning to ache.
I moved to Los Angeles from Portland, Oregon in 2011. Two years later, I was interning for Gavin “Mizzle” McNeill at the YOUth Fairfax Store & Gallery, and for the locally grown brand Just Be Cool (JBC. Global); Mizzle’s prior relationship with Nipsey led him to co-host the release party of the famous $100 Crenshaw mixtape.
I arrived at that event an hour early to help set up; there were already 100 or so fans waiting outside. When I got inside, I saw Nip hanging out in a hallway that leads to a back office. I shook his hand, congratulated him on his historic release, and welcomed him to the store. He was calm, gracious, and smooth. I walked away immediately wondering why I had welcomed this man to his event. Never mind, I thought, I didn’t have time to be embarrassed.
Nip was serious about track two on Crenshaw, “U See Us.” When the song began to fade out, Nipsey leaned over to tell Mizzle’s assistant Maya to run it back. One more time. And one more time after that. He was almost embarrassed by the fifth time but I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the correct call. That song set the tone. He was beaming. His big moment had finally arrived.
As I stood in line, baking, I thought about that day. I fukking hate lines. It’s a mental weakness. I always have to devise an exit strategy and a perfect reason to flee any earthly line, no matter what I stand to lose. If there was a line to my own mother’s funeral, I would think about how to apologize to her on the other side, for no line is worth the momentary assault on my anxious mind.
But this day was different. I was calm, like Nipsey. I thought about the actual block I was standing on. Someplace I wouldn’t otherwise stand for hours at a time, and more than likely never will again. This is the block where Nipsey used to grind day and night because his life depended on it. This is the block that he would eventually buy—and continued to grind on—because his life and the lives of so many others depended on it. This is the block where he lost his life.
I thought about my aching back and how unusual it was to not be freaking out and how the least I could do for one of the most beloved artists of a generation was to finish the drill and stay in line no matter how long it took. I owed it to him, personally.
There were so many of us—tight groups of friends who wore Dodgers hats, girlfriends, boyfriends, wanderers like myself, entire families, strollers, jerseys customized with the number 60. All here to pay tribute, to find out how to say goodbye, to begin to understand all the ways our lives were enriched and inspired by Ermias Asghedom.
Photo Credit: Brielle Jones
You hear, and read, and scroll through testimonies about how Nipsey’s death is uniting the entire city and softening violence from decades-old conflicts. We’re in the heart of the Rollin 60s. Rounding the corner onto 58th Place near the entrance of the memorial, I could now testify. You can see the truce; notes from rival sets are scrawled onto the pavement and concrete. There was a eulogy in some shape or form everywhere you turned. It was remarkable.
The sun was beating down, but the breeze made us forget. I would later find a fabulous burn on my exposed forehead and nose. Free bottled water, Brisk Lemon Iced Tea, and Hot n Ready pizzas were passed out. Volunteers kept the food and refreshments coming on a string. Iced tea for me.
After almost two hours I was invited to enter the memorial with 50 others. I walked past the first set of murals, past the graffiti-scribed names of other loved ones lost. Bracing myself, I turned the corner and there everything was: thousands upon thousands of mementos of The Marathon.
The armored truck. The giant wreath. The candles. The blue roses. The blue bandanas. The blue teddy bears. The photographs. The personal notes. The drawings. The Eritrean flag. The elderly and the young and the familiar and the strange all paying silent respects to the man they call Nipsey Hussle.
It crossed my mind that we were standing mere feet from the spot of a brutal assassination but the feelings of love and respect absorbed that darkness. The response was greater. Goodness and light were at full strength.
After 10 minutes or so, I accepted a bottle of water and reluctantly declined a plate of food—I felt it was time for me to leave. A police officer opened the gate so I could exit onto the sidewalk. Another row of candles, another giant mural, another reminder that there will never be enough time or real estate to fully honor Ermias Asghedom.
I jaywalked safely across Slauson and continued up the hill towards Chesley. I began to cry. After a few paces, I wondered if Nipsey would approve of my public showing of grief. I don’t know why I wondered that; I just did. It’s still his neighborhood.
