These are the Los Angeles hip-hop entrepreneurs carrying on Nipsey's legacy (2023)

On a commercial street in the 1400 block of Centinela Avenue in North Inglewood, a cable technician balances on an awning and untangles a tangle of primary-colored cables. When I'm within earshot, I hear him asking the owner to leave. Specifically, look for the owner of 1409 Sentinel. It's early January of last year, and when 2 Eleven, the owner, walks out of the glass shop, he's wearing a white Lakers sweatshirt with Kobe Bryant's number 8 on the back. He answers the technician's questions, then focuses on me after checking the matching gold outlines of his Nikes, and announces, "What a good day you came, I got my LLC today."

The physical store was updated last year, it now says "LEVEL UP ON CENTINEL" above the door, but The Level Up Store serviced Inglewood before the sign was ready. It's situated about 20 meters from the road on an L-shaped lane next to The Serving Spoon, a regular breakfast spot that has occupied the space since 1985. The two are connected by a soft brown awning that wraps around the range. Serving Spoon is getting ready to close for the day, but the Level Up store is busy right now. The store sells clothing and stocks shoes, jeans, shirts, jackets, hats, socks and other custom clothing from well-known national companies like Bathing Ape and Adidas, but focuses primarily on smaller Los Angeles brands, particularly those from Inglewood. On one of the first shelves, I see three T-shirts that say "Cypress Drop That Shit," merchandise from Los Angeles DJ and producer Cypress Moreno. Some of the new employees rearrange items while 2 Eleven keeps courtship. "Everything has to look beautiful," he says. "One of my friends, Keebo, has been in prison for 17 years. He just got out and I'll try to calm him down when he comes. He needs to see that we're officers here."

However, “official” in Inglewood did not always mean restoring autonomy to victims of the prison industrial complex. In 1939, as part of the New Deal, the now-defunct Homeowners Loan Corporation (HOLC) designed a map of Los Angeles to visualize and represent citywide mortgage risk according to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) standards. The map divided the city into dozens of irregularly shaped neighborhoods and then color-coded these sections according to the letter grades given for credit risk scores (A: green, B: blue, C: yellow, D: : red). Officially, the map shaded Sentinel and all of North Inglewood red. The ranking criteria were, at best, bizarre and downright racist. He favored racial and ethnic homogeneity, and even in this appalling practice he gave disproportionate marks based on which racial or ethnic group occupied the territory and how "subversive" it was. Areas with a red "D" grade tended to contain a large minority population.

Once a district was "flagged," it became increasingly difficult to obtain a home loan or even small loans to fix up condos, starting a cycle of decline that continues to plague communities. Richard K. Nelson of the University of Richmond helped publicize the insidious nature of these "red line maps" and calls the 1939 HOLC map of Los Angeles "explicitly racist... racism is not a subtext". It's just a text."

2 Eleven spent most of her 35 years in Inglewood, growing up near Rogers Park. He talks about hearing Snoop Dogg for the first time with his cousin in a Hyundai after church and how it sounded classy and forbidden compared to the Keith Sweat and New Edition he was used to back home. Soon Damu Ridas, a large group of Blood-affiliated rappers, would burst onto the scene in the early '90s, dodging Chevys on two wheels and wearing "100-degree hats and jeans." They were an even closer touchstone to local success, and the combination of them and No Limit Records ("I Bought Anything With a Tank On It") eventually led 2 Eleven to music. “Rapping?” he says, leaning on the Prius he was driving that day to save gas, “that shit fell in my lap. We've always played around with rap, but it really started when I went to New York to work with some producers. They let me freestyle in the studio and I printed the recordings on CD and sold them in 2001-2002. His name was nephew. I came back with 10 songs and searched all the sharing sites. I didn't know anything about the industry."

2 Eleven's music did not go through Centinela, but their affiliation with the Pirus neighborhood helped their music remain popular in Inglewood. Aside from a chance encounter with Suge Knight in 2005, during which he was told by the death row boss to skip to an as-yet-unreleased 2Pac track, 2 Eleven has stayed out of the music industry. Until he got a call from the Young Jeezy camp in 2007. "I applied to them," he explains, "they signed me to CTE World [Jeezy's label credits] and I lived in Atlanta until 2011." The angels. "Shit basically went left," he summarizes.

