"quotes,"
fragments
& field notes.

“Yeah, you gotta be comfortable with dying for this shit. It's just like gangbanging — you can't be a real banger if you ain't willing to die. You're not gonna be able to function in the situation. Not to say that's what you want, but you gotta accept that's a part of his life.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I see niggas jump the gun and step outside of their comfort zone or what they know for doing and go get smacked, go get 100 years. Work within the realm of what you got access to. When I didn't have a deal, we did mixtapes. That's what we could do.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Your value goes up the more you don't sit down at the table. You just work. I was like, you don't get it cheap because I'm grinding right now, just keep working. I just wanted to utilize all the new resources I was getting to build the next thing.” — Nipsey Hussle

“How much you get paid? The writer that wrote that, I paid him type of salaries to my employees at my business that got felonies and can't get jobs. No disrespect. So who's the underachiever? I own my company. I own the asset of this whole industry, which is your masters, your intellectual property, your publishing.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Sometimes you don't need facts, you could just go off your gut. Be confident in — I don't need confirmation. If I feel it, I trust how I feel. I know my intention is pure. My instincts is like connection to a higher understanding. I've learned to listen to my gut and be confident in making decisions off of that.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Thoughts is powerful in all facets. Even my career, even my life — things end up turning out exactly how I visualized them, not in the time frame I expected. You always want shit to happen overnight, but I just had clear visions. Your thoughts come to life if you stick to your script.” — Nipsey Hussle

“This shit ain't supposed to feel comfortable. It's supposed to be uncomfortable, supposed to stretch you, it's supposed to be a burden to a degree, and you gotta wrap your mind around that and accept it and embrace it. You catch some wisdom off of that.” — Nipsey Hussle

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. It's radicals, you know what I'm saying.” — Nipsey Hussle

“The marathon was a pep talk I was telling myself when I was in a vulnerable moment. When you look at the marathon as like life — it's about endurance, it's about preparedness, about mentally breaking through your barriers that tell you you can't keep going. You're more capable than you think.” — Nipsey Hussle

“You lose it immediately if you go into a creative space with the business intention. You can still succeed with the business intention and make a product that succeeds, but the art value is gone immediately. It's always visible, it's always present. You can hear somebody's intentions in their music.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I had to take two steps back to take ten forward. But then two back hurt — that's a defining moment. I stopped hustling, stopped making money every day, and you almost forget you as the man. It affects your confidence, how you look at yourself.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Economics is the answer. Empowering people economically is how you really really impact. But I don't know if it's about dropping a bag of money in the hood — I think it's about impacting culture in a way that the mentality changes. The institutions that exist are just a prison institution, a pipeline of jail. It ain't no constructive institutions for real that meets you ground level.” — Nipsey Hussle

“You learn the rules so you know how to break them, because you realize what's really important. It's a golden rule, and if you don't break the golden rule, all the other shit people will forgive and accept. The golden rule in the art is: tell the truth. Draw from your experience. Tell the truth.” — Nipsey Hussle

“If you look at artists that are in control, they had to go the wrong way. They had to take the stairs. You deal with turbulence and stuff, but I just had to set my situation up the right way and build my foundation, because a lot of artists are content just being artists.” — Nipsey Hussle

“When you don't have resources, you in survival mode. Being in survival mode automatically rules out a lot of things because you don't experience morality — you experience the need to survive. You don't experience fairness, you don't experience planning for the future. You just experience my ribs touching. Once you get out of survival mode, your morals come back closer to your daily decision-making.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Whoever you surround yourself with, you're around ten broke niggas you gonna be the eleventh one. You're around people that have high standards for themselves, high integrity, high standards for their friends — that's gonna rub off, you're gonna have that type of energy around you. Steel sharpens steel.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I used to get on camera and talk about street shit, about gang culture. Then I get to my show and everybody want to show me that they hard, and everybody fighting in the crowd and shooting up the parking lot. So I'm like damn, I'm putting out energy through these interviews that's showing back up in my show. That's when I decided I'm gonna speak what I want to see.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Most people want to skip the process, not knowing that when you skip steps, you miss the lessons. If you start small and build on what you have, you can continue to multiply that into something greater, while picking up all of the valuable lessons along the way.” — Nipsey Hussle

