Nipsey Hussle Songs: The Marathon in Order, From the Mixtapes to Victory Lap and Beyond

Most lists of Nipsey Hussle songs treat his catalog like a playlist: hits up top, shuffle the rest. That misses the point. Ermias Asghedom built his career like a business plan, and each era of his music soundtracked a specific ownership move: the trunk-of-the-car tapes on Slauson, the label he started after walking away from Epic, the $100 mixtape that Jay-Z’s company paid $10,000 for, the debut album he held back until it was ready, and the run that ended with two Grammys he never got to hold. This is the Marathon in order, song by song.

If you’re new to Nip, this is your map. If you’ve been rocking with him since Bullets Ain’t Got No Name, this is the receipts file. Either way, we’re doing it the way he would have wanted: with the numbers attached.

Why Nipsey Hussle’s Songs Read Like a Business Plan

Plenty of rappers talk about money. Nipsey talked about equity, which is a different conversation. Plenty of rappers rap about getting rich. Nipsey rapped about owning the masters, the store, the building the store sat in, and eventually the plaza around it. The songs aren’t separate from the business. They’re the quarterly reports.

That’s why the usual “top 10 Nipsey songs” format falls flat. Pull “Grinding All My Life” out of context and it’s a great club record. Put it back in sequence, as the payoff of a thirteen-year independent run that started with a CD in a trunk, and it reads like a thesis statement.

The Name Was the Thesis

The stage name is a play on the comedian and game-show regular Nipsey Russell. Per his own telling, a childhood acquaintance gave it to him as a nod to his work ethic: the kid who was always hustling. Before the music, there was a shoe-shine kit. The Los Angeles Times reported that at 11 he was shining shoes at $2.50 a pair to buy his own school clothes, with a goal of a hundred shoes a day.

Then came the trip that rewired him. In 2004, at 19, his father Dawit, an Eritrean immigrant who came to Los Angeles in the 1970s, took Ermias and his brother Samiel (later known to the world as Blacc Sam) on a three-month trip to Eritrea. Nipsey credited that trip with giving him his entrepreneurial spirit and his sense of community responsibility. Everything after it, from the label to the store to the co-working space, came from that same idea.

The Trunk at Slauson and Crenshaw

Before streaming, before DSP playlists, Nipsey sold his mixtapes out of a car trunk in the strip mall at Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard. Remember that corner. He came up on it, sold CDs on it, opened his flagship store on it, bought the plaza it sits in, and the City of Los Angeles eventually renamed the intersection after him. No other rapper’s career is tied this tightly to one corner. The songs keep returning to it, from the Slauson Boy tapes to “Crenshaw and Slauson (True Story).”

The Mixtape Marathon: Bullets Ain’t Got No Name to The Marathon Continues (2005–2012)

The first stretch of the catalog is pure mixtape grind, and it’s where the vocabulary of the whole career gets built: Slauson, the Marathon, All Money In.

Slauson Boy and the Bullets Trilogy

The very first release was Slauson Boy, dropped independently on December 13, 2005. Local success got him signed to Cinematic Music Group and Epic Records. Then came the series that broke him past the neighborhood: Bullets Ain’t Got No Name Vol. 1 (August 25, 2008), Vol. 2 (December 4, 2008) and Vol. 3 (August 4, 2009).

The Nipsey Hussle songs to know from this era:

• “Bullets Ain’t Got No Names” (2008): the title record and his first lead single, raw street reporting from the Rollin’ 60s side of Crenshaw.
• “Hussle in the House”: his commercial debut single, built on Kris Kross’s 1992 smash “Jump.” Critics liked it. The charts ignored it, and that taught him something about what the label system could and couldn’t do for him.
• “They Roll” featuring The Game: an early L.A. co-sign from one of the city’s biggest names at the time.

Off the tapes, the features were piling up too. He showed up next to Snoop Dogg and Problem on “Upside Down” from Snoop’s 2009 album Malice n Wonderland, and on the West Coast remix of Dorrough’s “Ice Cream Paint Job” with Snoop, E-40, Soulja Boy and Jim Jones.