I quickly stilted my emotions and turned right. I walked a block and a half to my car and drove away. Victory Lap continued playing uninterrupted from the morning drive, and I could no longer hold back my tears.
It was crowded in the gym and my mind was elsewhere. Following the passing of Nipsey Hussle, I made the sudden decision to pay my respects after seeing a photo of the parking lot where his family, friends, and fans were leaving keepsakes.
With a heavy heart, I jumped in the car and started driving to The Marathon Clothing store. There was a traffic jam on Interstate 405, so I kept going east on the 10 and got off at Crenshaw Blvd. Excited about the prospect of driving down Crenshaw on a sunny Saturday morning, I played Victory Lap from the top.
It was just before noon when I met the traffic approaching Slauson Avenue. I turned right on 57th and made my way up the skinny hill made even skinnier by two rows of parked cars. I turned right on Chesley and found a parking spot. On the sidewalk, I was greeted by a cheerful homeless man. There was a cool, geographically unusual ocean breeze rolling through the neighborhood.
I hadn’t even made it to Slauson before I saw the first tribute: R.I.P. NIPSEY spray painted in blue on a stone wall across the street from an auto shop. The traffic was backed up for five or six blocks from the plaza on the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue where six days earlier, Nipsey Hussle was murdered in cold blood.
ADVERTISEMENT
Photo Credit: Mark Escalante
There were people gathering across the street from The Marathon Clothing in small groups. For how many cars and people were around, it was quiet. Victory Lap played from speakers inside the memorial and every 30 seconds or so, a car would slowly roll by with Nipsey’s voice rapping from the open windows. The harmony of the entire spectacle was surreal and pleasing. Time was standing still.
The entrances to the mall were blocked by police officers who presented as calm if not flat out exhausted. The memorial was the biggest public attraction in Los Angeles for the entire week. Thirty yards from where I was standing, more than a dozen LAPD motorcycles were parked at the Louisiana Famous Fried Chicken. Officers were collapsed in the patio furniture in the shade.
At the time, a few people were permitted to view the memorial. Inside, visitors were ushered and assisted by men in matching brown suits. A black armored truck sporting All Money In, Nipsey’s independent record label, was parked outside. The blue balloons and decorations were numerous and only partly in view from where I was standing. It was an outpouring.
“All it takes is one a$$hole to cause all this pain,” an older man said as he walked up and stood beside me for a moment. He was shaking his head; I told him it was sick. He looked me in my eye and grunted in agreement before continuing down the sidewalk.
Onlookers openly smoked weed in front of the indifferent officers who would now and again remind us to be careful as we waded into traffic on Slauson to take better pictures and videos of the scene. I took a few drags from a vaporizer I keep on my keychain. I wished I had a blunt.
I couldn’t figure out where people were gaining entrance to the memorial, so I kept walking towards Crenshaw and crossed the street toward Fat Burger. There was a line of about 100 people wrapped around the block and towards the alley being supervised by more men in suits. Asalamalakum, they greeted us. One communicated on a walkie talkie. I kept a close eye on the man to know how long we would be waiting under the 12 o’clock sun. It turns out, a while.
Photo Credit: Mark Escalante
Nipsey’s music was no longer audible, but that didn’t stop people from whipping out their phones and pressing play on various selections from his discography. Conversations on the sidewalk were hushed and periodic. The occasional burst of laughter would ring along the line that was slowly growing.
The Crenshaw Rams of the Snoop Youth Football League arrived in droves, kids proudly in uniform, adults sporting their children’s names and numbers on hooded sweatshirts. They walked through the Fat Burger parking lot to the front of the line where they were let in through the sliding back gate; other people who were granted immediate access carried bottled water, takeout food, and other supplies. Nobody in line complained.
I thought about Nipsey’s #Proud2Pay marketing strategy, and his extraordinary ability to get people to patiently wait in line. Unsurprisingly, this rang true in death as it was throughout his campaign for The Marathon. I smiled to myself. I noticed my lower back was beginning to ache.
I moved to Los Angeles from Portland, Oregon in 2011. Two years later, I was interning for Gavin “Mizzle” McNeill at the YOUth Fairfax Store & Gallery, and for the locally grown brand Just Be Cool (JBC. Global); Mizzle’s prior relationship with Nipsey led him to co-host the release party of the famous $100 Crenshaw mixtape.
