"Although I didn't write this song, it spoke to me in a way that made me feel as if it was my own story,” Brandon said. “I found myself playing it over and over again in my bedroom, remembering situations that I've been through.”
Check out the video for yourself below.
He was not an industry infiltrator, parasitic or conforming. Nipsey was a Black man who hustled his way out of the mud, but stayed close to the beautiful, dirty roots, life lines, his hood. Every growing period, life as he knew it, was illustrated. Through the grit and growing pains, he evoked hope. It springs eternal. His songs, spirituals to many.
It is important to note that I am a Black woman who was raised in Southern California. I attended high school in Los Angeles during the time Nipsey was on the come-up, so yes, this one definitely “hits differently.” In 2005, he dropped Slauson Boy Volume 1. In 2008, he released two mixtapes. By 2009, just as I was about to graduate from high school, he dropped his single, “Hussle in the House.” This one put Nipsey on the map. It reverberated through The City of Angels — I can still hear the melodic background singers, “Husssssle.” The Marathon dropped the year after, and by then, Nipsey had our full attention as an artist. He'd later go on to win our hearts.
It was his Blackness; his keen sense of business and game; his raspy-smooth voice and lean physical stature. His street-cred and ability to talk about “money, hoes, clothes, God, and history all in the same sentence," (K. Lamar, Section.80). It was then, he ingeniously sold 100 copies of his mixtape to Jay-Z for $100 each.
Championing the hood, promoting Black-owned businesses, investing in real estate, being conscious and highlighting healthy diet, bringing Dr. Sebi's work to light. Being nominated for a Grammy, owning his masters, having just been photographed with his beautiful wife Lauren London in the March issue of GQ...
...only to be shot 6 times in front of his Black-owned business in his neighborhood at the tender, biblical age of 33.
For these reasons, it all hurts so much--it hits different.
Maybe it's not about unpacking. I don’t have the answers. I just know I’m full of sorrow and rage. I know my people feel betrayed. I know there is a family that lost an iconic, patriarchal member. A wife now a widow. Children without a father. A community with one less voice.
Time after time our heroes are slain. We’re left picking up pieces, questions unanswered. My Brothers and Sisters are mourning. I am mourning. If you are reading this and unable to relate, understand that many people across the country, across the globe, are experiencing a heartfelt loss. They are attempting a reconciliation of those feelings. I am not alone.
To my people, I love you. I am here with you. We will continue to uplift our leaders. Their names and work will not fade. Nipsey, we pray for your family and we ride for you.
The only advice I can offer: TURN THE HUSSLE UP...
“…Spoke some things into the universe and they appeared
I say it's worth it, I won't say it's fair
Find your purpose or you wastin' air…”
(Victory Lap, 2018).
Tell me about the project.
The project is a single video called 'Do The Work' and it’s from the perspective of a character that I created. I originally started writing it because I was fed up with a lot of the things I was seeing from friends online. I was also fed up with my experiences talking with people about politics, about the progress and change that we want to see in the world, knowing, deep down, that it was all empty talk, talk lacking in inward reflection and contradictory to the actions we take every day. So I started writing this thing like, ‘You don’t want to do the work...you don’t want to do the work…’ and I immediately realized that no, this has to be ‘I’ if anyone is going to hear me.
There’s a lot of myself in the character, and the song reiterates this phrase 'I don’t want to do the work,' and it’s satirical. It’s like, 'I could turn off my cable, stop the fables, but I don’t want to do the work. I could give away my clothes and pick the five shirts but that’ll change the way I view my worth and I don’t want to do the work.' You know? So it’s like all these little actions that we could take in an effort to be the change that we want to see in the world, but don't because it's difficult. That internal reflection is tough, so I made this single and the musid video.
But you don’t want to do that!