Walking Away From Epic

Here’s the first real business move. Epic hit financial trouble in 2010, and instead of renewing his deal, Nipsey walked. His planned debut album, South Central State of Mind, had a lineup of J.R. Rotem, Scott Storch and Terrace Martin on production, plus a single with Lloyd (“Feelin’ Myself,” which got to No. 93 on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart). It got shelved for good.

Same year, XXL put him in its Freshman class and labeled him “Most Determined.” LA Weekly called him the “next big L.A. MC.” Most artists in that position chase the major-label debut harder. Nipsey started his own label, All Money In.

The Marathon and The Marathon Continues

The first All Money In release, The Marathon, landed on December 21, 2010, the exact date the shelved Epic album had been pushed to. That one sneaked onto the Billboard 200 at No. 179, which is a real number for a self-released tape. The Marathon Continues followed on November 1, 2011, with L.A. running mates YG and Dom Kennedy on board.

Two records from this run became fan-canon singles: “Keys 2 the City” from The Marathon and “Run a Lap” from The Marathon Continues. Both later got proper iTunes releases in 2013. That shows how long his independent records kept earning, years after they first went out free. The title also gave the culture a phrase. “The Marathon Continues” started as a mixtape name and turned into a philosophy, then a clothing brand, then the line people wrote on murals across South L.A.

In 2012 he also connected with Rick Ross on “Proud of That” and the Maybach Music Group posse cut “Fountain of Youth.” Signing rumors followed, and he didn’t sign. He’d decided the third Marathon chapter, TM3: Victory Lap, would be his debut album and not just another tape, and he wasn’t giving up creative control to get it out.

Crenshaw and the $100 Proud2Pay Play: The Nipsey Hussle Songs Behind Hip-Hop’s Boldest Independent Move

This is the chapter everybody half-remembers, so let’s get the details right, because these are the Nipsey Hussle songs that changed how independent rap gets sold.

The Math

Crenshaw, hosted by DJ Drama, dropped October 8, 2013, as a free download on mixtape sites. That part gets forgotten. The music was free. What cost $100 was a physical, numbered, autographed first edition limited to 1,000 copies, sold from a midnight pop-up shop on Fairfax. Buyers also got perks: a ticket to an upcoming L.A. show, and for some, a personal phone call from Nip, signed photos, or an invite to the studio to hear early Victory Lap material.

It sold out in under 24 hours. That’s $100,000 off what Nipsey himself called his “album throw-aways,” the leftover Victory Lap sessions he’d themed into a Crenshaw tape. Billboard put the pressing cost at about 75 cents a CD, a gross margin north of 1,300% before recording costs. He branded the whole campaign Proud2Pay, and he explained it to RapRadar like a business-school case study:

“It’s 2013. Whether we accept it or not, buying music is a choice, not a requisite… it’s a value over volume thing.”

Value over volume. Don’t chase strangers. Serve the people who already ride with you, and charge what the relationship is worth. A decade later, that’s how every superfan-tier strategy in music works. Nipsey ran it out of a pop-up with a cash box.

“Hov Respects the Move”

Then came the receipt that made the move famous. Nipsey later told MTV he got a DM from a hip-hop journalist saying “Hov respects the move,” followed by an email from his team: Roc Nation wanted 100 copies. Jay-Z’s company wired $10,000 and got 100 CDs back. (The common version says “Jay-Z personally bought 100 copies.” The documented version is his label, Roc Nation, buying on his behalf. Same co-sign, more accurate receipt.) If you want the backstory on the empire that sent that wire, our Roc-A-Fella Records breakdown covers how Hov learned the ownership lesson himself.

The Crenshaw Songs to Know

• “U See Us”: an early-tape highlight and a mission statement. It even got serviced to UK urban radio in December 2013.
• “Checc Me Out” featuring Dom Kennedy and Cobby Supreme: the first official single, released September 26, 2013. Cobby would later co-found the AMB store with Nip.
• “Face the World”: 9th Wonder on the boards, a rare East Coast-leaning beat in the catalog and one of his most reflective verses.
• “The Weather” featuring Rick Ross: Maybach luxury rap filtered through Slauson.
• “Crenshaw and Slauson (True Story)”: the closer, a roughly 12-minute piece with a spoken-word outro and a hidden track. It’s the origin story told at the intersection where it all happened.

