https://www.etonline.com/nipsey-hussle-celebration-of-life-memorial-service-2019-04-11-live-updates-now
2019-04-12 06:31:19Z
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Jumat, 12 April 2019
Nipsey Hussle Celebration of Life Memorial Service: Live Updates - Entertainment Tonight
https://www.etonline.com/nipsey-hussle-celebration-of-life-memorial-service-2019-04-11-live-updates-now
2019-04-12 06:31:19Z
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Kamis, 11 April 2019
Nipsey Hussle Funeral: Live Updates - The New York Times
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The Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles was packed Thursday with thousands of mourners for the funeral of Nipsey Hussle, the Grammy-nominated rapper who was shot and killed in South Los Angeles, the same neighborhood where he grew up and was seen as a hero.
The memorial is billed as a “celebration of life” and began at 11 a.m. local time, an hour later than scheduled. The arena holds 21,000 people and was also the venue for Michael Jackson’s public memorial in 2009.
A procession will follow the two-hour memorial, snaking through Watts, Inglewood and South Los Angeles, passing by the Marathon Clothing store that Mr. Hussle owned and where he was killed last month.
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Music filled the Staples Center as mourners from across the city came to honor the local hero.
LOS ANGELES — The service began with a live band playing “Right Hand 2 God,” one of Hussle’s songs. His voice boomed across the arena, and thousands of fans sprang to their feet to sing along, the bass from the speakers shaking the ground, giving the event the feel of a concert.
“This is a celebration. The marathon continues,” DJ Battlecat shouted over the loudspeaker.
The coffin, adorned with white and violet flowers, sat center stage. Three large photographs of Hussle were projected overhead on oversized television panels, rendered in hues of pink and blue. A thick wall of flowers, a piano and a harp on stage softened the atmosphere in the cavernous sports arena.
Before the service began, “Victory Lap,” the title track from Hussle’s Grammy-nominated album, played on loop as people sang along. The bound, glossy booklet handed out at the beginning of the service featured messages from Hussle’s family, hip-hop luminaries, public figures with ties to South Los Angeles and other prominent African Americans in the arts.
President Barack Obama sent a letter praising Hussle, which Karen Civil, a hip-hop media personality, read at the service. Mr. Obama said that he had heard Hussle’s music through his daughters.
“While most people look at the Crenshaw neighborhood where he grew up and see only gangs, bullets and despair, Nipsey saw potential,” the former president wrote. “He saw hope. He saw a community that even through its flaws taught him to always keep going.”
Many of the people in attendance are waving Eritrean flags in the air and yelling, “We miss you, Nipsey.” — JOSE A. DEL REAL and WALTER THOMPSON-HERNÁNDEZ
Stevie Wonder and Snoop Dogg are among those paying tribute.
Stevie Wonder and Snoop Dogg are among the big names on hand to pay tribute to Hussle on Thursday, according to a program distributed at the Staples Center. The service began with Hussle’s own song “Victory Lap,” the title track from his most recent album and major-label debut, as the processional, followed by scripture readings and a selection from Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
The R&B singer Marsha Ambrosius, who sings on “Real Big,” the reflective closing song from “Victory Lap,” is scheduled to perform, as are the singers Anthony Hamilton and Jhene Aiko, a Los Angeles native. Family tributes from Hussle’s girlfriend, the actress Lauren London, and others, including Louis Farrakhan, the 85-year-old leader of the Nation of Islam, and the Los Angeles radio host Big Boy, are scheduled to follow.
Mr. Wonder is slated to perform his song “Rocket Love,” from the 1980 album “Hotter Than July.”
Also expected to participate in the ceremony: Hussle’s brother, Samiel; and the Los Angeles hip-hop fixtures YG and Mustard, who are serving as honorary pallbearers.
N.B.A. all-star James Harden of the Houston Rockets and DeMar DeRozan of the San Antonio Spurs also came to mourn Hussle. They wore white to honor their friend and fellow South Los Angeles native and entered with somber faces, not speaking to anyone. — JOE COSCARELLI
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Crowds began lining up at the Staples Center hours before the service.
Before entering the Staples Center, many fans stopped to take pictures in front of a black armored truck that Hussle owned. His “all money in” truck was used for promotions and was a fixture outside his clothing store in Crenshaw, where he was killed. The truck, positioned in the middle of a closed-off street and surrounded by fencing and plainclothes security guards, was treated like a piece of public art.
Inside the arena, piano music played through the softly lit hallways, a stark change for a venue that usually hosts sports events and concerts.