I arrived at that event an hour early to help set up; there were already 100 or so fans waiting outside. When I got inside, I saw Nip hanging out in a hallway that leads to a back office. I shook his hand, congratulated him on his historic release, and welcomed him to the store. He was calm, gracious, and smooth. I walked away immediately wondering why I had welcomed this man to his event. Never mind, I thought, I didn’t have time to be embarrassed.
Nip was serious about track two on Crenshaw, “U See Us.” When the song began to fade out, Nipsey leaned over to tell Mizzle’s assistant Maya to run it back. One more time. And one more time after that. He was almost embarrassed by the fifth time but I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the correct call. That song set the tone. He was beaming. His big moment had finally arrived.
As I stood in line, baking, I thought about that day. I fukking hate lines. It’s a mental weakness. I always have to devise an exit strategy and a perfect reason to flee any earthly line, no matter what I stand to lose. If there was a line to my own mother’s funeral, I would think about how to apologize to her on the other side, for no line is worth the momentary assault on my anxious mind.
But this day was different. I was calm, like Nipsey. I thought about the actual block I was standing on. Someplace I wouldn’t otherwise stand for hours at a time, and more than likely never will again. This is the block where Nipsey used to grind day and night because his life depended on it. This is the block that he would eventually buy—and continued to grind on—because his life and the lives of so many others depended on it. This is the block where he lost his life.
I thought about my aching back and how unusual it was to not be freaking out and how the least I could do for one of the most beloved artists of a generation was to finish the drill and stay in line no matter how long it took. I owed it to him, personally.
There were so many of us—tight groups of friends who wore Dodgers hats, girlfriends, boyfriends, wanderers like myself, entire families, strollers, jerseys customized with the number 60. All here to pay tribute, to find out how to say goodbye, to begin to understand all the ways our lives were enriched and inspired by Ermias Asghedom.
Photo Credit: Brielle Jones
You hear, and read, and scroll through testimonies about how Nipsey’s death is uniting the entire city and softening violence from decades-old conflicts. We’re in the heart of the Rollin 60s. Rounding the corner onto 58th Place near the entrance of the memorial, I could now testify. You can see the truce; notes from rival sets are scrawled onto the pavement and concrete. There was a eulogy in some shape or form everywhere you turned. It was remarkable.
The sun was beating down, but the breeze made us forget. I would later find a fabulous burn on my exposed forehead and nose. Free bottled water, Brisk Lemon Iced Tea, and Hot n Ready pizzas were passed out. Volunteers kept the food and refreshments coming on a string. Iced tea for me.
After almost two hours I was invited to enter the memorial with 50 others. I walked past the first set of murals, past the graffiti-scribed names of other loved ones lost. Bracing myself, I turned the corner and there everything was: thousands upon thousands of mementos of The Marathon.
The armored truck. The giant wreath. The candles. The blue roses. The blue bandanas. The blue teddy bears. The photographs. The personal notes. The drawings. The Eritrean flag. The elderly and the young and the familiar and the strange all paying silent respects to the man they call Nipsey Hussle.
It crossed my mind that we were standing mere feet from the spot of a brutal assassination but the feelings of love and respect absorbed that darkness. The response was greater. Goodness and light were at full strength.
After 10 minutes or so, I accepted a bottle of water and reluctantly declined a plate of food—I felt it was time for me to leave. A police officer opened the gate so I could exit onto the sidewalk. Another row of candles, another giant mural, another reminder that there will never be enough time or real estate to fully honor Ermias Asghedom.
I jaywalked safely across Slauson and continued up the hill towards Chesley. I began to cry. After a few paces, I wondered if Nipsey would approve of my public showing of grief. I don’t know why I wondered that; I just did. It’s still his neighborhood.
I quickly stilted my emotions and turned right. I walked a block and a half to my car and drove away. Victory Lap continued playing uninterrupted from the morning drive, and I could no longer hold back my tears.
