Nipsey Hussle Docuseries Eyed for 2026 as Director One9 Sifts Through Tons of Footage: ‘His Father Videotaped Everything’ (EXCLUSIVE)
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Source: Variety
Category: Entertainment
Originally Published: 2025-12-05
Curated: 2025-12-05 16:17
A long-awaited docuseries about the life of late hip-hop star Nipsey Hussle may finally be released next year. The filmmakers behind the series say the interviews, music and footage are all in place — now they’re on the hunt for a network or streaming home. Director One9, who was behind the recent three part Prime Video doc “Allen Iv3rson,” says the tentatively titled “Hussle” will have between five and seven episodes, and will be narrated posthumously by Hussle along with his brother, Blacc Sam.
The Grammy-winning Hussle (real name Ermias Asghedom), who became a respected figure for both his music career and his community outreach (which included investing in Crenshaw’s commercial district), was killed outside his clothing shop in 2019. He was just 33, and his death continues to reverberate in South-Central L.A. and the wider Southern California region — where tribute murals depicting the performer are commonplace.
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“We’ve been working on it for several years, and making sure that it’s told the right way,” One9 says. “You talk about one of the most inspirational figures out there, who was a highly gifted child building his own computers to burn CDs and get his music out there.”
Fueling the multipart doc, One9 says, is a trove of footage he’s sifting through as he assembles the episodes. “Nipsey had the foresight to videotape everything in his life,” the director says. “Even when he was young, his father videotaped everything. You see the whole transformation of a young man coming of age, going through the iterations of childhood to gang life to independence to music to finding his own voice — and then becoming such a huge inspirational figure to the Crenshaw culture and environment.”
The footage includes the first time Hussle went into the studio at age 12. He also recorded an unreleased audio book, parts of which will supplement the voice-over narration. And the series will feature never before-heard music from the vault.
Blacc Sam — aka Samiel Asghedom — has been instrumental in gaining the participation of Hussle’s family, One9 says: “Sam’s learning more about Nipsey’s life from just watching the archival [footage]. … It’s really the story of those two brothers and how they navigated their lives.”
Other people in Hussle’s orbit also contributed archival material. “It’s from every single one of his friends, people that were videotaping him during his life in the Rollin 60s [Neighborhood Crips],” One9 says. “We’ve got amazing interviews from Jay-Z to Kendrick Lamar to anybody that knew him at different iterations of his life. It’s a very intricate story to tell, and we’re just making sure we do it in the right way.”
Along with One9, “Hussle” comes from the artist’s Marathon Films shingle and LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s Springhill. One9 recently extended his overall deal at Ian Orefice’s EverWonder Studio, where he has several projects lined up in addition to “Hussle.”
One9 kicked off his career with the 2014 doc “Nas: Time Is Illmatic,” which chronicled the making of Nas’ 1994 debut album, “Illmatic.” After that, he worked as a co-executive producer and director on John Singleton’s Emmy-nominated A&E doc “L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later” and was an exec producer on “Rather,” Frank Marshall’s 2023 doc about journalist Dan Rather.
One9 says he landed the “Allen Iv3rson” gig by promising the NBA star that he wanted the docuseries’ approach to be “very raw, relentless, from the heart, from the gut, no punches pulled. And that’s what he did. He came with stories about things in his life were very hard for him to deal with, whether it’s alcoholism, money, dealing with the media, people getting killed in and out of his life, and at the same time being number one player coming out of Georgetown, into Philly, and really helping change the culture of the game.”
Among other docs in the works from the director is a project that centers on photographer Markus Klinko, an award-winning classically trained harpist who changed careers after a hand injury. As a fashion and celebrity photographer, he has shot Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and others. Here’s the logline for “The Art of Reinvention”: “A three-part documentary exploring how artists evolve to survive as the creative world is reshaped by technology and AI, told through the lens of photographer Markus Klinko’s own transformation. The series shows that reinvention isn’t optional, it’s the new form of artistic survival.”
Says One9: “What I’ve learned is how to really create stories of identity. Looking at how people change, how they endure, but ultimately how they disrupt. I really love stories that tell the disruption of the way hings were before, how they were after and putting all those pieces together.”
This article was curated from Variety. All rights belong to the original publisher.