“He was just a very humble man,” said Tanika Johnson, who works at a hair salon near Hussle’s store. Ms. Johnson said Hussle felt like a cousin to everyone in the neighborhood. “This is what I want you guys to understand: He grew up in a gang environment, where people don’t get out alive. But he came from a loving, caring family and he gave back to the community. He gave jobs to people in the community. What more could you want?”
Kathleen Gonzalez, 20, said what she remembers most about Hussle is how he treated everyone — “a homeless man, an average man, a man without papers who was here illegally.”
“He gave everyone the same praise he received,” added Ms. Gonzalez, a therapist who works with special needs children in South Los Angeles. “Nowadays it’s really rare to see that.”
Even as the city came together on Thursday to mourn Hussle, she said her community was on edge over the threat of more violence. She said there were rumors going around her neighborhood that there would be more shootings in retaliation for Hussle’s murder.
“Being from that part of the city, it’s something you keep in mind,” she said. “Nipsey wouldn’t want that.”
At one point before the memorial, security shut the doors to the arena, after some fans, apparently without tickets, rushed one of the entrances.
Some mourners came from far away. Ron Solomon flew in from Atlanta Wednesday night and went straight to Hussle’s shop in Crenshaw. “Everything he lived is what I believe in, too,” he said. “Uplifting his people. Not letting the system beat us.”
Alexis Short, 30, said she came out of respect for what Hussle represented in black culture.
“His music is motivational. And his interviews, his interviews, he would talk about eating well, taking care of yourself, giving back,” she said. “He was so inspirational. It just breaks my heart.”
Ms. Short, who is from Long Beach, said she first started following Hussle’s music in 2012 when she saw him at a small venue in Torrance, Calif. Wearing a jean jacket and sporting long colorful nails, Ms. Short, who was attending the service alone on Thursday, sat at a table inside the arena before the service started. She and others quietly flipped through a bound, glossy program featuring photos from Hussle’s life, from family beach trips to celebrations to red carpet events. — TIM ARANGO and JOSE A. DEL REAL
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Los Angeles is mourning Nipsey Hussle. So am I.
I keep coming back to Nipsey Hussle’s vigil — the thousands of candles, flowers and handwritten notes. Every time I come back, I’m surrounded by a sea of black and brown faces and the sound of h is music, which has now become the unofficial soundtrack of the city. The City of Los Angeles is in mourning. Nipsey and I never met, but we had mutual friends, and it always seemed as if I knew him. Maybe it was because every time he spoke, I heard the city I grew up in: a community of black and brown people trying to combat daily bouts with hardship and loss with unyielding joy and love. — WALTER THOMPSON-HERNÁNDEZ
A student of 1990s gangster rap, Hussle once sold his own mixtapes.
Nipsey Hussle may have only released “Victory Lap,” his debut studio album with a major label, last year, but he was already a veteran West Coast rapper.
A student of 1990s Los Angeles gangster rap, from N.W.A. and Dr. Dre to Kurupt and Snoop Dogg, Hussle started in hip-hop as a teenager on the mixtape circuit, often selling CDs in his neighborhood from the trunk of a car. He first gained some national attention beginning in 2008, with the mixtape trilogy “Bullets Ain’t Got No Name,” and after an ill-fated deal with Epic Records, focused on releasing music independently through his own All Money In label.
Like many rappers at the time, Hussle mixed original songs, like the synth-driven G-funk anthem “Hussle in the House,” with verses over others’ popular beats of the moment. In a slight rasp and distinctly L.A. cadences, he told street-level stories of gang life and growing up in Crenshaw with a wisened edge.
Hussle was also an inspired marketer, and his entrepreneurial streak made headlines in 2013, when he sold limited-edition physical copies of his mixtape “Crenshaw” for $100, despite it being available as a free download online. Jay-Z bought 100 copies, and his company Roc Nation would go on to manage Hussle as he attempted to reach new commercial heights.
Though he never scored a Billboard smash or national radio hit, Hussle steadily released music through the 2010s, drawing interest from Atlantic Records. “Victory Lap” was released by the label, in partnership with All Money In, last year and featured appearances by YG, Puff Daddy and Kendrick Lamar. The album debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard chart and received a nomination for best rap album at the Grammy Awards, where it lost to Cardi B’s “Invasion of Privacy.” (After his death, “Victory Lap” would return to the charts, reaching No. 2 this week thanks to a surge of interest on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.) — JOE COSCARELLI
Mourners from across the city are expected to honor the local hero.
