Nipsey Hussle Tells The Epic Stories Behind 'Victory Lap," Track By Track
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. 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 music their for free.
Nipsey didn't buy it. 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. But it takes more than an innate business ethic to make great music. 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. 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.
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. He declined to speak on it directly, saying he preferred to let the music speak for itself. In a sense, it does. 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. That's certainly no defense, but perhaps some missing context.
"When they [read] this interview, they'll be able to go through and listen to the album and really break down my point of view," he told me, after deep-diving into Victory Lap, track by track, in his own words. "That'll give them an insight on who I am and what I believe in more than any tweet or statement or Instagram post. When they hear the music, they'll hear what I believe in and what I choose to promote. And I think that's the most important thing."
"Victory Lap"
"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."
If you check the stats — the murder rates and incarceration rates in the years I was a teenager in L.A. — in my section of the Crenshaw District in the Rollin' 60s, none of my peers survived. None of my peers avoided prison. None of 'em. Everybody got bullet wounds and felonies and strikes. So to make it out mentally stable and not in prison and not on drugs, that's a win. That's a victory in itself. Then to be in