Revisiting Victory Lap: Clash Meets Nipsey Hussle
Interview piece
Interview piece
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BUY CLASHTICKETS
A year since the release of his debut album, we revisit Nipsey Hussle’s incredibly strategised release week with a conversation from the vaults…
CLASHMUSIC
FEATURES
22 · 02 · 2019
5.9K
It’s mid-February, 2018, in Los Angeles and excitement hangs tangibly in the air. The 67th NBA All-Star Weekend is taking place at the Staples Center and Marvel’s Black Panther is in the midst of a box office crushing opening weekend. Anybody who’s anybody has been drawn to the city, and the soundtrack heard bumping from car speakers all over the busy streets is Nipsey Hussle’sfreshly released ‘Victory Lap’.
The Crenshaw native launched his debut album on Thursday night with a star-studded sold out show at the Hollywood Palladium. Opting to release the album at such a busy cultural moment would see most artists buried in the noise, but Nipsey Hussle has studied the zeitgeist enough to engineer things in his favour.
Nipsey is a strategist. He embraces business just as much as he does music, but on both sides is calm, collected and calculated. Everything Nipsey does is with intention: he hunts out knowledge and then employs his findings into steps that draw him closer to his goal, rather than just sloppily saturating the market and waiting to see what sticks.
A year on from its release, and we’re fresh off another All-Star win for Team LeBron. Just shy of ‘Victory Lap’s first birthday Nipsey received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album Of The Year. It’s the oldest record in the category, but managed to retain its value, weathering another incredibly busy year for hip-hop.
Today the album sounds as fresh and motivational as it did during that release week, during which Nipsey took the time to squeeze in a conversation with us while he was running errands around the city. Unfortunately due to deadlines, logistics and time restraints, it never made it into the print magazine.
But, not wanting to let Nipsey Hussle’s profound knowledge, insight and advice go to waste, we’re celebrating a year of ‘Victory Lap’ with this conversation from the vaults...
- - -
How have you been feeling about the way that people have been responding to ‘Victory Lap’ in the past few days?
I’m really excited and a little overwhelmed. Everybody’s been really blown away by the music. I’ve got a tonne of personal feedback from a lot of the people I look up to, just in hip-hop; from legendary MC’s to my peers in the game. So I’ve just been humbled, and honestly a little overwhelmed by everything.
It just charted at number four, were you expecting that level of commercial success?
I try to stay away from sales expectations. I knew that it’s my best work and that we spent a lot of time just trying to elevate the musical value. I was more just being a student and seeing how that translated to sales. I was really confident in the music. I knew that regardless of how it performed, that it was gonna impact people and that people was probably going to be inspired and probably surprised.
What were your personal goals for the album when you were creating it?
It was really to make a great piece of art, to take everything I learned from my mixtape career and build on the successes of what I’ve done in the mixtape space musically. I wanted to add to the tradition of classic hip-hop debuts, and just speak to the love of music: the love of instruments, the love of poetry and great songwriting.
- - -
- - -
Your mixtapes have always been such high quality, they’ve always felt good enough to be considered albums - what steps did you take to ensure that this sounded like something more?
One of my priorities too was to make a clear elevation in what they got from a Nipsey Hussle album as opposed to what they got from a Nipsey Hussle street release or a mixtape.
I had recorded a song with Hit-Boy, probably in 2015, and I just loved how his engineer had my vocals sounding, so I called him and I said: “What mic was it that we used? What was the preamp? What was the entire vocal chain?” He sent me a list of equipment and I went and bought it. So I recorded all of the vocals for ‘Victory Lap’ through this vocal chain that Hit-Boy used and actually gave me my best vocal performance to date.
I had a conversation with Lyor Cohen back in 2015 also, and he gave me some insight into what separates success and failure in terms of the music industry. He said, “What’s wrong with the music industry is the good records because they confuse you: you know a great record when you hear one, your know a terrible record, but the good records are confusing.”
So I looked at the records we was considering for the album and I was like, I want a collection of great records on this album. I feel like most of them, if not all of them, are great records in intention. Now whether or not I executed, that’s for people to say.
How would you describe the atmosphere in the studio that you’d built to create the album?