The tape held up as more than a stunt. XXL named Crenshaw the second-best mixtape of 2013, and in 2022 Rolling Stone ranked it No. 189 on its list of the 200 greatest hip-hop albums of all time. That’s a free mixtape on a canon list.

Mailbox Money: Raising the Price Tenfold

Here’s where a lot of write-ups slip, including some big reference pages: they say Mailbox Money repeated the 1,000-copies-at-$100 formula. It didn’t. When the tape dropped on New Year’s Eve 2014, Nipsey cut the run to 100 copies and raised the price to $1,000 each, as he laid out in his Complex interview at the time. The free download stayed free. Ten times the price for a tenth of the copies is the same “value over volume” idea, pushed further.

Musically, Mailbox Money is the one where the title says the strategy out loud. Mailbox money is passive income, the checks that show up whether you clock in or not. “Count Up That Loot” was one of its singles. The tape reached No. 8 on Billboard‘s Heatseekers chart, his best showing there yet. In 2016 he followed with Slauson Boy 2, which reached No. 104 on the Billboard 200, and he teamed with YG on “FDT,” a Gold-certified protest record he said was shaped by his positive experiences with Mexican immigrant communities in L.A.

Mailbox Money to Victory Lap: Grinding All My Life, Last Time That I Checc’d, Double Up, Dedication

Announced in 2013 and delayed repeatedly, Victory Lap finally landed on February 16, 2018, through All Money In and Atlantic Records. It was the first major commercial release after thirteen years of mixtapes, and the only solo studio album released in his lifetime. It debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 with 53,000 units, earned a Best Rap Album nomination at the 61st Grammys (it lost to Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy), and in February 2023 the RIAA certified it double platinum.

Pitchfork’s Sheldon Pearce called it “the most gripping record in his catalog.” The Guardian crowned him the “crown prince of G-funk’s new school.” Here are the Nipsey Hussle songs that carry it.

“Victory Lap” featuring Stacy Barthe

The title track opens the album with a crate-digger detail most fans miss: it interpolates “Knee Socks” by the Arctic Monkeys, which is why Alex Turner has a writing credit on a Crenshaw rap album. Lauren London adds background vocals. It went platinum.

“Last Time That I Checc’d” featuring YG

Released January 19, 2018, as the second single, it was Nipsey’s first song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 (No. 76) and is now certified 2x platinum. The video, co-directed by Blacc Sam, puts Nipsey in front of a blue wall with a white Lamborghini and YG in front of a red wall with a black one. For two artists from opposite sides of L.A.’s neighborhood color lines, the staging speaks for itself, and it matches how Nipsey operated: he made a point of working with Blood-affiliated artists to set an example.

“Grinding All My Life”

The Murda Beatz-produced anthem started life as a leak called “Grindin,” which surfaced in March 2017 on the soundtrack of the video game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, almost a year before the album. Nipsey told NPR exactly what he was going for: “I told Murda Beatz I needed something for the club… All my life I’ve been grinding. I stopped going to school when I was 14 and I was self-educated since then.” The video is the business plan on camera: counting cash, shipping orders, a bank deposit, and a stop at the Marathon Clothing store. 2x platinum.

“Hussle & Motivate”

The chorus samples “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” from Annie, the same flip Jay-Z cleared for his 1998 smash. That’s why Shawn Carter has a writing credit here. According to the clearance story DJBooth reported, Nip needed Hov’s sign-off to use the sample, which makes this the second time Jay-Z’s operation put its name on a Nipsey project. The song’s reach went well past rap circles. Michelle Obama put it on her 2020 workout playlist. 2x platinum.

“Double Up” featuring Belly and Dom Kennedy

This is the highest-certified song on the album at 3x platinum, and it came with the most ambitious video of his career: an 11-minute short film starring Lauren London and Jackie Long. It follows a young hustler in 2007 and the girl who leaves the life, then picks up ten years later when he’s fully legit. Nipsey told Billboard the story was autobiographical.

