How Nipsey Hussle met Mac Miller: “He a cool cat”
Seven years ago now, the hip-hop world was dealt a crushing blow: Mac Miller, one of the scene’s young, leading voices, died. Six months later, in March 2019, one of his contemporaries followed: Nipsey Hussle was shot dead. Miller had only been 26 years old when he passed, while Nipsey wasn’t that much older at 33. It was a bleak period for hip-hop fans and artists alike.
There was a period of mourning for both Miller and Nipsey, which was perhaps most clearly evident at 2019’s Coachella Festival, which took place only shortly after Nipsey died. Plenty of performers mentioned the fallen rappers, an indication of how much love there was for each of them. Musicians, like fans, adored Mac Miller and Nipsey Hussle, and, in turn, they held each other in high esteem, too.
Back in 2011, some eight years before his tragic death, Nipsey sat down for a conversation with BET.com, the website for the American basic cable channel Black Entertainment Television. Among other things, Nipsey spoke about his first ever encounter with Miller—and, fittingly for men of their age, the whole thing was very millennial.
“You know Mac Miller,” Nipsey said, “he a cool cat and I had been conscious of what he was doing from a distance. But I was walking through the mall or something or the airport one day and I see a Billboard [magazine] and I see who on the cover of the Billboard and it was Mac Miller and me knowing him as being independent and not having a huge radio presence, that was big to me so when I saw that I twipic’d it and I put it on Twitter. I just gave him his props on that and was just like ‘That’s big.’”
Miller noticed Nipsey’s tweet, so he reached out. “You know,” said Nipsey, “it’s a sign of the times that we living in and you know he hollered back like ‘We fans of what you doing. We got a show in LA, when we come out there we wanna get with you.’ So he had two back-to-back shows at the House of Blues and when he finished he came by the studio and we chopped it up.”
The meeting, by the sounds of it, was a fairly relaxed affair. “It was you know just kicking it,” Nipsey explained, “and played some music and all that and was just talking about the industry and I was just telling him how I really respect what he’s doing and it’s motivation for an artist like myself that’s doing it independent right now to see somebody even before he put out a no. 1 album he was… so I just wanted to give him his props on that… so he’s cool and we hit it off and knocked a couple records out.”
On YouTube, there is footage of Mac and Nipsey in the studio together, though it’s not clear if the video captures the specific encounter Nipsey was describing. It must be said, the clip is a bittersweet thing. On the one hand, it’s cool to see two young legends of the 2010s hanging out in a laid-back setting, listening to tunes and generally having a nice time. On the other hand, the video depicts two young men who, within a matter of years, would be dead way before their time.