Back in North Inglewood, he was embraced by a new generation of rappers. Rucci, Ackrite, Lil Deuce, Sean Mackk and others saw 2 Eleven as a verified uncle in music and NHP. "I think youth helped me stay relevant and motivated," he says. "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have this store if it weren't for Sean Mackk." Sean Mackk was part of a duo with Rucci known as MackkRucci, and the two had styles that in their self-titled solo project blended together like a jaw clenching shut. Mackk glided like a confident crook when Rucci stepped on Kiefer.

In July 2017, Sean Mackk was murdered in a cul-de-sac, a devastating blow to his friends and family and to Inglewood rap's potential for the future. That's also the reason I'm in this parking lot. "All that shop shit was Sean Mackk's idea," says 2 Eleven, "When he died I had to honor his memory by granting his wish. One day I'll pick him up and we'll go straight to a studio at Paramount. He's after me from Rogers Park to Cahuenga, why don't we have shit for Inglewood like Nipsey Hussle has for his neighborhood? He said I'm the oldest and I need to go and set this up for them. I deviated from that at the time, but he was right."

Sean Mackk provided the impetus, but he wasn't here to see the Level Up Store incarnation or 2 Eleven's "Blood Walk" video reach 2.4 million views on YouTube. It's obvious he would have enjoyed the video, but the outfit and welcome Keebo received on his first trip back to Inglewood suggest Mackk would have seen more.

The corner of 108th and Broadway is relatively quiet on a mid-July afternoon. On the west side of Broadway there is a small church, an even smaller hotel and a liquor store. The building in the northeast corner across from the liquor store is a shared space between the Broadway Boxing Gym, recognizable by the striking red "BOXING GYMNACIO" against the white colorway, and rapper G Perico's So Way Out store. The storefront is named after her clothing brand, So Way Out, and her record label, featuring clothing, merchandise, and physical music available from all of her companies. When asked about the meaning of So Way Out on Los Angeles' Home Grown Radio in 2016, Perico said, "I'm just an ignorant nigger trying to have something big."

When I knock on the door, the rapper comes out to meet me, dressed in a dark blue hat and his "work clothes": gray Dickies shorts, white T-shirt, Puma sneakers with cream and blue accents and a diamond necklace. He warns me to be careful of my steps.

In about a month, Perico will host a grand reopening of the store to coincide with last August's Ten Eight project, which features a black-and-white image of the So Way Out store on the cover. Right now the room is practically empty. The walls are a pristine slate white and the new sleek flooring is complete except for the back hallway. In its 1939 assessment of District D52, where the Perico company is now located, the Federal Housing Administration recognized its large black, Mexican, and Japanese population before commenting, “This is the 'melting pot' area of ​​Los Angeles and for a long time devastated time. ”

The FHA gave it red shading and recommended a "slum cleanup project".

G Perico has been in South Central all his life. He grew up close to the 105-110 scholarship and the "invalid lifestyle in this area". In a 2017 interview with the No Jumper podcast, he said, "I have no history of getting hurt. But I've done a lot of gangster shit and I've been in those situations. A lot of it is documented, some of it isn't." While he rejected the conformist notion of a job, he remarked during a stint in prison in 2014 that he was essentially the only person in his cell block who didn't have a two-digit number. prayer. He had flirted with the idea of ​​rapping before, even releasing projects that gained local acclaim, but it wasn't until Perico's final release from prison that he turned to music. Since then, he has released six projects that produce a different sound than the traffic music of Drakeo the Ruler and 03 Greedo. Perico doesn't test the limits of slang or convey the chilling sentiments of his own psychological torture. He guides you through the days in South Central while looking back on well above average hair. He's a pimp rap who's less obsessed with pimping than how it affects everything else. Perico's music is often sold by critics as "G-funk revivalism", but this confuses these artists' accurate openness and friendliness with the music they actually make.

He shows me the back hallway that leads to an office and general storage, but that's his secondary function. Every wall is splattered with graffiti marks every few feet, and although they're almost done painting, you can see evidence of mass-ordered T-shirt sketches and stylized memorabilia from incarcerated friends. They are all Perico originals. At the end of the hall is a door showing the height of the exhibit, which reads "SHITTIN ON ALL HATERZ". "I've always drawn and written about shit," he says, pushing his hand against the wall. "See all that shit? That's what LA does, it's part of the culture."

"There's another G Perico and So Way Out," he continues. “There are stories similar to mine, deep down and stuff, but that's just me. That's what I think this latest project of mine [Ten Eight] is doing. G Perico in all its qualities. It makes me interesting, I have different personalities. It makes me a stupid nigger, not just kinda boring."

