Why the West is Watching Nipsey Hussle

Posted on: Sun, May 17 2009

By Rime

Why did west coast rising star Nipsey Hussle have to go to New York City to get a record deal?

After all, he built up a solid local fanbase over a short period by flooding South Los Angeles with mixtapes and posters. The Game swore before God on Power 106 that this rapper, a Rolling Sixties Crip, was the next hip-hop star born out of L.A. gang culture to take the rap world by the throat. But with those accolades and a street-certified mixtape presence, Slauson and Crenshaw’s Nipsey Hussle had to travel more than 3,000 miles to lock down a major label deal because, as he puts it, his standing in the Sixties worked for his street cred but against a major offer from Warner Music, Interscope and Capital, among others.

To give you an idea of how that could be the case, consider that the Rolling Sixties Crips (RSC) are on the FBI’s 2009 assessment of national gang threats, a list that includes MS13 and La Eme. Over the past three decades, this Crenshaw District set, which has had reported ties--at one time or another--to Suge Knight, has been the focus of LAPD crackdowns and Los Angeles gang injunctions. Still, even given such dangerous affiliations, according to one major label exec who didn’t want to be named, Hussle’s lack of a deal had less to do with a story of prejudice towards MCs who represent West Coast gangbanging, and more to do with the overabundance of L.A. rappers already trying to get a deal. Nipsey is just waiting his turn for the limelight.

“From a major label perspective, as far as cats out of L.A., Bishop Lamont and Glasses Malone had been making a lot more noise than Nipsey. His buzz just wasn’t that strong to me,” the executive said.

He’s long been a known member of RSC and many in L.A. gang circles know him as Thundercat . He’s considered one of the rising stars of the South L.A. gangster scene which includes Jay Rock, who has ties to the Bounty Hunter Bloods. But Hussle says he’s just like any other businessman when it comes to his rap career, and he takes a lot of pride in his independent music grind. Along with his team, he’s generated 50,000 units of his mixtapes for the streets. Nipsey’s first collection of songs blasted onto L.A.’s underground just a few years ago, and immediately drew comparisons to a young Snoop Doggy Dog. He’s got a G’d up charisma molded from time putting in work on the street, and his wordplay is unmistakably the product of a rap style honed through years of practicing and taking encouragement from O.G.s in the hood, including the well-known Rolling Sixty, Big U.

His combined Internet and street presence paid off, because his music reached across the U.S. landing on the desks of executives in New York. Before long deals emerged with Def Jam, stewarded by the late Shakir Stewart, as well as with Epic records. “It was interesting that I had to go way to New York, way to the East Coast, for a label to really get involved,” Hussle remembers.

But it was a guest shot on the 2006 posthumous 2Pac album, “Pac’s Life” that really opened the world up to Nipsey’s flow, and let radio and the L.A. music industry know quickly, they had to pay attention. For Hussle it was a long step-by-step process. “We were independent for a long time and was doing it out the trunk. We kind of like adopted the Bay Area grind.”

That same grind was successful for rappers up North (and even contributed to Game’s success) and generated enough buzz, along with an aggressive guerilla marketing campaign that included posters on light poles for miles up and down La Cienega Boulevard and throughout the Crenshaw District, to get Hussle a Felli Fel-hosted mixtape along with invites to several major label offices.
He can flow with a seriousness of a seasoned street vet, which includes all the gun talk, cautionary street tales and odes to fallen soldiers that you would expect from someone who’s spent a significant amount of time in the L.A. fast lane earning his stripes. As his major label prospects started increasing, Hussle says his frustrations grew in turn. After the handshakes and listening sessions with the majors, the follow-up calls to come back in and sign the paperwork with the lawyers never came.
“Every time we was fittin’ to come sign, it’s like somebody would give [the label] a phone call and they would let them know who they was really dealing with. Like, ‘Them is the 60s, or that’s Nipsey from Six-O, you don’t want to have another situation like Suge Knight and Death Row.’”
Of course, coming from such a notorious set, some of his elder homies tried to talk him out of rapping about gang culture, since it could hold him back from getting a mainstream deal.

But after putting in so much hard work, it wasn’t even a possibility for Hussle not to make it. “I’ve always been pursuing it as a dream, but as far as doing it as a career and really putting in the hours every day and being in the studio, you can say I was actively pursuing rap since I was 14.” Now 23, Hussle has been grinding in the game close to a decade.