The majority of mourners at the event are African-American and Latino, largely in their 20s and 30s. Many are wearing Nipsey Hussle memorial T-shirts or the famous “Crenshaw” shirts that were sold in Hussle’s clothing store. Members of the Eritrean community are wearing traditional clothing, some adorned with national flags.
The outpouring reflects the depth of admiration for Hussle, who incorporated his upbringing and experience as a gang member into his music, which spoke powerfully to many who live in Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods and well beyond. As his musical success propelled him in recent years, Hussle funneled investments to the South Los Angeles streets he had grown up on, earning devotion from fans, neighbors and local leaders.
The Marathon Clothing store that Hussle opened on Slauson Avenue in South Los Angeles was a potent symbol of black entrepreneurship. The store transformed into a makeshift memorial last month after Hussle was gunned down there over a “personal dispute,” according to the Los Angeles Police Department. — JENNIFER MEDINA
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/us/nipsey-hussle-funeral.html
2019-04-11 18:11:15Z
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Nipsey Hussle Celebration of Life Memorial Service: Live Updates - Entertainment Tonight
https://www.etonline.com/nipsey-hussle-celebration-of-life-memorial-service-2019-04-11-live-updates-now
2019-04-11 19:30:32Z
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At Nipsey Hussle’s Memorial, Los Angeles Comes Together to Mourn - The New York Times
LOS ANGELES — Thousands of mourners are expected to gather in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday to honor the life of Nipsey Hussle, the Grammy-nominated rapper who was fatally shot last month and whose success and commitment to redeveloping South Los Angeles made him a local hero.
The funeral, billed as a “celebration of life,” will be held at the Staples Center. All tickets for the event, which were free, were claimed online within minutes of being made available earlier this week. The arena’s capacity is 21,000.
Tens of thousands of fans are expected to gather around the venue, where a public memorial for Michael Jackson was hosted in 2009. The two-hour service will begin at 10 a.m. local time and will be followed by a procession from the Staples Center through South Los Angeles.
Hussle, born Ermias Joseph Asghedom, channeled his upbringing and adolescence as a gang member into music that spoke powerfully to many who live in Los Angeles’ most vulnerable neighborhoods. As his star rose in recent years, Hussle brought investments and attention back to the area, earning the adoration of his neighbors and fans.
Though he developed a following far beyond Southern California, his death last week struck a particularly painful chord among residents of the Crenshaw District, where he grew up. His clothing store on Slauson Avenue in South Los Angeles, The Marathon Clothing, had become a potent symbol of local success and black entrepreneurship, a theme he addressed regularly in his music. His fans clung to lyrics that melded familiar rap bombast with exaltations about self-discipline and long-term financial planning, a break from a music culture that often emphasizes flashy spending.
The store transformed into a makeshift memorial on March 31 after Hussle was gunned down there over a “personal dispute,” according to the Los Angeles Police Department. The suspect, Eric Holder, was apprehended by authorities two days after the shooting.
For days outside the store, fans prayed, lit candles and left hand-written letters addressed to Hussle. One of the mourners was Candace Cosey, 32, who remembers him as Ermias from their time attending Hamilton High School together in the early 2000s, a magnet school on the West Side of Los Angeles. She recalled how Hussle would sell mix CDs to her and others at school, and how he later started selling music in the neighborhood out of his trunk.
She came close to tears as she pulled out a picture of him from the high school yearbook. “If you grew up here, you either knew him directly or you knew someone who knew him,” she said.
Even as his career took off, Hussle remained approachable and “big hearted,” she said. As he amassed fame and wealth, he continued living modestly while making investments in businesses in the neighborhood. And he could be very generous. When a colleague passed away several years ago, Ms. Cosey approached Hussle’s team to see if he could help with the funeral expenses. He contributed several thousand dollars, she said.
“He was about uplifting us. He hired people from the neighborhood who wouldn’t have had a job otherwise. He took care of so many people, and he invested in what he believed in, here, because he grew up here,” she said. “We have to keep that work going. It’s what he was about.”
[Read more about the community’s reaction to Hussle’s death.]
Hussle’s death has drawn attention far beyond the Crenshaw District. Celebrities and political leaders across the country have offered their condolences to Hussle’s family and friends. In an interview last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti praised Hussle’s contributions to South Los Angeles, a community that he acknowledged has been historically overlooked by the city’s political establishment.
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Mr. Garcetti said Hussle embodied the very idea of black entrepreneurship, a critical component of lifting the community and its residents.
