Album Review: PROLIFIC by Nipsey Hussle & Bino Rideaux
Recorded in 2017 and now posthumously released, PROLIFIC catches Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux trading ambition, money, and grief like two men finishing each other’s sentences.
Two of LA’s rappers grew up there and fashioned the same dream, the one that sees a foreign car waiting outside the street you were born into. Ermias Asghedom, otherwise known as Nipsey Hussle, led the scene as head of All Money In, pulling the younger artists up behind him; Bino Rideaux was among those. By 2017, the two already had a mixtape and enough jargon to make a proper full-length the same year. PROLIFIC is the album they did then, released the day before Hussle’s 41st birthday. He died in 2019. The tracks are crafted to be split down the middle, each voice responding to another.
Hussle responds in couplets he designs to outlast the track. In “Sacrifices,” he threatens, “Don’t fall in love with no hustler, you know that come with conditions,” and delivers, “Love ain’t ‘posed to be prison,” building the setup till it’s ready to be engraved on a wall. But Rideaux doesn’t build. He leaks. “Off a pill, I ain’t got it in me trying to tell a lie,” he confesses on “Reckless,” the kind of thing that sneaks up on you, halfway to being thought out. Putting the two on the same track works for the contrast. “Reckless” puts Hussle’s bravado, “Fuck if I crash, don’t save me,” against Rideaux’s pleading, “Why do you pick up, baby?” when calling her at four in the morning.
On the wavy “500 Horses,” the Italian silk and the first million don’t stray far from the gang enhancements on the charges and the yellow tape on the apartments; Versace comes as evidence he made it out, not a reminder he left behind. Hussle says it plainly, “My success was symbolic/My finesse was iconic/How I glowed up out the darkness.” Rideaux finds the same theme cold, asking for a hundred thousand before anyone proposes a deal, storing the property behind his lawyer, and spinning on a dime when he addresses the people he protects, unable to eat when his brother goes hungry. Hussle’s part in the dancehall-produced “Miami Off the Plane” rolls the bragging and preaching into a single breath: “No record label advances, got millions from grams,” the burden on his shoulders destined to either break or make him.
But nobody sells anything on “Count On You.” Hussle opens straightforward, “Family broken, so I stand with my niggas/Showed up to every shootout, but I ran from my feelings,” and builds the rest around the man who carried away a part of his heart, “Heart broken like my artery missing.” Rideaux responds with a father’s fear, “Pray my son never face what I go through,” and then, without a hitch, “I been tryna relate with some of these songs in case I die today.” It’s the only spot where neither one keeps their guard up.
And when it comes down again, it comes down in the love songs, where the two voices fuse into one. Same story, repeated thrice in “Make Believe,” “Just Like Me,” and the Rideaux verse on “Vibe With Me”; the man teaching her the game and the rules learns that she was make-believe. And Rideaux gets a pretty clean send-off on “Make Believe,” “Can’t turn a bitch into a stan,” while Hussle spends the same song relishing how well he ignored her, “I get a kick when you call me, and I don’t pick up for some days,” but they’re complaints in the same vein, wronged narrators one after another. “Super Real” breaks up the string with the finest writing here, Hussle turning a woman into a consultant, “Body language speaking Mandarin/Talking to you like an analyst/Rearranging your establishment,” before letting the power go both ways, “I put my life in between these lines/I got you breaking my music down.” The grandeur even pays off once, Hussle on “Vibe With Me,” putting the distance between him and Heaven at a mile or two, and sounding like he means it.
The best ride is the one Cardi B takes on “I Just Wanna Know.” She’s the only artist who ever got a verse out of her wrings more from that than any other guest. This song is a West Coast sex record, constructed completely out of questions, and for two verses, it’s Hussle and Ty Dolla $ign doing the asking. Then Cardi shows up and starts answering every one of them and throwing the gang line right back at him. Hussle had been wondering whether a Blood woman could deal with a Crip, and she volleyed, “Could a Crip nigga fuck with a Blood bitch,” then added, “Would you hit still if I was a bum bitch?” The only guest who answers instead of decorating. Leon Thomas drops in on the 112-sampled “Vibe With Me” and contributes one keeper, “Your body belongs in a museum,” while Ty does a lot to smooth out the hooks on “Mean It” and “I Just Wanna Know,” making them enjoyable and easy to forget.
But the hardest part here is “Situations.” Hussle is out of patience, ready to “speak with demonstrations,” flipping from “three hundred to a million” in one breath and a “closed casket on him” in the next; and Rideaux’s half is all demons he learned to live with. And the dread doesn’t stick just to the dark songs here. “All Summer,” amid blue rags and rubber burning, Rideaux takes the floor away, “I don’t know if I’ma wake up in the morning,” “I can’t lose no more, my nigga, I can’t afford it.” Cars and cash are the reality in these songs, and the fear that any of it could disappear come morning.
The interlude for “Just Like Me” is two people watching a bus go by, unsure where it’s going. It’s more than bluster to couple mail turns with mail tables—it’s something Hussle has professed plenty of times, down to the spoken-word intro to his “Bacc of the Bach.” It’s an unmistakable part of the drive, “plottin’ on millions,” and the choice is real, but the numbers can’t lie, and things can change for anyone. No man knows when it’s times up but the destination is clearer and you wanna enjoy the ride a little more sharing it with the world. The Marathon will forever continue.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Sacrifices,” “Count On You,” “Super Real”