Hussel with longtime girlfriend actress Lauren London. Photo courtesy GQ
A banner of Nipsey Hussle is stretched across an exterior of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall. It has been there for most of the year and is easy to spot. On the placard, Hussle is gazing upward, hands clasped as if in prayer or plotting the next move.
Given the image was a celebratory banner for his sensational, Grammy-nominated label debut “Victory Lap” — a record that saw him go from an ambitious underdog to one of West Coast hip-hop’s most valuable players — it’s quite likely his mind was on future initiatives.
Yet, after the rapper was shot dead on March 31, at 33, the billboard will now become a monument to an artist violently robbed of his life.
Why his death is exceptionally devastating not only to those of us who live and breathe hip-hop but also reside in his birthplace of South L.A.: He was more than a rapper.
Driven by a rapacious desire to reinvest in the streets that raised him and rebuild the community, Hussle became an entrepreneur, community organizer, activist and mentor as he transformed into a rap star. His death in front of the strip mall he was redeveloping a few blocks away from that celebratory banner feels particularly cruel. In fact, as I write these words the buzzing of news and police helicopters is rattling into my office.
Born in South Los Angeles
Hussle, born Ermias Asghedom, never shied away from the licks and stumbles that came with growing up in South L.A. in the ’90s. He came of age right down the road from the mall where his visage now hangs in what he called “the worst house on the best block.” He hustled, doing whatever he needed to survive. And yeah, he fell into gangbanging.
“We dealt with death, with murder,” he told The Times in 2018. “It was like living in a war zone, where people die on these blocks and everybody is a little bit immune to it. I guess they call it post-traumatic stress, when you have people that have been at war for such a long time. I think L.A. suffers from that because it’s not normal yet we embrace it like it is after a while.”
Innately, he poured the trauma of the streets into the music. Hussle was undoubtedly a student of West Coast rap progenitors. Cut across any of his work — there’s a decade’s worth online beyond “Victory Lap” — and you’ll see a man haunted by the rigors of watching friends drop, not to mention catching too many close calls himself.
Hussle made music for the street hustlers and those of us struggling to make ends meet and he became a local hero for using the fame and fortune he got from rapping and pouring it back into the neighborhood. It’s easy to root for a man who sold copies of his mixtapes out of the parking lot of a strip mall and turned right around and opened a shop in that same mall the second he could afford it.
Development Projects Followed ‘Victory’
Hussle was inspirational, repeatedly stressing that success is a means to make things better for those less fortunate and those who will follow him. When the Times interviewed him last year, he was balancing promotion for “Victory Lap” with the opening of Vector 90, a co-working space and STEM center in the Crenshaw district that he envisioned as a conduit between underrepresented groups and corporate partners in Silicon Valley and beyond.
It was impressive to see this kind of forward-thinking investing from a musician. Hussle didn’t just envision a vibrant South L.A., but he saw it as a hub for our nation’s brightest intellectual thinkers.
“In our culture, there’s a narrative that says, ‘Follow the athletes, follow the entertainers,'” he told us. “And that’s cool but there should be something that says, ‘Follow Elon Musk, follow [Mark] Zuckerberg.’ I think that with me being influential as an artist and young and coming from the inner city, it makes sense for me to be one of the people that’s waving that flag.”
Evidence of Hussle’s goodwill is sprinkled all over Crenshaw. He was known to buy shoes for students. He repaved basketball courts and freshened up playgrounds. He provided jobs and shelter for the homeless, and he paid for funerals for those who struggled to bury their loved ones. Hussle loved South L.A., so much so he made the streets of Crenshaw the backdrop for a photoshoot he recently did for GQ — Hussle sharp as a hood prince charming to his princess, actress Lauren London.
Strip Mall Redevelopment
He invested in Destination Crenshaw, a milelong stretch of rotating and permanent art installations; helped renovate World of
Fans take a selfie at the Nipsey Hussle memorial outside his Marathon Clothing store in Los Angeles. (Photo Los Angeles Times)