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Nipsey Hussle VibeZ (we miss you bro!!)

Eleven tracks for a rapper who spent a decade turning independence into a business model and was murdered outside the shop he built. We miss you, bro.

Ermias Asghedom, 1985–2019

Nipsey Hussle was from South Central Los Angeles, of Eritrean and African American descent, and affiliated with the Rollin' 60s Crips from his teens. What he built out of that starting point is the reason he is remembered as more than a rapper.

He spent roughly a decade releasing mixtapes independently and refusing the major-label deals available to him. In 2013 he sold Crenshaw for one hundred dollars a copy — a deliberate provocation about the value of music that Jay-Z answered by buying a hundred of them. He opened The Marathon Clothing store on Slauson Avenue, invested in the neighbourhood, funded a STEM centre, and worked on programmes to reduce gang violence.

His debut studio album Victory Lap arrived in 2018 and was nominated for a Grammy. He was shot dead outside his own store in March 2019, at thirty-three.

What to listen for

"Hussle & Motivate" is built on Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life" and is the clearest statement of the whole project — the work ethic as the subject rather than the reward.

"Racks in the Middle" with Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy won a posthumous Grammy and is the most affecting record here, particularly the verse about a friend who did not survive.

"Dedication" with Kendrick Lamar is the one that best captures what his peers thought of him.

"Grinding All My Life" and "Last Time That I Checc'd" with YG are the Victory Lap highlights — the latter is as celebratory as he got.

The Bino Rideaux tracks come from their joint No Pressure project and are the loosest, most enjoyable things in his catalogue.

"If U Were Mine" with James Fauntleroy is the softest, and "Double Up" with Belly and Dom Kennedy the most West Coast.

Go deeper

Victory Lap (2018) is the album, and it should be heard whole.

The Marathon mixtape series is where his following was built, and Crenshaw is the historically significant one.

For the Los Angeles lineage: Dom Kennedy, YG, Jay Rock and further back Dr. Dre and DJ Quik.

And the ownership argument he made — buy the block, own the masters, keep the money local — has outlived him and is arguably his largest contribution.

One final note on the legacy. The music is good and the business argument was larger: buy the building, own the masters, keep the money on the block. Artists across several genres now cite it directly, and the Marathon store on Slauson has become a site of pilgrimage. Very few rappers leave behind a functioning economic model; that is what makes this eleven-track memorial feel insufficient and necessary at once.

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