The biggest misconception about gang life according to Nipsey Hussle
Nipsey Hussle was born and raised in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, and spent his time in the streets from an early age. He left home at 14 and joined the local Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips, a gang prominent in his local neighbourhood.
He eventually made it out of the hood and turned his grind into musical success, securing a top-two album on the Billboard 200 chart with Victory Lap. He also won two posthumous Grammys for ‘Racks in the Middle’ and DJ Khaled’s ‘Higher’.
As someone who was affiliated with gangs at an early point in his life, he was fully aware of the misconceptions about the streets but not oblivious to despicable acts like murder. During an interview with DJBooth in 2009, Nipsey shared his thoughts on what people get wrong about life in the hood, believing people are a product of the life they’re thrown into.
“The number one misconception is that everybody in a gang is a mindless killer, just an ignorant, self-hatin’ n*gga with an uzi runnin’ around killin’ motherfuckers all day,” he began. “I’m not gonna sit here defendin’ what’s wrong—killing and gangbanging, that’s just wrong.
“But at the same time, the way that adolescent teenagers get done in these courtrooms, based on, ‘Oh, he’s a gang member,’ so he gets a trial like a terrorist. We’re not the cause, we’re the effect. As gang members, as young dudes in the streets, especially in LA, we’re the effect of a situation. We didn’t wake up and create our own mindstate and our environment; we adapted our survival instincts.”
He added, “Gangbanging is a survival instinct, regardless of how anybody tries to paint it. It’s a lot of, like you said, sensationalised conceptions of what it’s about—lowridin’, fuckin’ bitches, runnin’ amok—but at the same time, it’s a survival instinct first.”
Nipsey also opened up about how his mindset changed from childhood to teenage years to adulthood, explaining how he had to fend for himself since his early teens. “Obviously, from childhood to my teenage years, I really came into my own,” he said. “I left the house early; I was on the streets when I was, like, 15. I’ve been holdin’ my own since that age. I kinda came into my manhood, or what I thought was my adulthood, early.
“I had to show up, and I had to make sure I had gas money, food money, rent money, clothes money—everything was on me, startin’ at that age, so that’s what led me to start hustlin’, that’s what led me to start to try to find ways to fend for myself.”
He wasn’t quick to forget the values his mother instilled in him as a child, but he had to do what was needed to survive in the streets. “That wasn’t necessarily my mentality comin’ out the house, ‘cause my mum taught me the difference between right and wrong off the top, since day one,” he admitted.
“But when I was in the street daily, full-time, 24/7, it’s the standard that we follow, and I had to adopt that in order to hold my own. At that point, I kinda went through my struggle. A lot of people get stuck in that zone right there and never transcend to the next stage, which was realising who I am, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, and makin’ decisions based on that instead of bein’ like a leaf on a tree, gettin’ blown whichever way.”