We are students of the game, so I realised that for Motown to go on that run the went on, they needed Hitsville USA. For Death Row you needed the studio they built in Los Angeles. For Roc-A-Fella you needed D&D Studios and then Baseline. For Cash Money you needed Hit Factory. So we built our own version where we had two studio rooms for producers, two studio rooms for vocal recording.
We had two offices, one in the front and one in the back. So again, really intentional and just being [an environment] where everybody could bring their best creativity out. I spent nights there: I didn’t go home because of how comfortable it was.
What’s unfortunate is that halfway through us recording the album, we had signed a lease and we thought we did a deal with the owner, but we did a sublease. So the actual owners evicted the guy we did the lease through. We did this big renovation and ended up taking a complete loss on the studio.
My goal is definitely, I’m buying a building next time and we’re going to renovate the property that we own and rebuild from scratch. But the space we had is not ours anymore.
What do you want people to take away from listening to ‘Victory Lap’?
First off I want them to be inspired. The highest human act is to inspire, so that’s definitely a priority. Outside of that I want to let them know a little bit more about me as a human being and as an artist. I want them to be a little bit more inspired to reach into their greatness and to pursue whatever their passions are. That’s what the album is about: it’s about taking the stairs and walking uphill but ending up there anyway.
My scenario is being from the inner city of Los Angeles, being involved with gang culture, dealing with that and then dealing with the music industry as a first generation learning curve. I never signed ton a platinum artist. I never had anybody in my immediate circle that was successful in music.
So it was something we had to learn through trial and error, and we figure it out. That’s something I’m really proud and excited about. I just want [listeners] to take a level of resilience from the narrative that Nipsey Hussle represents, and a level of “if he can do it, I can do it.”
When did you first develop an interest in business?
That’s something I think we’ve grown up trying to close the gap, being in the situation where we had to fend for ourselves at times. Just figuring out that the best way to do that was to be somebody that didn’t wait and didn’t depend on people. Because your expectation of your living standards is, the majority of the time, going to be above what the traditional platforms present you, whether it’s working a nine to five or going to school and finding a job.
Not to discredit that for anybody, because everybody has their own path, but me, I’m first generation wealth. I figured if I ever became successful I was going to be the first in my immediate family to achieve at that level, so it was about being aggressive.
It was about being resilient and being creative with ways to make money. So when I look at examples of people that came from similar situations, they were all entrepreneurs and they put it together in one generation by being really aggressive and creating it.
- - -
- - -
How important do you think it is for artists to have their own understanding of the music industry rather than relying on other people to guide them?
If you’ve got somebody in your circle that could provide insight, you gotta embrace it. But just in my case it was about figuring it out, because in my experience people gave me advice that was in the interest of them using me for their cause. So I recognised that if I really wanted to empower myself as a boss in the game, I was going to have to come up with a strategy in order to do that - I had to educate myself.
When talking about business I’ve seen you referencing everything from business to Philly cheesesteaks and video games: what are your preferred ways to learn new things, and why do you think it’s important to explore other industries outside of the one you operate in?
I think it has to do with a few factors: number one, my mom. She raised me in a house full of books. No matter what my mom was going through financially, if I said, “I want to get a book,” she’d take me to the book store. She had a lot to do with me embracing books early.
Then, I came up in the information age. I came up in the era of the Internet becoming a thing, and Google becoming a thing, us being exposed to the world. As a kid I would spend my lunch money on buying tapes, I’d go to the Warehouse Records and spend my last $10 on ‘Life After Death’, I did that. Or The Source magazine, because I wanted that information and it was behind a paywall, but when the Internet came you could search all day and get this information.
I went to the University of YouTube or the University of Google
Search form
Search ClashMusic.com
BUY CLASHTICKETS
A year since the release of his debut album, we revisit Nipsey Hussle’s incredibly strategised release week with a conversation from the vaults…
CLASHMUSIC
FEATURES
22 · 02 · 2019
5.9K
It’s mid-February, 2018, in Los Angeles and excitement hangs tangibly in the air. The 67th NBA All-Star Weekend is taking place at the Staples Center and Marvel’s Black Panther is in the midst of a box office crushing opening weekend. Anybody who’s anybody has been drawn to the city, and the soundtrack heard bumping from car speakers all over the busy streets is Nipsey Hussle’sfreshly released ‘Victory Lap’.