Perico is tidying up the office, moving boxes and pictures to make room for some chairs. After clearing the table, he throws away the cougars and leans back in his chair while playing on a Bluetooth speaker so he can play Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" at the volume he likes, in my opinion. As the first chorus plays, Perico pulls up his socks and starts rocking in his chair, yelling, "Doesn't that sound clean? I want this place to look the way it does."

Storefronts emerged shortly after music as another avenue of escape and legitimate income. Before explaining, she asks the manager to place an order of shrimp, snapper, and fried oysters for the family's lunch at the Imperial Fish Market. “When you become popular in the ghetto, you can't be in a drug store or neighborhood hot spots,” he continues. "That was my escape from it. And the LAPD tried to find that motherfucker a couple of times after we opened the business. At one point they even opened the doors and came in with riot gear and stuff. When they saw it was real and I complained on their ass, they sat down and gave me space. Now it's getting to the point where it's something that makes money, can support families and pay people's rent.

Police assaults and vendettas aren't the only obstacles to carrying out an internment operation in a less publicized part of town. Perico, like 2Eleven, relies on word of mouth and social media to market its business, and it's hard to drive traffic when the default shopping destinations are Los Angeles. Rodeo and a two hour line to Melrose.

Now that So Way Out has been open for a few years, Perico says he finally understands his shop's full role in the larger G Perico universe. It is no longer just an escape for him, but an aesthetic extension, which explains the store renovation. When he's finished, the left wall of the store has large-format images of the Ten Eight album cover and photos of Perico hanging, and the shelves are opposite and lined with clothing. He also plans to use the store as a community venue for concerts, pop-up events and a meeting for his cycling club. “For people to understand, respect and value my conversation,” he says, “it starts at the bottom. I need different aspects of my art to work together. When there's so much going on in the world of art and clothing, it's hard for people to get attached to everything at once if you're not connected. I'm working on it. If you look at it, it has to be something, not just the idea. I'm more than a crippled Broadway nigga, I'm sure he's a big Broadway nigga, no music or anything, but he's so much bigger than that." Watching him talk about his shop, it's clear that Perico, like Nipsey and 2 Eleven, do not cynically use your storefront as an ultimate source of income. Instead, they are redistribution nodes, fixing systemic flaws as best they can for the people they encounter every day, whether in the form of employment, a physical problem space to create or clothes.

A few weeks before Halloween 2019, a small group of teenagers gather and smoke a few blocks south of Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. They usually don't notice people moving around them. Seeing the lonely man with a lime green travel bag, taken over a white T-shirt and black pantaloons, sliding down the street with a small group, the teenagers join at 60 per cent of pedestrian traffic, saluting and smiling at your Height. figure in. The man, Desto Dubb, nods to make sure he doesn't miss any locations and yells an apology when he fails to shake hands. Some people know Desto from his now-infamous Vine clip from September 2016, in which an LAPD officer placed Desto's skull on the hood of a car for six seconds along with three liters of codeine syrup. When the officer says, "That's a lot of cough syrup... You must be very sick", Dubb's joke takes over and he clears his throat several times to counter the officer's urging.

No one mentions this incident to him, at least not on the sidewalk. If you're familiar with the city's contemporary rap scene, you've heard their music; a multi-layered cocktail of entrepreneurial pragmatism ("if this beer goes to the lake, I'm going to the lake") and opiate-tinged blues from Jordan Downs projects on Watts' East Side. He explained in his formal musical introduction that he was "put on this earth to sell juice". Even if LA music isn't on his radar, Dubb is constantly at the bottom of a rapper's Instagram profile, most notably Florida-based Lil Pump, with whom Desto has toured internationally as a fashion man. Today, at least for this hour, it's just part of the neighborhood.

Right now, Desto, known to his close friends as Josh, is marching downtown for a new promotion for his clothing line, That's An Awful Lot of Cough Syrup. He started selling T-shirts with the viral phrase shortly after resolving the legal issues that led to its creation. Originally just black T-shirts with white lettering, his stash now includes vests, bags and hoodies in all colors and, starting today, some khaki suits. His merchandise is so prolific among rappers and the rappers' celebrity neighbors that it's hard to find a talent that never had one. (Last month, young Detroit rapper Baby Smoove posted a video wearing a sweatshirt; Gabriel Gutierrez, the chef on the Mexican tour Alitas El Diablito, was awarded the first "Awful" cooking apron; and polyglot genius Young Thug wore the khaki suit.) "You've got to give some shit," he says, before walking through a seedy mall to reach the print shop. "Because if someone doesn't wear free shit, they don't have to look so good. Let's see what happens with that." While other rappers in the city have opted for brick-and-mortar stores, Desto sells most of his clothes online and his main advertising platform is Instagram and these samples are being published.

