Dear Nipsey,
It’s been almost a month now since you passed on to the next life and I gotta admit, your absence is still very surreal. I found out through Facebook, through Complex, and then through a string of texts from some of my closest friends. This feels weird, too. I don’t know if there is a normal way to find out about something like death, but discovering yours through social media seemed inadequate.
How you been, man? You seem like the type of dude that promoted such inspiration that you’re probably somewhere inspiring others as we speak, even if it’s not here. I can imagine you finding pockets of communities in heaven and bringing them together, healing them like you healed people down here. Random, I know, but it felt like you could uplift anyone.
I still get sad thinking that you’re not here anymore and I didn’t even know you. I knew of you. I went to your concerts. I watched your interviews. You know, all the fan type of stuff, the standard support issue. That’s crazy to me. That even though I didn’t know you I felt like I did because your message just resonated. How could it not when it was so constructive? This makes me think of the people who were in constant contact with you. Your family. Your kids. Your descendants. Your inner circle. Your neighborhood. The people that knew you best. That’s got to be a different level of suffering and I’m sure that you wish for nothing more than to see all of them again. To spend time with them even if just for a moment.
When you passed, the outpouring of love was immediate. I guess that’s the way social media works nowadays. Immediacy exists now like crack. Your murder was viral in the literal sense but also in the figurative sense. You shutdown instagram. You shutdown twitter. Facebook. The way people communicate now. You dominated all lines of communication. That first night. That first week. You have dominated our thoughts. I can’t even put it into words, but you shook the world when you left. It’s weird that on the surface it seems like you made more of an impact in your absence then in your presence, but I guess that’s how life works sometimes. Like you can’t be fully appreciated when you’re here. What a shitty concept. Bro, your funeral, or better worded—your celebration of life sold out the fucking Staples Center. The motorcade that held your body went through all of Los Angeles. People flooded the streets. To pay their respects. To catch a glimpse of a legend before he officially passed on in our eyes. And let me go back a little bit. Listening to the testimonies of your dearest friends and family. That shit was tough man. You could hear the pain and the emotion. Your death has not been easy and it will never be easy. It’s like this gaping hole that seems incapable of ever closing. When your brother spoke you could just hear the love, man. Those memories he spoke of. Those are unforgettable. Everyone that spoke man. That was from the depths of their hearts.
Nowadays, several weeks later, it’s like we can only listen to you. Your music was 100 percent motivational. That’s gym music, bro. Like get your shit together music. Take care of your business and be responsible music. Be accountable music. We always knew it but man, if people didn’t know then, they certainly know now. I’m trying to run a marathon this year. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but now I have no choice. It feels like this purely spiritual thing now. Like you will be completely guiding the way. “The Marathon Continues”, that’s what you always used to say. Yours could never stop.
It feels like you’ve been a part of my DNA. I first heard your music in my friend Jackson’s car back in 2009 or something. “Kush and Haze.” A banger if I’ve ever heard one. I remember when the Marathon dropped the next year. You could tell from the beginning that was going to be a classic. And then it just kept going. Mixtape after mixtape. Fire after fire. New concept after new concept. These weren’t normal mixtapes, we could tell. There was messaging behind it. It was bigger than the music. What you did with Crenshaw and Proud to Pay. Mailbox Money. I’m going to come clean man. I was getting so impatient with Victory Lap, ha! I’m sorry, but you had been releasing so much good shit and promising that album for so long, I was like, “We need this shit, Nip!” And then it came out and it was beautiful. Everything. From top to the bottom. The release, the promotion. It seemed like everything was coming full circle. The recognition was finally taking place. More attention on different platforms. I’m telling you, there were few interviews I looked forward to more because I knew some real shit would be spoken into existence. It went beyond the music. You were a businessman. A mogul. Ahead of your time. Ahead of the curve.
