![]() So to make it out mentally stable and not in prison and not on drugs, that's a win. Everybody got bullet wounds and felonies and strikes. ![]() in my section of the Crenshaw District, in the Rollin 60s, none of my peers survived. ![]() If you check the stats - the murder rates and incarceration rates in the years I was a teenager in L.A. "I'm a urban legend / South Central in a certain section / Can't explain how I curbed detectives, guess it's / Evidence of a divine presence." That's certainly no defense, but perhaps some missing context. Nipsey's hustle speaks to those who often develop a paranoid sense of hypermasculinity in order to survive environments where their own identity is a primary target. He declined to speak on it directly, saying he preferred to let the music speak for itself. When I talked to him for the exclusive breakdown of his album with NPR Music, Nipsey was still feeling the heat from social media after an Instagram post of him praising a positive image of young black boys was widely condemned for simultaneously expressing homophobic sentiments. A long-time member of L.A.'s notorious Rollin' 60s Crips, Nipsey's gangland snarl remains as visceral as ever, but the former street entrepreneur hustles legally now, a reformed hard-head turned inspiration to the hood. And on Victory Lap, the first release from his multi-album deal with Atlantic Records, he opens the vault to reveal of fresh stockpile of thug motivation. But it takes more than an innate business ethic to make great music. ![]() And it paid in dividends: $100,000 in the first 24 hours, to be exact - even Jay-Z respected his hustle enough to order 100 copies. This is same artist, after all, who had the audacity to price physical copies of his 2013 mixtape Crenshaw at $100 a pop, when a still woefully devalued music industry had rappers en masse giving away their music for free. A decade in the waiting, Nipsey Hussle's Victory Lap is more than an anticipated major-label debut - it's a testament to the independent grind he employed to cultivate a dedicated fanbase. ![]()
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