Stic.man and M1 — collectively known as the revolutionary Hip Hop group dead prez — sat down for an interview with the Juan EP Is Dead podcast where they talked to co-hosts Peter Rosenberg and Cipha about their massive single “Hip Hop (It’s Bigger Than)” and classic 2000 debut Let’s Get Free.
During the conversation, stic revealed Nipsey Hussle actually wanted to redo Let’s Get Free — with their blessing, of course.
“I had a conversation with Nipsey Hussle before he passed, maybe a year ago, actually a little bit before that,” stic said around the 26-minute mark. “He had just solidified his deal with Atlantic Records. I had met him before through a friend Zayd Malik. We got on a jet and had a talk, and he told me about what he had been trying to do up until that point as an independent artist, and how he wanted his situation to be with Atlantic, he had made certain personal goals so he could partner with them.
“He wanted to talk to me about his three album mission, which was to do Victory Lap, another album, and then his third one, which was his last final one he would owe Atlantic, and call it The Spook Who Sat by the Door and he told me he wanted to redo Let’s Get Free and wanted our permission. Right, to sample and redo it for what he called ‘his generation’ with all of the admiration he had for that record. We just had a heart-to-heart, back and forth, but obviously we didn’t get to go there. But I wanted to talk about the type of heart Nip had and where he was coming from, as it relates to that.”
M-1 then chimed in on how he felt the day he learned Nip had been murdered, saying, “It hit me hard man, the day he got shot, I had just landed in Cali for a boxing film I was a part of. As soon as I landed, it was blowing up on the phone. Where Nip was going with it man, is definitely in a lot of ways, tribally speaking, we were in the same space.”
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Neighborhood Nip was shot and killed on March 31, 2019 outside of his Marathon Clothing store in South Central Los Angeles. Suspect Eric Holder was arrested three days later and is currently behind bars awaiting trial. While Nip never got to see the Let’s Get Free remake come to fruition, he released several impactful projects before his passing, including the Grammy Award-nominated album Victory Lap.
Bigger Than Hip Hop: How dead prez Is Improving The World
Earlier this month, Nipsey’s estate celebrated the 10-year anniversary of The Marathon with a special YouTube event called The Marathon Visual Album Experience. As the two-year anniversary of his death inches closer, fans can expect more from his team. According to All Money In rapper J Stone, a posthumous follow-up to Victory Lap is in the works.
“It’s gonna definitely be another Nip album,” he said during a December 2020 interview with Bootleg Kev. “But it’s All Money In, we ain’t gonna put out nothing Mickey or do it just because. Rest in peace in ‘Pac. If they would have held on to his music a little bit more, it would have been received different. But the music was still good and we needed it at that time. Nip has his brand and his image so strong and tight like, you can’t do the ‘Pac on him with the Makaveli 1, Makaveli 15.”