I was like, let's try to do something that's manageable for us, we have to start somewhere. We reached out to three nonprofits that are doing really dope work in areas that I care about in New York, and we all collaborated to create WORKWEEK. Basically, it’s Sad Girls Club, which is a mental health nonprofit started by Elyse Fox that originally targeted young women but is now expanding to men. Then we’ve got New York Legal Assistance Group that provides free legal aid to 75,000 New Yorkers annually that can't afford it for crucial issues such as immigration, domestic violence, among others. Then we’ve got Building Beats, a NY-based public afterschool porgram that teaches beat making and production classes. Our main priotity when collaborating with these nonprofits was figuring out a way to compliment the curriculum each program already offered. As a rapper, I'm tapped into the cutlture in a certain way, so I wanted to figure out how I could raise awareness for these causes using my own audience.
These three events are just a starting point. I don’t think I’m changing the world, this isn't going to be some dramatic thing where we solve the issues surrounding mental health, education, and justice, but you have to start somewhere. I think a lot times we’re so daunted by the macro that we don’t think about what we can on the micro, the short term. The response so far has been great. I’ve had fans tell me ‘Yo, your song put a fire under my ass.' People were genuinely inspired to start working towards their goals, those things that they kept putting off.
Now you’ve been working as a musician for a while?
Yeah.
And do you have like an album out? Or how does that work these days?
Yea so I have some projects out but my debut album is coming out probably in June.
So you’re still in the beginning of your come up.
It depends on who you ask, you know? I’ve had fans that have been rocking with me for a while now. My first headline was a little over two years ago, so that kind of was a marker I guess.
Would this be a new direction for you? This kind of shift towards social issues?
Nah. I mean, anybody that knows me and has been following me knows I’ve always, both in my art and just how I use my platform, I’ve always been passionate about speaking on issues I care about. I think part of the ‘Do the Work’ thing is I’ve had to look inward and say, ‘Alright, well, you do a lot of talking about these issues, and you make art about these issues, and sometimes speaking can be an action in a certain way - but what have you really done?' Like what have I done? I think we tell ourselves things, especially as artists, we’re like, ‘Well, when I’m famous and rich I’ll be able to do all this community engagement and give back because then I’ll have money, and then I’ll have all this clout,’ and I just looked inward and I was like, I think it’s important to try and start doing whatever it is that I can on whatever small scale with the things that I’m passionate about. So it's new in the sense of the WORKWEEK and taking this really to the ground, but it's consistent with the messaging that I’ve had over the past few years.
Right, so essentially it’s like a critique of the complacency that happens on social media. These ‘facebook rants’ or just even the idea of activism these days is so annoying. Because it’s like ‘oh activism/advocacy.’ Like what do you mean ‘advocacy’? What does that even mean?
And this idea of like, what does it look like to use your voice in an age where everybody has a voice because of social media? And you can say anything at any time, it really cheapens what that means. And you can make a status or you can say a thing and you can feel like you’re a part of the cause, but I think it’s really about understanding and discovering that using your voice in 2019 has to look like some form of action. Whether it’s literally as simple as reading more about these things to become more informed, or giving certain things up in your life, or whether it's reaching out to a non-profit and engaging. Whatever your platform is, whatever you have time to do, but we do make decisions every day, whether we think we are or not. It's like clothing, almost like you can't opt out. Even if you walked around naked, you’d be making a statement. So it's the things that you purchase every day, or the conversations you engage with, these all contribute to the progression and the direction of the world.
It’s interesting that you had this moment where you had to say it was ‘I’. I think that's where the power of the video comes from. Do you ever feel that way? The way that's expressed in the song?
Totally! First of all, I mean there's a lot of me in it. A lot of the things that I list as things that I could do but I’m not doing, a lot of them do apply to me. But then, second of all, yeah, I think there is the honesty of that feeling. I’ve seen the responses where a lot of people relate to that, like ‘I just really don’t want to this, this feels so overwhelming,’ and everyone's got their own problems and their own issues. So I think that's why the song resonates with people, in the sense of that it meets them first from a place of empathy. It’s empathy through critique.
Tell me about growing up in Little Rock.
Growing up there is probably what you think it is. I had to have a really big imagination, so I was always watching TV and I knew that there was always more out there in the world. But I love where I’m from. I love the hospitality, I love the food, I love the people. Music was another thing that helped me - it definitely acted as a form of escapism for me. I love the prominence of nature in Little Rock too. It’s actually called the “Natural State” so there’s a lot of green. I feel like I’m humble because of where I come from.