“Dedication” featuring Kendrick Lamar

Two of L.A.’s most serious minds on one track, and it went platinum. The connection outlived the song: Kendrick’s 2022 video for “The Heart Part 5” digitally morphed his face into Nipsey’s while he rapped about his legacy. If Kendrick is your entry point to West Coast rap, the Kendrick Lamar Vintage T-Shirt is the one we made for heads who hear that lineage, and our Kendrick Lamar GNX deep dive traces where the city’s sound went next.

“Blue Laces 2” and the Deep Cuts

A sequel to his earlier “Blue Laces,” it rides a Willie Hutch sample (“Give Me Some of That Good Old Love”), pure soul-sample DNA from the Motown-era composer who scored The Mack. It’s platinum too. And the less-talked-about album cuts (“Status Symbol 3” with Buddy, “Million While You Young” with The-Dream, “Loaded Bases” with CeeLo Green, “Real Big” with Marsha Ambrosius, “Right Hand 2 God”) are all certified Gold. Most of Victory Lap is certified now.

Racks in the Middle and the Posthumous Nipsey Hussle Songs

On February 15, 2019, Nipsey released “Racks in the Middle” featuring Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy, who also produced it. Roddy has said the beat started as a session between him and Hit-Boy. Nip heard it, claimed it, and told a skeptical Roddy that “the streets are going to feel that.” Rolling Stone noted that it sounded more radio-friendly than his usual records while keeping his “radical honesty.”

It was the last single he released. On March 31, 2019, Nipsey Hussle was killed outside his Marathon Clothing store at Slauson and Crenshaw. He was 33. His memorial filled the Staples Center, and a 25.5-mile funeral procession wound through South Los Angeles, past crowds lining the streets.

The Grammys He Earned

“Racks in the Middle” went on to peak at No. 26 on the Hot 100, his highest-charting song as a lead artist, and is now certified 4x platinum. At the 62nd Grammy Awards in January 2020 it won Best Rap Performance, Nipsey’s first Grammy, accepted by his family and Lauren London.

The second came the same night. “Higher,” DJ Khaled’s record with Nipsey and John Legend, was filmed before his death and released May 17, 2019. Khaled routed proceeds to Nipsey’s children, and the song won Best Rap/Sung Performance. Khaled has described playing Nip the beat over lunch, leaving to give him space, and coming back to find him already writing. Complex ranked that verse the best on the album.

The Features That Kept the Marathon Running

• “Deep Reverence” (Big Sean featuring Nipsey Hussle, 2020): a Detroit-meets-Crenshaw reflection that reached No. 82 on the Hot 100.
• “What It Feels Like” (with Jay-Z, 2021): from Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album, peaking at No. 51. A proper collaboration, eight years after the Crenshaw co-sign.
• “Diamond Mind” (with Dr. Dre and Ty Dolla $ign, 2022): from the Grand Theft Auto Online: The Contract update, putting Nip on a Dre beat. That’s the full West Coast lineage, from The Chronic to Crenshaw, in one record. We made a Dr. Dre The Chronic T-Shirt for heads who can draw that line.

Prolific (2026): The Album He Finished in 2017

The newest chapter came out two months ago. Prolific, a 15-track collaborative album with longtime partner Bino Rideaux, was released August 14, 2026, through All Money In, Out The Blue and Atlantic, one day before what would have been Nipsey’s 41st birthday. It was recorded in 2017, around their joint tape No Pressure. Blacc Sam has been explicit that it’s not a posthumous compilation pieced together from scraps but a complete body of work the two finished together. “Reckless” and “Sacrifices” were the lead singles. If you want the birthday-week context, our Today in Hip-Hop entry for Nipsey’s 41st marked the moment.

