Photographs are relics, but we tend to think of video differently: as surveillance, a transparent lens, a perpetual present. Bino Rideaux doesn’t have the luxury of seeing it that way. Speaking to POW founder Jeff Weiss, the 33-year-old rapper from South Central cites the music video for his 2015 single “100 Days 100 Nights” as proof of just how much things can change, and just how many people get left behind. “It’s a lot of faces in there that I ain’t seen in years,” he says, noting the numerous funerals and incarcerations that now blot out the younger visages in the footage. But music is one of the ways people can be remembered, celebrated, frozen in time.
This week, Bino is the conduit for remembering one of Los Angeles’s modern musical heroes, Nipsey Hussle, who was murdered in March 2019. Nipsey was a mentor to Bino, and in 2017 the pair released a joint mixtape, the pointed No Pressure. Shortly after, they returned to the studio to make the follow-up, PROLIFIC, an album that is glossier and more melodic, but retains the predecessor’s edge and credibility.
The Legacy of PROLIFIC
PROLIFIC was mostly finished—even down to the sequencing and artwork—before Nipsey’s death. But for more than seven years, the team overseeing his estate (chiefly his brother, Blacc Sam), has been judicious about releasing anything from the vaults. Finally, they decided, the time was right to let the world hear what this duo, perfect complements and counterweights to one another, had done together.
Watch the video above to hear Bino speak about the way his family fostered his talent, writing his first rap to a Nelly beat, and the influence Nipsey had on him, in this life and beyond.