“When you make money every day it's a different spirit you carry, a different way you get treated, a different charisma. Then to sit in the studio every day, night alone, investing in your equipment — you done forget how people react to you. It affects your confidence, how you look at yourself. But that's the test.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I had to learn how to record. I used to run from the mic back to the console, press record on Pro Tools, run back to the mic, lay my little verse, run back, stop it. It made me record a certain way too — I was really focused on getting the take right, because I felt like I gotta keep doing this shit over.” — Nipsey Hussle

“It's a lot of examples that you could look up to as a young kid in the streets. You could look up to a Kendrick Lamar — forget what he's saying, just where he came from. You can reverse engineer what they did. You know what I'm saying, look at the steps, what happened.” — Nipsey Hussle

“When you go pull a lyric down — where is it? Where does it exist? You go somewhere mentally and you bring something back that people that aren't where you just went can't hear in a place that you both are. It's a song that only I can write, because it's only true to me.” — Nipsey Hussle

“He was like, that's what's wrong with the industry — the good records. They're clouding everything, they're clogging the space, they're hard to tell apart from the great. He was like, get the good records out the way. You should only aim to make great records. This whole shit is about the great records — those are the records that should get a chance.” — Nipsey Hussle

“We was taught to gang by older dudes that gangbanged when there wasn't cameras everywhere and wasn't no technology. They gave us a message in a book of rules they was able to live by, but they didn't have technology working against them. So they misled us unintentionally — there ain't no way you're gonna get away with it. Your phone is connected to the tower, and your big homie couldn't tell you nothing about that.” — Nipsey Hussle

“With new levels, there's new devils. Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it's happening.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I don't even think selling a CD for a hundred dollars is what the valuable thing is. The valuable thing is to be creative with how you monetize the connection that the music created. We got trained by traditional how to monetize the connection — but there's other people participating in that transaction that didn't have nothing to do with how the connection was made.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Master your energy. Do your best to master your energy, and what you put out — because what you put out is gonna return to you in a different form than you put it out in. If you tired of that shit, adjust the energy. Adjust what you wake up thinking, and what you say, and then lastly what you do.” — Nipsey Hussle

“The marathon is just about seeing long term, seeing a vision, understanding that nothing really worthwhile happens overnight and just sticking to your script long enough to make something real happen. Laying a brick every day instead of trying to build a brick wall. Eventually you look up and you got a brick wall.” — Nipsey Hussle

“The best thing you can do for a person is to inspire. That's the best currency you can offer. When a person can rely on you for that, you empower them in every realm in their life — relationships, business, art, creativity. Because without inspiration, you drop. You can't summon the energy unless you're inspired.” — Nipsey Hussle

“You ain't gotta read books nowadays. You can learn on YouTube. You can go to college for free. Spend that time and educate yourself, and at the end of the day learn about some shit and it turn into the cash — the information will turn into cash along the long eventually.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I'm a grinder. I'm dedicated to the lifestyle of going hard every day. I've been in it since I was a teenager. You know it's not gonna come back overnight — if it was overnight it was a long night.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I'm not gonna lie and portray this ultimate poise like I've been had it figured out. No, I just didn't quit. That's the only distinguishing quality from me and probably whoever else going through this. I went through every emotion trying to pursue what I'm doing.” — Nipsey Hussle