The Crenshaw native launched his debut album on Thursday night with a star-studded sold out show at the Hollywood Palladium. Opting to release the album at such a busy cultural moment would see most artists buried in the noise, but Nipsey Hussle has studied the zeitgeist enough to engineer things in his favour.
Nipsey is a strategist. He embraces business just as much as he does music, but on both sides is calm, collected and calculated. Everything Nipsey does is with intention: he hunts out knowledge and then employs his findings into steps that draw him closer to his goal, rather than just sloppily saturating the market and waiting to see what sticks.
A year on from its release, and we’re fresh off another All-Star win for Team LeBron. Just shy of ‘Victory Lap’s first birthday Nipsey received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album Of The Year. It’s the oldest record in the category, but managed to retain its value, weathering another incredibly busy year for hip-hop.
Today the album sounds as fresh and motivational as it did during that release week, during which Nipsey took the time to squeeze in a conversation with us while he was running errands around the city. Unfortunately due to deadlines, logistics and time restraints, it never made it into the print magazine.
But, not wanting to let Nipsey Hussle’s profound knowledge, insight and advice go to waste, we’re celebrating a year of ‘Victory Lap’ with this conversation from the vaults...
- - -
How have you been feeling about the way that people have been responding to ‘Victory Lap’ in the past few days?
I’m really excited and a little overwhelmed. Everybody’s been really blown away by the music. I’ve got a tonne of personal feedback from a lot of the people I look up to, just in hip-hop; from legendary MC’s to my peers in the game. So I’ve just been humbled, and honestly a little overwhelmed by everything.
It just charted at number four, were you expecting that level of commercial success?
I try to stay away from sales expectations. I knew that it’s my best work and that we spent a lot of time just trying to elevate the musical value. I was more just being a student and seeing how that translated to sales. I was really confident in the music. I knew that regardless of how it performed, that it was gonna impact people and that people was probably going to be inspired and probably surprised.
What were your personal goals for the album when you were creating it?
It was really to make a great piece of art, to take everything I learned from my mixtape career and build on the successes of what I’ve done in the mixtape space musically. I wanted to add to the tradition of classic hip-hop debuts, and just speak to the love of music: the love of instruments, the love of poetry and great songwriting.
- - -
- - -
Your mixtapes have always been such high quality, they’ve always felt good enough to be considered albums - what steps did you take to ensure that this sounded like something more?
One of my priorities too was to make a clear elevation in what they got from a Nipsey Hussle album as opposed to what they got from a Nipsey Hussle street release or a mixtape.
I had recorded a song with Hit-Boy, probably in 2015, and I just loved how his engineer had my vocals sounding, so I called him and I said: “What mic was it that we used? What was the preamp? What was the entire vocal chain?” He sent me a list of equipment and I went and bought it. So I recorded all of the vocals for ‘Victory Lap’ through this vocal chain that Hit-Boy used and actually gave me my best vocal performance to date.
I had a conversation with Lyor Cohen back in 2015 also, and he gave me some insight into what separates success and failure in terms of the music industry. He said, “What’s wrong with the music industry is the good records because they confuse you: you know a great record when you hear one, your know a terrible record, but the good records are confusing.”
So I looked at the records we was considering for the album and I was like, I want a collection of great records on this album. I feel like most of them, if not all of them, are great records in intention. Now whether or not I executed, that’s for people to say.
How would you describe the atmosphere in the studio that you’d built to create the album?
We are students of the game, so I realised that for Motown to go on that run the went on, they needed Hitsville USA. For Death Row you needed the studio they built in Los Angeles. For Roc-A-Fella you needed D&D Studios and then Baseline. For Cash Money you needed Hit Factory. So we built our own version where we had two studio rooms for producers, two studio rooms for vocal recording.
We had two offices, one in the front and one in the back. So again, really intentional and just being [an environment] where everybody could bring their best creativity out. I spent nights there: I didn’t go home because of how comfortable it was.
What’s unfortunate is that halfway through us recording the album, we had signed a lease and we thought we did a deal with the owner, but we did a sublease. So the actual owners evicted the guy we did the lease through. We did this big renovation and ended up taking a complete loss on the studio.