It’s not like growing up in LA.
Yeah, exactly. Even me falling into music, it’s still weird to the point where I’m like, “how did I even get here?” to this day.
So your focus wasn’t always music?
I wanted to be a veterinarian, then I shadowed a veterinarian and quickly realized that wasn’t what I wanted to do. It’s very gruesome. I went to cosmetology school for a bit too, thought I was going to do that...but no, I don’t even like doing hair! Music was something I always did throughout high school that I just kind of kept doing throughout my life, music was something that I never really thought was going to happen because of the fact that I’m from Arkansas.
How did linking up with Donald Glover early on in your career help push you further into the music industry?
So I had released a mixtape called “Laugh Now Die Later” and it was poppin’ off on the internet. Donald’s manager had found the song and hit up my co-producer at the time and was like, “yo this is crazy, Donald might remix it.” I was freaking out, but I wasn’t trying to get too excited. Anyway, he ended up doing it and they all came to Little Rock and naturally we forged a relationship. After that, he suggested that I come to LA and see more of what the world has to offer me, and I’m really grateful for that. I learned so much from being around that crew of people, most importantly how you can make an idea come to life. I was in the house where Donald and his friends were first discussing Atlanta, so I watched it go from simple ideas that people exchanged to this massive success. Even the album “Awaken My Love,” I was around for the beginning of that.
Do you think you wouldn’t have felt that push to get out of Little Rock if not for these newfound relationships?
I had already felt the urgency to leave. I moved to Atlanta a couple of times. Atlanta is kinda like Little Rock, a bigger city but just as southern. They pushed me to get completely out my comfort zone and travel to somewhere that was totally unfamiliar. I think that when I got to LA I began to understand that making music was an actual career, that music was actually what I wanted to do.
What do you think about the term “creative competition”?
There’s competition in every industry, but in the spaces that I occupy, I feel like the mentality to have is “let’s just have fun.” I want to make music, hang out, create.
How has coming up in the age of internet rap changed your perspective on the music industry?
I feel like I started out as internet rapper, but I’ve definitely transformed into what most people would consider a “real” artist. The internet was the only way to get people to listen to me. I was out here like, “hey! I’m in the middle of nowhere!” I was tweeting, I was all over soundcloud, even my Tumblr was poppin’ for a minute!
To me, your music is highly emotional but jumps to extremes on both ends of that spectrum. I was wondering, when your in that creative space, what emotion do you thrive off of the most?
It’s lowkey kinda hard to say because it varies, but I definitely thrive off of the feeling of being underestimated. When I feel underestimated, I feel fueled--it’s straight up gas for my car. I’m trying not to go to that place so much. I want to begin to write from a place of contentment.
Tell me the story behind your upcoming EP, because the title and the cover art are so contrasting.
I started making this project when I was depressed. I feel as though all the music I was making up to this point was what I thought people would want to hear. People want to turn up, you know? But that wasn’t where I was and I had to be honest with myself about that. These songs are very reflective of where I was at that time. I was in the space where I didn’t want to be alive anymore. Some friends had reached out to me and something that one of them said that really stuck out was “I’m glad you cried out for help”. I feel like a lot of us suffer in silence. We don’t want to bombard people with our problems, but sometimes we need to be like, “hey! Can you care about me for two seconds?” And that’s okay! This project isn’t really for anybody, it was music therapy for me and something that I feel compelled to share with others.
What would you tell your fans out there who are having difficulty processing pain?
I would say talk it out with somebody and make them understand that you need to talk. The moment you start saying things out loud, it becomes easier because what you’re holding inside will only manifest--you’ll start to see your world become what you feel on the inside. We’ll always experience traumatic things and we’ll always feel pain, but it’s important to know that okay to vocalize how you’re feeling, it’s important to tell somebody, to speak up. We all must remember that there are people that want to see you thrive and be happy.
"Cry 4 Help" is out now.
