My filter bubble doesn't expose me to a lot of west coast rappers, so I didn't really catch Nipsey Hussle until he smacked up that dude in that viral clip a year or so ago. Then I got bored with everything in my life (as usual, and common, when we consume material cultures as a sense of identity, because it ultimately lacks the sustenance of true culture so we are always hungry and searching and pretend this is expanding our curation of culture when in actuality it is absence of culture) and made an effort to listen to all the west coast shit that had been prominent from the past few years. Nipsey stood out, easily, not only in delivery but in the sedimentary content of his lyrics. He was a deep dude.
In the immediate aftermath of his murder, online realm was convinced it was a government assassination due to the Dr. Sebi documentary. But then people were like, "lolol, no this was a gang shooting." Two theories here, though: THEORY A - killed by govt, as assassination, which is being dispelled as ridiculous conspiracy. THEORY B - he was murdered by another gang-adjacent individual over petty beefs, but that entire biosphere of gangsterism was expanded greatly in '80s with crack import to inner-cities, which destabilized urban minority neighborhoods further than they already were. This was seen as crazy conspiracy when Gary Webb wrote about it 30-some years ago, but it came to be seen as true. So either way, directly or indirectly, Nipsey Hussle was killed by government assassination.
Side notes here - the guy who shot him was laughed about because his name was Shitty Cuz. All his social media referred to himself as Fly Macc. A couple tweets I came across told a story that when he was accused of snitching by gang associates, they raped him, and somebody made a funny comment after raping him which led to his street name being Shitty Cuz. So while everybody was laughing about what a dumb name that was, it appears to have come from sexual assault in that prison-industrial way where patriarchal dominance is applied man-on-man (or men-on-man in this occasion).
Second side note - The sharing of what a tremendous influence Nipsey was having in his own community, choosing to re-invest there instead of disappearing off to elsewhere, that was great to see. But the second wave was people throwing up memes that there's Nipsey's in your own city you don't support. Sorry y'all, but a dude trying to get me to buy a $30 t-shirt I'll never wear at the local hip hop showcase who has his own clothing company is not the same as re-investing actual money and trying to pull your community up. I get that people got dreams and are chasing them, but you demean the actual accomplishments of Nipsey Hussle by trying to associate your hustle with his. But I'd rather you be out there hustling than all of these generally white and often wealth-adjacent promoters who exploit y'all.
Third side note - POC internet was all about that Dr. Sebi conspiracy, and I was actually kicking it with some older progressive white folks yesterday (as a white folk, I know many white folks), and they were talking about a microbiologist or somebody who had food theories that had cured people of some horrible shit, but had to keep it on the down low because pharmaceutical/medical industry would come out blazing if you made claims that challenges their authority. I brought up the theories that Nipsey Hussle's murder was related to Dr. Sebi, an asked if they knew Dr. Sebi. None of them did, and only one of them knew Nipsey Hussle (or at least said anything about knowing him). Again, our filter bubbles are weird, which are engineered in a lot of ways, to keep people separate, so as to consume their identity in different economically appropriate ways.
Which brings me to side note four - the government, at this point, wouldn't have killed Nipsey Hussle, if you assumed that Nipsey's murder was a hit. The police are an agent of the state, and even if Fly Macc/Shitty Cuz was a snitch, the police often put the word out that people are snitches to get them fucked up. Or they turn snitches into assassinations to distance themselves from the act. But police are an agent of the state, and the state is an agent of the ruling class. We live in a corporate oligarchy at this point, so if anybody needs to be silenced or eliminated or shut down, it happens. It's always happened. This is nothing new in the American experience. Social media/internet gives us access to so much more, and people start falling down rabbitholes and want to think they're some brilliant social scientist that has connected all the dots, but fuck man, most of what we connect is obsolete by the time it goes public. We can't figure it all out. But if you pull back and big picture the shit, it's obvious the state is fucked, but it's also obvious regardless of how fucked a state is you can carve out a shadow existence that is out the spotlight and halfway tolerable. The problem with America today is the spotlight is shining all over the place, and everybody feels out in the open and fucked. Everybody's depressed and hopeless and feels like the end of the world is coming. It's not the end of the world though, just the end of an era. So eat right, live right, help and build with your community, and build the tendrils of survival for yourself.
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