“When you go on a mission, when you're looking for your so-called enemy, you driving through a different hood — it's an invisible line you crossed. You gonna pass up the dude that's dressed square, you gonna pass up a dude from a different race. When you see somebody that's dressed like you, walk like you, got the body language like you — you gonna say, there you go. You looking for yourself just on the other side of town.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I never made a project and thought 'this is a mixtape.' I always went into it like this is an album I'm working on. When it really became time to release on a mainstream retail level, my challenge was to make it a step up — more attention to everything, more critical on each part of the whole product.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Most important thing — you gotta get rid of doubt. The way to do that is you have a plan. If you got a plan, it's not just a pipe dream — you have a step-by-step list of things to do to get to your goal. Without that, soon as something pops up, it's gonna look like the end-all.” — Nipsey Hussle

“You don't come to fight Tyson thinking it's about to be easy. You better be ready to get your jaw broke, ready to get a low blow, get your ear bit. How many people want these spots? It ain't that many slots. You gotta be willing to really fight hard, really be one of them guys.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Define what you have a passion for and don't quit. Everybody gets tested. If you don't quit, you don't learn it. That's really the secret to everything — how much you can take, how much pressure, how much stress, how much insecurity in your decisions. If you don't quit, you're gonna get the education that the school of experience offers.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Everything's gonna test you if it's worthwhile. You're gonna make decisions based on what you care about more, and without even being conscious that you're getting tested, you're gonna be getting tested. So you're gonna have decisions to make — continue this lifestyle, or sacrifice because I really care about this music.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Gangbanging is like a volcano. Don't ever get comfortable in a volcano. It might go — it could blow. So it's never like it calmed down. It's chill right now, it's going to go up again though. Not just to be grim, but that's kind of the reality of that.” — Nipsey Hussle

“You need faith to make it through the dark spots, when what you see in front of you doesn't represent what you believe is going to happen. It may be completely opposite, but you have to keep walking forward, because you have faith.” — Nipsey Hussle

“It sounds simple telling people to work hard and never quit, but to really execute and demonstrate those principles takes discipline and faith. Those are the two factors that I believe separate the good from the great. The difference is measured by how much you can walk in faith, and how much you can exercise discipline.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I seen people in my circle take their eye off what they was doing and get focused on what the next person was doing, and step outside their character. Everybody ain't a hustler, everybody ain't a robber — everybody got their own niche. You get so caught up in what you see the next person doing, you step outside your niche and your comfort zone.” — Nipsey Hussle

“The game ain't built for your success. You just gotta be a beast, you gotta be harder, you gotta be stronger, you gotta be meaner, you gotta be hungrier, because you're gonna be fighting uphill. It's like escape velocity — if you don't have it, you're not gonna penetrate the atmosphere. It ain't personal, it's physics.” — Nipsey Hussle

“Once I got educated to the way that the deals get structured, it would be disrespectful for us to expect anything other than a partnership, because we'd been had sweat equity, we'd been had money invested, we'd been operating as not only the creative but also the administrative.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I tell people, they like, 'I just want to be better than such-and-such.' Fool, you ain't competing with such-and-such. How many artists are in this country, how many record labels are saying, okay my artist is dope. You're not competing with somebody from your neighborhood — you compete with everybody.” — Nipsey Hussle

“If an up-and-coming artist says give me some advice, my advice would be: define who you are and what you are, and be clear on it, meditate on it, and then live and die by it.” — Nipsey Hussle

“You gotta do anything you do with love, or you shouldn't do it, or it's gonna come across. If you cook some food and ain't no love in it, it's not gonna taste the same. If you covering a culture and you don't got love for that culture, you don't have understanding of the qualities and values — you don't got no right having an opinion about it.” — Nipsey Hussle

“It was a lot of pressure to take the elevator or jump on somebody else's back or ride somebody else's wave. That worked for a moment, but the respect is what keeps you in the game. Distinguishing yourself through how you get there is what people really, at the end of the day, say: I know his character from demonstration.” — Nipsey Hussle

“I’m not a perfectionist. And it’s such a gratifying concept.” — Virgil Abloh