“He represented redemption and hope. He had come from the world of gangs and gotten out,” he said. “This is a devastating shock to the stomach. He was really ambitious — he wanted to get African Americans into tech, on top of his music game, on top of his businesses.”
“Then to be killed in such a clichéd way, by guns, for a beef in South L.A., it feeds into too many stereotypes,” he said.
Velma Sanders, 60, said she did not listen to Hussle’s music but, as a lifelong resident of South Los Angeles, she felt pride watching his career grow in recent years. His presence, she said, was felt by everyone.
“He would be out here. He showed you that he didn’t fear where he grew up. He was proud of it,” she said. “He was building up this community, giving back to this community. He took that money and instead of buying something luxurious, a big home or whatever, he put it back in his community so these would not be vacant buildings. It’s just beautiful.”
[Read an assessment of Hussle’s music and its place in hip-hop.]
Manuel Pastor, a professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California who has researched the demographics and culture of South Los Angeles, said Hussle’s killing “felt like a kick in the stomach.” He described Hussle as “a hometown guy lifting up his hometown.” Nothing illustrated this more, he said, than when Hussle and his girlfriend, the actress Lauren London, posed for a photo shoot in GQ in February at locations around South Los Angeles — not Hollywood, not downtown Los Angeles, not New York.
“This really hit hard. This was a hometown guy who stayed home,” said Mr. Pastor.
Mr. Pastor said Hussle had left the gang life but never rejected the culture of the community. Alienation and the search for identity amid violence and poverty often feed into gang culture, something Hussle spoke about openly.
“He did what many people ask of black celebrities, to come back to their community,” said Najee Ali, an activist in South Los Angeles who knew Hussle. He said the community is accustomed to feeling left behind when one of its own makes it big and finds fame.
“They all leave,” he said. “Hussle was the only one to stay in the community. He believed in the slogan, ‘Don’t move, improve.’ That’s what made him special.”
Hasani Leffall, 35, who knew Hussle, once worked for the rapper’s stepfather at a South Los Angeles restaurant called Bayou Grille. To emphasize the depth of feeling over Hussle’s murder within the black community of Los Angeles, he mentioned the murders of Tupac, Biggie Smalls, even Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Even with his fame, money and the support of the community, Hussle couldn’t escape the violence of the streets he rapped about.
Mr. Holder, the suspect in the killing, is an aspiring rapper who knew Hussle when he was younger. Mr. Holder, Mr. Leffall said, “represents a dark side about L.A., and a dark side about just men in L.A., in Crip life. There’s always somebody that just doesn’t like you, doesn’t like the fact that people love you.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/us/nipsey-funeral.html
2019-04-11 13:23:21Z
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Nipsey Hussle Memorial: Traffic Delays, Rolling Closures Expected For Memorial And Funeral Procession - CBS Los Angeles
The doors open at 8 a.m., and while cameras and recording devices will not be allowed at the memorial, the music subscription service Tidal will livestream the event to members and non-members alike.
Immediately following the service, a 25.5-mile funeral procession will wind its way through Inglewood, South Los Angeles and Watts.
Rolling street closures will be implemented along the funeral procession route, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. The route will start in Exposition Park, going by USC, make its way by Hussle’s childhood home, pass by The Marathon Clothing store, Hussle’s store and the site of his murder, and end at the Angelus Funeral Home.
Hussle, whose real name was Ermias Asghedom, will be buried at Forest Lawn cemetery.
The 33-year-old Grammy-nominated rapper was shot and killed in front of his clothing store on March 31. His murder sent shock waves through the music industry and the South LA community, which he had been investing in the form of his clothing store, an apartment building for low-income families and a barbershop. The day after he died, he had also been scheduled to meet with LAPD officials to discuss ways to end gang violence.
A gang member, Eric Holder, has been charged with Hussle’s murder. Police say Holder shot Hussle over a personal dispute.
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/04/11/nipsey-hussle-memorial-funeral-procession-staples-center-traffic-delays/
2019-04-11 15:07:00Z
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Los Angeles Is Mourning Nipsey Hussle. So Am I. - The New York Times
LOS ANGELES — I keep coming back to Nipsey Hussle’s vigil — the thousands of candles, flowers and handwritten notes — left where the rapper and activist was shot and killed outside his clothing store in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood on March 31. Every time I come back, I’m surrounded by a sea of black and brown faces and the sound of his music, which has now become the unofficial soundtrack of the city. The City of Los Angeles is in mourning.
