In mid-February 2018, rapper Nipsey Hussle released his first studio album, Victory Lap, a paean to his complicated relationship with Los Angeles gang life. While making the rounds on American hip hop radio stations and podcasts, if he wasn’t breaking down gang codes or marketing his various businesses, Nipsey kept returning to his roots beyond his South Central, Los Angeles neighborhood: his Eritrean immigrant background.

Ermias Asghedom’s father had fled the ongoing war and settled in US. By also celebrating his father’s background (his mother is African-American), Nipsey was partly reflecting what Boima Tucker described elsewhere on this site as “a resurgence of an unbridled enthusiasm for Africa in black America.” In recent times, American artists of African immigrant background have openly made connections to their parents’ homelands public and explicit. Issa Rae has done so on television, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira and Daniel Kaluuya on film and Wale and French Montana have done so in music. The comedian Tiffany Haddish, another Los Angeles native, is also foregrounding her Eritrean background. Haddish recently traveled to Eritrea then wore a traditional outfit to the The Oscars. It is obvious that Haddish’s new found connection to Eritrea, has added to her confidence as a public figure. This is in contrast to a generation ago when the children of African immigrants to the US downplayed their family connections in fear of attracting ridicule.

In 2004, when he turned 18, Nipsey traveled with his father and brother, Samiel “Black Sam” Asghedom, to Asmara, the Eritrean capital and stayed three months. This trip would have a profound influence on him. Beyond just a celebration of his African heritage, it would become part of his personal mythology. It appears as inspiration for his brand of capitalism.

Nipsey admits that at first it wasn’t so easy arriving for the first time in his father’s home country:

I experienced culture shock. The shit that we rely on day-to-day out here, your cell phone, Internet, e-mail, and your females, [laughs] and your daily movement, it’s all cut off once you get out there. It’s more about the interaction with people.

However, as illustrated in an interview with popular New York City radio station, Hot 97, in February, he ultimately credits that trip with giving him a connection to his roots, and widening his worldview beyond South Central, motivating him to achieve the success that he has. He explains that he was impressed with Eritrea’s communal culture, which “filled in a blank spot for me, as far as understanding myself.” And, in an interview back in LA on a local station there, he said “as far as I am a black person from America, I am a black person from Africa too.” When asked whether it was weird to be in a place where you actually weren’t a minority, Nipsey replied: “For sure. You saw that in key positions; president, government, police, everybody’s the same [color]. It’s a country run by its people. No racial class, everybody feels a part of it.” For an African immigrant growing up in race obsessed America, the racial makeup of Eritrea’s government is a strong affirmation of one’s sense of self pride.

Eritrea itself doesn’t show up in Hussle’s lyrical content. In fact, he seems to be very cautious about making explicit political statements about Eritrea. When asked by his interviewers at Hot 97 about the political divide between Eritrea and Ethiopia, his reply was: “There are experts and we got to be really careful about this.” Instead, his Eritrean sojourn is solely represented as the fuel for his transformation from unfocused teen “gang banger” to a self-made entrepreneur.