I went to your Smokers Club Tour in Seattle when you were with Smoke DZA and Curren$y and Dom Kennedy. Dude, I was so high, but I remember your set. I don’t think the weed had fully kicked in yet. I remember the concert being so loud. You had your Marathon logo as a backdrop. You were younger then. Lanky. Hat on. You always used to wear a Seattle hat (for other reasons I found out later) and I was like this dude is already cool as fuck. I saw you later on, a couple years later at Nectar. I was so pumped, but it was still like the city hadn’t been fully exposed to your music or something, despite you always having so much love there. Maybe it slipped through the cracks, but anyway it wasn’t super crowded but you still rocked the stage and the faithful fans were rapping along with you and maybe you left early, but the fact that you were there and did it no matter how big the crowd size was just love through and through. Then later later I saw you rock the stage alongside your brother, YG. I tried to get everyone to come to that concert I swear. It was one of those rare moments where you get two people you love to listen to on the rise and you just knew that y’all were gonna get bigger and bigger and it showed. Club Sur in Sodo. Packed house. I think you went first. YG followed. Then ya’ll did some songs together. Oh my god that energy was crazy! When ya’ll did “You Broke” the shit might as well have shut down, but sadly that’s what happened a little later. A fight broke out and shit literally went down and that was that. I don’t think we could fully grasp nor handle the amount of awesomeness that was happening on stage. That was our loss. I still think about that.
Man, I could have seen you out here in New York on your Victory Lap tour, your first stop, too! And then you did a second show that night. That was a mistake not to go because the footage looked awesome and it was just you at such a high point in your life getting everything that you had worked for. Everything was coming together.
Forgive me, but I gotta go back and forth a little bit. Your Marathon mixtape is so crazy, man. Like crazy on a different level. The last two runs I’ve done have been two of the best runs in my life. I’ve run through your mixtape both times and I almost passed out both times cause I was rapping your lyrics out loud. Like screaming them so the whole world could see. People thought I was just a crazy white man running through their neighborhoods, but I choose to believe that some people heard me and some of them listened to your music and they knew what the deal was. From “Love” to “U Don’t Got A Clue” to “I Don’t Give a Fucc”…you were speaking like a prophet. Everyone literally everyone needs to listen—and to all your music—but that is required listening. It hits you to the core.
I think of all these people, man, in relationship to you. The people who I knew in high school and college you were fucking with your music so tough! Like that’s all they listened to. My guy, Isaiah Thomas, who was one of your disciples. He put so many people on to your music, man. Hundreds. Thousands. Like he was spreading your gospel to the world. At UW, when I was a manager for his last year there, he used to play your shit in the locker room all the time! He knew what the music was doing. The effect it had. And his journey and his own marathon seems to have your music as his soundtrack. It’s just crazy.
I don’t know, dude. I’m probably talking in circles at this point, but you had an effect on me. On all of us. I was depressed and still am that you won’t be releasing new music anymore, but that’s the most selfish shit I could say. You know what’s even sadder, the community you grew up in, a community you were revitalizing and raising up…I feel for them. If there is a saving grace it’s that people will pick up where you left off. That’s a certainty. Your impact was so huge. Seems like everyone is going to pick up where you left off. All over. All over the world. In every city and every hood you showed up in. That’s not normal, man. Not everybody leaves that type of footprint. That type of energy that people want to feed off it and build off it even when it’s not physically here.
You weren’t my family, but I have felt your loss in every way. A homie told me, “Why are you getting so depressed? Why are you upset and distraught? Why? He’s not your family. Why do you care so much?” It made me reflect because I suppose he had a point, but like I said Nip…you were in my DNA. From 17-27 you were in my ears. Those are formidable years man. Important years. I can’t even explain it. But you being you, I feel like you understand. You were a sage then and you’re a sage now.
I hope you’re good man. I hope you’re pain free and still teaching the world like you’re teaching us down here with what you gave us. I can’t compare you to other legends in other eras. You were unique in every way.
I was watching a D.L. Hughley interview the other day. I like his perspective and he was being asked about your death. Something he said resonated so deeply with me. He said, “…he represented us…and us is all of us…his art wasn’t his thing, his humanity was…you can be a human being and be so connected with a place—there’s no lyric, no joke, or no catch that can touch the part of our hearts that Nipsey did…I’ve never seen black men, a young black man like that, in my life, celebrated for his service to people [like Nipsey was].
You were larger than life, man. An entrepreneur. A motivator. A father. A brother. A son. An influencer. Just ask anyone and they’ll give you something else that you were. Something positive. And that’s non-negotiable. It’s never-ending.
I’m here to thank you, man. For your life. For how you helped us and led us and graced us and how you will continue to do so until the end of time.
I just want to express my gratitude. To pay my respects.
Let me leave you with your own words from the song “I Don’t Give a Fucc”:
Rest in Peace, Nip! NEIGHBORHOOD!