Dubb's confidence is on par with any memorable salesperson, but there's substance behind the tone. Her clothing runs sell out frequently, though they are usually around $100, and that's partly because of her exclusivity and partly because of her expertise. I ask him when he remembers selling something for the first time and he replies: “Where I come from, everyone is poor. You don't even notice because everyone is in the same position. When I was four or five, I remember getting up really early on Friday mornings to take out the trash cans. You're happy because you earn some money to do things, but then you realize that's not how it's supposed to be."

Desto's first real experience as a salesman was when he started selling candy in stores as a teenager. “There were kids whose parents could buy shit and others who had to buy it themselves. I didn't know the second type until I started seeing my friends show up in Jordans because I knew their parents couldn't afford them. That's when they told me that Tyrone on 101st Street was hiring teenagers to sell candy bars. "Desto and his friends were picked up on Saturdays and taken to banks, supermarkets, pharmacies or anywhere they could part with a box of candy." That makes you sociable," he explains as he flips through the samples and mingles with the printer's owner. "You stand in front of a bank and talk to 30 or 40 people an hour. buy. You can tell by their face if they're going to respond. There are people you can't ask right away, so you say something nice about their outfit and then tell them to yell at you on the way out. It's an icebreaker. Instead of pestering people with 'HEY MR, CAN YOU BUY SOMETHING?'"

Clothes started soon after as another way to stay stylish despite your financial situation. In an attempt to leave her "broken old self" behind, Desto enrolled in sewing classes as a freshman at Crenshaw High School. He wanted to make his own clothes and had no plans to sell them to others until he heard back from his colleagues. "It was back in the day when people would put the Louis Vuitton logo over Nike checks and stuff like that. I have a sewing machine and I can take an old backpack and put the Louis symbol on it, really do whatever you want. " "I sewed for three years and learned all about it. I didn't have a website or a business, it was all personal. I learned how to sell what people like and test your customer base."

We go back to his loft so he can fold and pack the khaki suits for his promotional outfit, and he casually mentions that he's saving one for Atlanta producer Wheezy. Today, her Jordans are blue and white as she paces the kitchen, reviewing the details of her life. In the middle of our conversation, he walks over to a pull-up bar to tie the gold Cuban chain that hangs around his neck. Dubb is more open about sharing stories about tattooing Nipsey Hussle (Desto is also a tattoo artist) and forming his bond with the late rapper Crenshaw.

"Originally, I was a fan of Nipsey from Bullets Ain't Got No Name," says Desto, flipping through photos of the pair on his phone, pausing occasionally to provide context. "Not about any groupie bullshit, but I was talking about the streets and the places and the events we saw, so fuck it." I was apprenticed to this tattoo parlor for about a year and they wouldn't let me tattoo anyone, so I left and started doing [tattoos] in a friend of mine's garden. Nipsey was one of the first to pass by because he saw my drawing work where I was studying."

Nipsey also set up Desto with a bail bondsman when he posted a $250,000 bond. This stemmed from accusations against Desto for unknowingly talking to friends he recognized in a parking lot shortly before they decided to rob a supermarket.

"That's how I knew he meant what he said," says Desto. “He didn't shy away from any kind of person. Nip treated everyone equally, the CEO and the concierge. Every time she was around him, she felt like she was learning something, but not in a way that she could always see it. Now put things in perspective. He showed you what you could be."

Desto talks about his final days with Nipsey before the Crenshaw rapper was gunned down outside his shop in March 2019. He yelled my clothes, music, tattoos and all. During [the recording of the Grammy-nominated Victory Lap], he told me to go to the studio every day and be there while I did it. If you've seen him at an awards show, you can approach him. You can't just walk up and talk to Kendrick Lamar or The Game. You can walk to Nipsey. That was my pinch." He spends about fifteen minutes watching old videos of him and Nipsey.

Dubb was famous in Watts before Instagram gave his character the reach he deserves. His IG name was @tattmandubb because he tattooed names like Nipsey Hussle and A$AP Yams. Now that the "Awful Lot of Cough Syrup" brand is popular enough to warrant big city popups (eg San Francisco's Rolling Loud) and has been dubbed by global superstar rappers, use the more direct @destodubb. He captures all the complexities of an Eastside babe raised in sink water to become the (probably) first talented rapper-tattoo designer in all three. Either way, he's the one to remember.