He tried to take the right path early on, following his love of music to attend Hamilton High School near Beverly Hills. But it didn’t prove to be as promising as he’d hoped. His original goal was to get his hands on all the musical equipment the magnet school provided; he says the school focused on learning an instrument and not on getting into a studio to rap. “Their focus wasn’t on hip-hop. They wanted me to learn to play a violin or something like that.”

Hussle kicked off his mixtape grind with “Slauson Boy Vol. 1.” It caught the ears of the L.A. streets with its raw tales of Crip culture and observations from the kind of MC who’s actually put in work. A varied rhyme style spitting sincere hood tales about rich rolling and Slick Rick-type storytelling with all the hard R’s you would expect from the gangster lexicon are there. By all indications, even the mixtape cover which featured Hussle standing in front of some South Central projects all give claim to the fact that this rapper wasn’t faking jacks like former prison guard Rick Ross. He was not only a gangster in the studio, but also on the streets.

He holds his gang ties close, not just through obscure lyrics, but with obvious song titles, like “RSC For Life”, a cut from his Bullets Ain’t Got No Name mixtape. Youtube also has a few videos for Hussle’s music that play like gang propaganda. While the title track “Bullets Ain’t Got No Name,” comes straight out of L.A.-raised gangster rap, “Piss Poor”, “Ain’t No Black Superman”, “They Roll” (featuring Game), and “Closer Than Close” round out Hussle as not only a rapper who shoots bullets in his lyrics, but can also look inside himself and his situation, and comment on the general madness that can be the hood.

“I don’t go around saying I’m the hardest Crip, or nothing like that. I just speak about the reality of my neighborhood,” he said while cruising down La Brea one weekday in February, taking care of a few errands. In contrast, his neighborhood sits miles away from the calm of the Hollywood area and relates more to the long history of gang violence that has left the Crenshaw District and Slauson Avenue a place to be careful when holding it down for any gang, whether Crip or Blood.

He could very well be one of the most visible representatives from his hood to make it in front of the mic. When asked about other rappers claiming RSC, he says Kurupt doesn’t count. “I’ve been out there since ‘85 and I never seen Kurupt. I consider him a DPG, not a Rollin 60.”

Hussle was one of those young kids you see on the block. He’s an ‘80s baby, a first-generation gangbanger who followed his brother Black Sam into the ranks of the Rolling 60s. Hussle’s background is perhaps unlike many L.A.-bred gangbangers; his father is of East African decent, and immigrated to L.A. from Eritrea. He later met Hussle’s mother who grew up on 5th and Slauson, which is where the family settled.

But in the end, it didn’t matter where Hussle was raised, or what group he’s affiliated with. Though the music industry may have hesitated in giving Hussle a contract, he eventually secured one in 2008 - in the middle of a recession, no less. “I’m signed to Epic and we did a deal through a company called Cinematic Music Group. They basically got a joint venture with Epic for my project.”

DJ Skee, who helmed Hussle’s last two mixtapes and became a major supporter after hearing Hussle flow years ago, feels this MC could break out of the West in the way the Game did before him---with the right national record, of course. Even with the major co-signs he already has, Skee says securing corporate support for Hussle, or an artist in any music genre for that matter, is a tough sell these days. “The whole endorsement game right now is messed up, especially after the Chris Brown incident. He was a clean-cut figure and now corporations pulled back the campaigns they had money invested in,” the hip-hop entrepreneur and radio DJ said. “It makes it even harder for a gangsta rap artist, but on a different note,” Skee adds. “Companies know what to expect from that realm already, so it may not hurt it, although it’s tough for any true endorsements for rap music in general.”

Hussle, as his name implies, is all business when it come to this rap game. He’s attuned to the need for 360 deals, and all the moves the companies are making to snag new artists. For him, it was all just a matter of grinding and patience. No set tripping. He knows that to be alive in his early 20s, with a label deal, is all he needs to help bring a new spin to West Coast music. In April he’ll wrap up a national tour with Game in anticipation of his debut album, South Central State of Mind. That tour, in many respects, is a passing of the torch between one West Coast cultural icon to perhaps, the next.

By Rime | Comment