How Blacc Sam & Bino Rideaux Continued Nipsey Hussle’s Marathon With ‘Prolific’: ‘His Music Is Timeless — Billboard

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How Blacc Sam & Bino Rideaux Continued Nipsey Hussle’s Marathon With ‘Prolific’: ‘His Music Is Timeless — Billboard | AIPROPX

Nipsey Hussle once said, “The highest human act is to inspire.” Seven years after his tragic passing, that inspiration refuses to fade.

When fellow South Central rapper Bino Rideaux and Hussle’s older brother and business partner, Blacc Sam (born Samiel Asghedom), pull up to the Billboard office during their NYC press run for Prolific — Hussle’s collab album with Bino and the late rapper’s first posthumous project — they’re rolling 25 people deep: a record that won’t be broken anytime soon when it comes to artist visits.

With a lineup large enough to make up an MLB roster, there’s a certain intentionality in making sure everyone from the All Money In family who had a hand in Nip’s journey was there for the ride, as if a piece of Hussle was carrying on through them too, picking up where the rapper, community leader, innovative entrepreneur and upstanding family man left off.

“Seeing the inspiration and how he inspires so many people, that’s what he wanted to do. That was really his mission,” Sam tells Billboard. “He was really happy to give any type of inspiration, and when he saw people use that inspiration, even if it was a little bit of inspiration from him, and succeed, that [thrilled] him.”

Hussle took a liking to a neophyte Bino, inviting him to the studio for a mid-2010s session, and the fuse was lit from there. Prolific , which Hussle has inked on his right temple, came together in 2017 across three straight months of being locked in at the NoName Studios in the Valley’s Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles. At the time, the building was leased to Ye (formerly Kanye West) and used as a hub for his G.O.O.D. Music label. The rap lore of NoName stretches back to the ‘90s when it was home to Death Row Records, where Dr. Dre and 2Pac made history.

Originally titled Single for the Summer , Bino’s smoky melodies easily mixed with Nip’s spoken wisdom and street savviness to form a potent combination, as they waxed poetic about their romantic escapades and relationship issues, while it was a more experimental Hussle than what was heard on Victory Lap .

“He was prepared to be vulnerable on these records and get out of the norm and just experiment a little bit,” Bino says, adding that Prolific was recorded before their 2017 joint project No Pressure . “This was the initial idea. More songs for women and a project aimed at real-life experiences we were going through at the time.”

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They pushed one another as each day brought something new at No Name. When they weren’t in the booth, Hussle showed Bino documentaries and other days saw the crew gambling outside while playing basketball and All Money In’s Hoggy (BH) grilling crab legs.

Studio breaks were traded for rooftop poolside trips to the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, which was captured in the Prolific cover art, approved by Hussle. “It’s constant workflow every day. Somebody doing something at all hours of the day for sure,” Bino adds. “It was easy for us to collab. For me, it was motivation to get up and go work with Nip Hussle every day. It was fun, bro.”

Production is helmed by frequent collaborators such as Mike & Keys, MYGUYMARS, AXL Folie and Rance 1500, while mixing duties were handled by MixedByAli and NOIS. Trunk-rattling drums, woozy basslines and even Caribbean rhythms make up the sonic palette, which doesn’t sound dated to nearly a decade ago when Nip and Bino cooked up Prolific .

“It’s like if you playing basketball, or got a workout partner — I know [Bino] motivated Hussle to stay on that,” Sam says of Nip and Bino pushing one another. “You’re getting Hussle and Bino at their finest, and them coming together for something neither could’ve created on their own.”

A rising Cardi B, Ty Dolla $ign, Buddy, BH, James Fauntleroy, Leon Thomas and a posthumous lift from the late Static Major are sprinkled in throughout the 15-track effort.

“I Just Wanna Know” finds Nip and Bino joining up with Cardi and Ty Dolla, while Hussle delivers a raunchy yet sleek chorus, part of which was first used on Ty and Ye’s Vultures album.

Sam remembers Nipsey championing Cardi from an early stage. “I didn’t really know who Cardi B was. So then, as we were seeing her go crazy, I was like, ‘We need to put that record on Victory Lap ,’” he recalls telling his brother. But Nip was intent on the track’s fit on Prolific .

“It’s just cool when you see somebody do what they say they’re gonna do. That is like the coolest s–t ever — because there’s so many people that just talk, and nothing ever happens,” Ty Dolla $ign says of his Hamilton High School classmate. “[Nipsey] set it up to where we’re still talking, and it still matters. It’s bigger than rap, it’s bigger than a song. It’s bigger than all the generic bulls–t you hear today.”

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The long-awaited “500 Horses” lives up to the hype as worthy of the pantheon of Nipsey Hussle gems, while “All Summer” is the perfect drop-top cruise tune to survive the sweltering West Coast heat. Prolific comes to a fitting close on “Bacc of the Bach,” with Nip explaining his definition of The Marathon and how he felt he needed to reinvent himself as a hustler, pivoting from his Bullets Ain’t Got No Name series.

From the sequencing to the artwork , Prolific is essentially as Hussle intended, outside of a few later production tweaks and Leon Thomas’ soothing assist, which was a welcome addition to the fold. “Somebody new walked in there trying to get on the mic, and I didn’t know who it was, and so we was like, ‘Nah, we’re not doing this,’” Sam recalls of Thomas’ contribution. “Once we seen what he did, it was dope as f–k!”

Hussle personally delivered Prolific to Blacc Sam circa late 2017 and raved about the project and intended to release it as his next endeavor post- Victory Lap . Following Nipsey’s death in March 2019, Sam couldn’t even listen to his brother’s music. As time passed, he became ...