The Stool Pigeon

Words by Danna Hawley

Photo Jackson Stewart

Following the legacy of the Long Beach and Compton rap stars of the early nineties, 23-year-old Nipsey Hu$$le seems destined to blow up huge. He’s the powerful new voice of South Central Los Angeles, an area that’s been voiceless for the last decade. “I grew up in the hip hop generation so I’d watch these dudes like Snoop and Dre and ’Pac and Biggie, who came from similar environments to me, and were just telling their story and expressing themselves. I felt I had a unique story to tell because of my lifestyle and where I come from. I wanted to speak for the struggle that wasn’t being represented.”

Indeed, his songs are narrative documentaries from the South Central hood, about hitting rock bottom and rising up again, with death, drugs and violence lining the chapter notes.

Nipsey Hu$$le went from grinding on his corner of Slauson and Crenshaw to hustling his way around the blogosphere after he dropped the murderous Bullets Ain’t Got No Name, Volume 1 mixtape in April of last year, followed by an equally hard-hitting second volume last winter. He recently finished a 44-date US tour with LA big gun The Game solely off the back of those mixtapes, and he’s lined up a 22-date tour with Snoop Dogg (someone he shares a remarkable likeness with, in both appearance and swagger). His debut full-length A South Central State Of Mind will be released on Epic Records at the end of the year.

Nipsey lights up when talking about touring with The Game: “I really got to get in front of the fans and hit these places like Albuquerque, New Mexico, North Dakota, Missoula, Montana - the boondocks! And they were fanatic; they were in the front row with Nipsey Hu$$le shirts on, screaming all the words to the songs. That was really the biggest inspiration for me because I’m not an established star. I’m not a platinum-level artist - I’m a street artist who dropped two mixtapes.”

The Bullets mixtape series (volume three is due out this summer) is raw, straight-to-the-gut struggle music; candid and brutal, full of truth and street wisdom articulated by Nipsey’s characteristic voice. His personality-driven lyrics glide with inventive, moving couplets, from the intensely hard (“I hustle till the block’s done / Till the motherfucking cops come and I shoot till the shots gone / I’m serving red rum from the shotgun”), to the intensely emotive (on ‘Hard Out Here’, he spits a verse to his mom about his abusive step dad: “I used to wanna stay away, I used to hate coming home / Outcasted from the family because I wasn’t his own / How’d you let him hit me that hard? / How’d you let your two kids starve?”). He also litters his tracks with sharp, poetic moments throughout: on ‘2 Good For Me’ (which samples Sade’s ‘Sweetest Taboo’), for example, Nipsey wants his lover to “taste a picture, paint a thousand words in body language”.

In conversation, he’s missing the typical rapper braggadocio and machismo, instead peppering his dialogue with fiercely intelligent quips, reflective eloquence and a rare helping of realness. “I stopped going to school when I was 14,” he says, “but I don’t endorse that, and I don’t say that like it makes me more street. I was just young and I had to get to my money - I had to get to my goal. But at the same time, I felt like I was starting to fall behind, as far as staying up on information went, so I made a conscious decision to educate myself. I started reading real heavy - on history, culture, philosophy - just to broaden my horizons and give myself an understanding of the world and who I am.”

Nipsey left home at 14 and was brought up by the Rolling 60s, one of the most vicious and feared gangs in South Central. By the age of 20, he had enough street success to set up shop with his brother in the same parking lot that they had started out grinding on. “We put our money together and leased out a store; selling t-shirts, hats, merchandise and mixtapes,” he says. “It became a focal point for the whole west side of LA.”

But the store’s success was the very root of its downfall. “There was a lot of activity, there were always dudes hanging out front,” he continues. “In the police’s eyes, they see a group of young black or brown people, and they automatically assume they’re gang members, so it created a lot of tension. When I was out of town - actually it was when I was in New York negotiating my deal with Epic - they raided my shop and took my brother to jail for 19 months. He just got out the pen less than a month ago. The cold part is the whole time I was working on my album, he was away.”

Initially scoring a meeting with Epic Records solely off the back of his name (a moniker based on late comedian Nipsey Russell which he earned as a successful young street hustler), Nipsey has every intention of maintaining his artistic integrity despite being tied to a major label. But how does he plan to stay grounded once everything blows up? “You can’t build a skyscraper on quicksand,” he answers gracefully. “The core of who I am will be another layer; it will be another floor in my building, if you will. My foundation is rooted in reality: I was a helpless young dude at one point. I’ll never neglect that struggle that I went through, and I think that’s why I went through it.”

California notoriously has the most overcrowded prisons in the States; its system encourages criminality, and its streets are just as locked-up - once in the hustle, it’s a lifetime commitment. Nipsey seems thankful to have been given an escape route. “I was never gonna be able to leave the streets because I didn’t know any other venue,” he says. “I didn’t finish high school and I don’t have any credentials. Just as it all went bad for me in the streets, it started really picking up with music and I made a quick decision just to jump in. And every day - even this interview, to be recognised in the UK and to have people interested in me way over there in London - is confirmation. It’s mind-blowing for me because a year and a half ago, I was sitting on Crenshaw Slauson trying to figure out what I was going to do with myself. And six months ago, I was in the county jail with no bail, looking at a lot of time. I feel like everything happened for a reason so I’m trying to stay focused, stay humble and stay hard. And I’m not even on some dramatic or melancholy shit; I’m just being real about it.”

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