The news came as a shock. It was Sunday around 4 p.m., and I was interviewing Randy Hook, a member of the Compton Cowboys — a group of 10 childhood friends who ride horses through Compton — when he put his phone down and said, “We lost Nipsey, man.” Then I began to receive text messages, 20 to be exact. I went on social media, and my fear was confirmed: We had, in fact, lost Nipsey.
Part of the reason his death was so shocking was that I believed that, in some ways, he was invincible. He often rapped about death, but I believed that Nipsey had figured out a way to overcome the often brutal realities of Los Angeles street life. That was not the case.
Nipsey Hussle, born Ermias Joseph Asghedom, and I were the same age, 33, and briefly attended Hamilton High School together. At Hamilton, he was more committed to playing basketball than he was to rapping, but it’s almost no surprise that the rapper came out of that school. Prominent Los Angeles musicians like Syd from The Internet and Kamasi Washington, a jazz artist, also attended it.
Nipsey and I never met, but we had mutual friends, and it always seemed as if I knew him. Maybe it was the sound of his voice — a blend of Southern drawl and laid-back West Coast popular here — or his style of clothing that felt like home. Maybe it was because we both grew up in the same era, both grew up going to the Fox Hills Mall on weekends, and both grew up shopping at the Slauson Swapmeet. Maybe it was because every time he spoke, I heard the city I grew up in: a community of black and brown people trying to combat daily bouts with hardship and loss with unyielding joy and love.
The City of Los Angeles appreciated Nipsey for so many reasons: He was an activist who supported his community and gave back — without boasting about it on social media — in ways that continue to be revealed as each day passes. Nipsey unapologetically believed in Los Angeles and represented it at a time when so many of the people and landmarks that we grew up with have changed or have closed down. Every time he rapped about Crenshaw or Slauson Boulevard in a song, he preserved our memory of it, even as the city’s landscape changes and leaves many of us wondering what’s next.
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Nipsey had his flaws. He made comments about masculinity that some said were homophobic. He acknowledged on “The Breakfast Club,” a popular radio show, that he still had a lot of growing up to do.
But at a time when so many residents of South L.A. are displaced, Nipsey reinvested a part of the money he made from music into the community that raised him. He was a co-founder of a space called Vector90, which was a ’hood version of WeWork, accessible to people in the community, with an emphasis in STEM for young people of color. He bought up the entire strip mall — the same one where he first sold music from the trunk of his car — that was home to his Marathon clothing store, a space invested in fostering a positive environment for the community. And he gave back generously to the 59th Street elementary school he attended as a child.
We saw ourselves in Nipsey, because, in many ways, he was part of us.
Some people have rightfully noted his past involvement with the Rollin’ 60s Crips, one of Los Angeles’s most notorious street gangs. Allowing that to define his legacy is not only reductive but is also missing the larger point: Like so many other black and brown youth from his community, Nipsey was shaped by forces far beyond his control. At some point, though, Nipsey recognized that being an active member of a gang wasn’t the only way to live. Music became an outlet for his thoughts and ideas about the world.
In many ways, Nipsey was a journalist like me. He wrote and documented the things he experienced and used vivid descriptions and rich metaphors. Songs like “Dedication,” “Blue Laces 2” and “Keys 2 the City” were autobiographical testimonies told through the lens of someone fighting both to preserve a memory and redefine the negative image of his life and community. Nobody could tell it better than he could; he was the expert in his own story.
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His story was ours, too.
When “Victory Lap,” his first studio album, was nominated for a Grammy this February, my friends and I felt as if we had just been nominated for one too. We were proud and hopeful, sharing text messages about our favorite songs the week the album came out. It felt like the beginning of Nipsey’s ascent into the upper echelon of mainstream success, after nearly 15 years of putting out some of our favorite mix tapes.
Some people are comparing his death with that of Tupac Shakur,the rapper who was reportedly killed by rival gang violence 23 years ago. The motive for Nipsey’s death is still pending. But some similarities are uncanny: Each one died by gun violence, loved his community, and showed wisdom far beyond his years. Since Nipsey’s death, the city has felt somber, deflated, even.
In the end it was Nipsey’s unwavering commitment to frequent his community as an everyman — to stay connected to the “streets” — that felt like a double-edged sword. On one hand it’s why we loved him, he was accessible, he was humble and his energy was pure; but it was that very connection that, ultimately, led to his killing. And that’s what makes the loss of Nipsey so unbearable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/us/nipsey-hussle-death.html
2019-04-11 15:22:30Z
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