My goal is definitely, I’m buying a building next time and we’re going to renovate the property that we own and rebuild from scratch. But the space we had is not ours anymore.
What do you want people to take away from listening to ‘Victory Lap’?
First off I want them to be inspired. The highest human act is to inspire, so that’s definitely a priority. Outside of that I want to let them know a little bit more about me as a human being and as an artist. I want them to be a little bit more inspired to reach into their greatness and to pursue whatever their passions are. That’s what the album is about: it’s about taking the stairs and walking uphill but ending up there anyway.
My scenario is being from the inner city of Los Angeles, being involved with gang culture, dealing with that and then dealing with the music industry as a first generation learning curve. I never signed ton a platinum artist. I never had anybody in my immediate circle that was successful in music.
So it was something we had to learn through trial and error, and we figure it out. That’s something I’m really proud and excited about. I just want [listeners] to take a level of resilience from the narrative that Nipsey Hussle represents, and a level of “if he can do it, I can do it.”
When did you first develop an interest in business?
That’s something I think we’ve grown up trying to close the gap, being in the situation where we had to fend for ourselves at times. Just figuring out that the best way to do that was to be somebody that didn’t wait and didn’t depend on people. Because your expectation of your living standards is, the majority of the time, going to be above what the traditional platforms present you, whether it’s working a nine to five or going to school and finding a job.
Not to discredit that for anybody, because everybody has their own path, but me, I’m first generation wealth. I figured if I ever became successful I was going to be the first in my immediate family to achieve at that level, so it was about being aggressive.
It was about being resilient and being creative with ways to make money. So when I look at examples of people that came from similar situations, they were all entrepreneurs and they put it together in one generation by being really aggressive and creating it.
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How important do you think it is for artists to have their own understanding of the music industry rather than relying on other people to guide them?
If you’ve got somebody in your circle that could provide insight, you gotta embrace it. But just in my case it was about figuring it out, because in my experience people gave me advice that was in the interest of them using me for their cause. So I recognised that if I really wanted to empower myself as a boss in the game, I was going to have to come up with a strategy in order to do that - I had to educate myself.
When talking about business I’ve seen you referencing everything from business to Philly cheesesteaks and video games: what are your preferred ways to learn new things, and why do you think it’s important to explore other industries outside of the one you operate in?
I think it has to do with a few factors: number one, my mom. She raised me in a house full of books. No matter what my mom was going through financially, if I said, “I want to get a book,” she’d take me to the book store. She had a lot to do with me embracing books early.
Then, I came up in the information age. I came up in the era of the Internet becoming a thing, and Google becoming a thing, us being exposed to the world. As a kid I would spend my lunch money on buying tapes, I’d go to the Warehouse Records and spend my last $10 on ‘Life After Death’, I did that. Or The Source magazine, because I wanted that information and it was behind a paywall, but when the Internet came you could search all day and get this information.
I went to the University of YouTube or the University of Google
Frida Giezman
Banned
This the first time I was introduced to nipsey
Remember seeing this shyt on world star
I was like who is this nikka lol
There was definitely something different about him
blizzard man
Join the Nintendo Fun Club today!
that dj booth article and pic got me tearing up at work, sitting at my desk like 
drugxglory
Street Struck
Yooooo Same here bruh! I remember one of my homies had come to my house and asked if he could use my computer one day, he calls me in the room like “have you heard of nipsey hussle? He from 60’s” Im like nahh..he goes “check this out, he got next”
My nikka predicted it
Every since i seen that video on world star i been following him since.
I was around to see the same shyt after Pac's death and it played out the same way. don't get caught up in all the side drama. If his music finds a new audience we all win. Dude has words to inspire for decades. The game needs that motivation and people in general.
Dontay Flaco
fka King Napz
Yeah, always had a problem with "gatekeeping".
And yeah, I remember those days of folks smashing on "nikkas" cause they been fans of Pac forever and only know dear mama
You should only have an issue if somebody claim they been rocking for years and you find out they started listening last week.
If somebody say they've been watching his moves and are fans of his philanthropy and never heard his music, then shyt let it ride.
JodyHiighroller
Superstar