Where to Start: A 10-Song Nipsey Hussle Starter Pack

Ten Nipsey Hussle songs, in career order, so you hear the business plan play out instead of a shuffled greatest-hits rip:

1. “Bullets Ain’t Got No Names” (2008): where the voice starts. Rollin’ 60s street reporting, before any of the ownership talk.
2. “Hussle in the House” (2009): the major-label single that didn’t chart, which is the lesson that led to All Money In.
3. “Keys 2 the City” (The Marathon, 2010): the first independent chapter.
4. “Checc Me Out” featuring Dom Kennedy and Cobby Supreme (Crenshaw, 2013): the soundtrack to the $100 pop-up.
5. “Crenshaw and Slauson (True Story)” (2013): twelve minutes at the corner where all of it happened.
6. “Last Time That I Checc’d” featuring YG (2018): the first Hot 100 entry, blue wall and red wall.
7. “Grinding All My Life” (2018): the thesis statement, with Murda Beatz.
8. “Hussle & Motivate” (2018): the Annie flip with a Jay-Z clearance behind it.
9. “Racks in the Middle” featuring Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy (2019): the last single and the first Grammy.
10. “Higher” with DJ Khaled and John Legend (2019): the second Grammy, with proceeds going to his kids.

Once those land, go back for full projects: Crenshaw start to finish, then Victory Lap, then Prolific. Dig the features too. “FDT” with YG, “Fountain of Youth” with Rick Ross and “Deep Reverence” with Big Sean all show how far his circle reached beyond L.A.

Nipsey Hussle Songs FAQ

What is Nipsey Hussle’s most popular song?

By chart and certification numbers, it’s “Racks in the Middle” featuring Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy: his highest Hot 100 peak as a lead artist (No. 26), 4x platinum, and his first Grammy. “Double Up” (3x platinum) and “Grinding All My Life” and “Hussle & Motivate” (both 2x platinum) are right behind it. Among his features, “Higher” with DJ Khaled and John Legend reached No. 21 on the Hot 100.

How many albums did Nipsey Hussle have?

Two studio albums: Victory Lap (2018), his only solo studio album, and the posthumous collaborative album Prolific with Bino Rideaux (August 2026). Most of his catalog lives on mixtapes, fourteen of them by Wikipedia’s count, including Slauson Boy, the three Bullets Ain’t Got No Name volumes, The Marathon, The Marathon Continues, Crenshaw, Mailbox Money, Slauson Boy 2 and No Pressure.

What is Nipsey Hussle’s real name?

Ermias Joseph Asghedom. He was born Airmiess Joseph Asghedom on August 15, 1985, in Los Angeles, and raised in the Crenshaw District by his mother Angelique Smith and his Eritrean father Dawit Asghedom.

What are the best Nipsey Hussle songs about grinding?

“Grinding All My Life” is the obvious one, and the title is the whole message. Add “Hussle & Motivate,” “Count Up That Loot” from Mailbox Money, “Million While You Young” with The-Dream, and “Racks in the Middle.” For the closest thing to the grind on film, watch the “Grinding All My Life” / “Stucc in the Grind” two-part video, which shows the daily routine of running an independent business.

What does “The Marathon Continues” mean?

It started as the title of his 2011 mixtape and became his core philosophy: success is a long race you keep running, not a sprint or a single hit. After 2019 it became a rallying cry. The intersection of Slauson and Crenshaw was renamed Ermias “Nipsey Hussle” Asghedom Square, the nearby Metro K Line station was dedicated to him and the Crenshaw community in 2022, and he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 15, 2022, his 37th birthday. For the documentary project LeBron James backed, see our coverage of the Nipsey Hussle docuseries.

Did Jay-Z really buy Nipsey Hussle’s mixtape?

Yes, through Roc Nation. The label bought 100 copies of Crenshaw at $100 each, $10,000 total, in October 2013. Jay-Z later appeared on the posthumous “What It Feels Like” (2021), and his name is in the writing credits on “Hussle & Motivate” because of the “Hard-Knock Life” sample.

Final Thoughts: The Catalog Is the Blueprint

Played in order, Nipsey Hussle songs tell one long story: a kid selling CDs out of a trunk on Slauson ends up owning the plaza, and he never pretends any of it was easy. He walked away from a major label before most people knew his name. He charged $100 for a free mixtape and sold out. Then he raised the price to $1,000. He held his debut back for nearly five years and still made a double-platinum album. Every record is a receipt for a decision.

That’s why the culture still says “The Marathon Continues.” If the independent-hustle side of hip-hop is your lane, our Griselda Records deep dive shows another crew that built its own lane without asking permission, and the Body Count band members piece covers the Crenshaw High roots of Ice-T’s crew, whose 2020 song “When I’m Gone” was written for Nipsey.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team