Nipsey Hussle honored as hometown hero with star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
Nipsey Hussle posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday as his hometown of Los Angeles continues to honor the rapper's legacy three years after his killing.
Family and friends of the rapper, including his longtime girlfriend Lauren London, attended the ceremony on Hollywood Boulevard in front of Amoeba Music, which was streamed live on the Hollywood Walk of Fame website. Monday would have been the rapper's 37th birthday.
"I think I speak for the entire city of LA when I say that we've always known that Hussle was destined for greatness," London said at the ceremony on Monday. "Nip would've been honored by this moment."
"You've been a pillar in our family in the community. You poured into me from day one and I've always been so amazed and impressed at the example that you set," Hussle's sister Samantha Smith said at the ceremony.
Nipsey Hussle, known as "Neighborhood Nip," dedicated his life to building the streets of Crenshaw in South Los Angeles where he grew up. It is on those streets where the rapper, whose full name is Ermias Asghedom, was killed on March 31, 2019, outside his Marathon Clothing store.
Los Angeles officials dedicated a new Metro station in Hyde Park in his name last week, not far from where his Marathon clothing store was located, according to Los Angeles ABC station KABC.
"I think he would want everyone to remember that you can't get to what's possible unless you commit to moving forward," London said on Monday. "That doesn't mean forgetting where you've come from, but it requires acknowledging the reality you were born into and the power you have to change that reality for the better.
"So whenever you're in the city of angels, and you see this star, I hope that it encourages you to break away from whatever might be holding you back, and for you to run your marathon until God says that it's finished," she added.
Eric Holder Jr., an acquaintance of Hussle and an aspiring rapper from the same neighborhood, was charged and found guilty of his murder on July 6. Holder's attorney told ABC News that his client intends to appeal. He is set to be sentenced on Sept. 15.
Both Hussle and Holder belonged to the same gang, the Rollin 60s of the Crips, but in the last years of his life, Hussle had worked to stop the violence and broker peace between rival gangs.
"He got people to understand that people who come from where we come from can accomplish great things," La Tanya Ward, a community organizer in south Los Angeles, told "Good Morning America."
Ward, who was affiliated with the Black P Stones Blood gang, previously told "Nightline" that Hussle's tragic death was felt by members of both the Bloods and the Crips and for her, the common grief was an opportunity to bring them together.
"I went on my Instagram and I saw that the Bloods and the Crips I follow were all equally sad," she told "Nightline." "So I just felt like it was like a good opportunity to basically play on that."
Ward organized a peace march in Crenshaw in 2020 and said members of gangs from all over Los Angeles attended.
"It was just unreal," she said.
The Marathon Clothing store has since closed and the site has become a memorial for the rapper, but according to a representative for his family, a new Marathon Clothing store at a different location is set to open by the end of the year.
Hussle's brother Samiel Asghedom, who is set to attend the ceremony on Monday, spoke with ABC News days after the rapper's death and reflected on how he will remember his younger brother.
"He was a brother, a musician, an entrepreneur, a people's champ," Asghedom told ABC News in April 2019.
"He was somebody that believed in the process of hard work, determination and just the positivity of somebody staying in the area that he grew up in and making something out of nothing," Asghedom said. "... he was a role model to the community, to the kids, and to the mothers and the grandmothers and the community that watched him grow up and seen him as a youngster, (and now) a family man, a father, raising his kids."
The rapper received five Grammy nominations and won two posthumous Grammy Awards in 2020, where he was honored with a musical tribute.
