Getting Nipsey Hussle’s story right has mattered more to his family than getting it out quickly. During a new appearance on the Bootleg Kev Podcast, Blacc Sam explained why the long-discussed docuseries about his brother has taken years to complete. He revealed that the team has been willing to finance the project themselves rather than hand over control simply to secure a release.
“We got shelved for a while because we didn’t want to sell it to certain individuals and certain companies that were kinda trying to come in and take creative control,” Sam said. “So, we've just been taking a step back and doing it the long way. Self-financing it a hundred thousand at a time.”
The result has grown into something much larger than a traditional feature documentary. Sam said the current version runs roughly eight or nine episodes and draws from an enormous archive assembled from throughout Nipsey’s life. “We got footage from everywhere. Footage from things I didn’t even think existed,” he explained. “We have hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage to go through.”
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An Intimate Look At Nipsey's Life
That material reaches back well before Victory Lap or The Marathon Clothing store. Sam said viewers will see Nipsey as a child and follow the period when he first began teaching himself the ins and outs of music. The series also documents his early hustling years before tracing the point when music stopped being something he was experimenting with and became the career he intended to build.
“We kinda just documented everything, from Hussle’s childhood to when he first learned how to record himself and make beats,” Sam said. He added that the archive includes footage from when Nipsey was “selling dope” in his neighborhood, along with moments that show how his ambitions began changing. Moreover, the family footage may prove just as revealing. Sam added that the series gets into Nipsey’s home life and the birth of his daughter, opening parts of his story that remained largely private even as his public profile grew. That level of access is one reason the project has remained episodic.
“We’re looking at another five to six months to just finish it,” he told Bootleg Kev. “Then, once it’s finished, there’s nothing up for critique or anything, this is it, then I wanna go and figure out where we’re gonna put it at.”
Sam also said that after completion, the priority will be to find a home capable of putting Nipsey’s story in front of the widest possible audience. Netflix is high on his wish list, although no distribution deal has been announced.
