Nipsey Hussle's The Marathon Clothing Brand Is a Big Part of the Late Rapper's Legacy
Nipsey Hussle was more than a rapper. Though his music will doubtlessly-and deservedly-be one of the main things he's remembered for after his untimely shooting death on March 31, he was also an entrepreneur with his own fashion brand. The rise of The Marathon Clothing as a company roughly tracked with the rise of Hussle as an artist, dating all the way back to the rapper's music video for "Hussle in the House."
"One of the things that popped off was the Crenshaw shirt that I wore in my first video," Hussle told me in late 2016. "We saw people coming to all the shows asking for it, and we felt the demand. So we started off just manufacturing that one piece of [what was] basically merch, and it's transformed into an apparel line."
The progression, Hussle said, was natural. "Being from L.A. and being influenced by fashion, I always was into clothes," he explained. "And then just following the model of being influential in more than one category and trying to create businesses in those categories ... Fashion is one of the categories that, if you’re a certain type of music artist, you become influential in those spaces. So me being an entrepreneur and a hustler, I wanted to actually have a business in one of those places."
The line has since grown from that first sweatshirt into a much bigger collection of sweats, tees, pants, outerwear, and accessories. It even includes women's and children's apparel. But aesthetically, it's cohesive: rooted in core designs like the signature, swooping "Crenshaw" graphic and an American flag-themed "TMC" logo.
It's not the kind of stuff designed to push the boundaries of capital "F" fashion. Instead, The Marathon seems tailor-made for fans of Hussle specifically and of streetwear in general. It's about creating something familiar but still special in its own set of codes and references.
At the time we spoke, Hussle was gearing up for the brand's next big step: a flagship store that opened on June 17, 2017. (In a sad turn, that store, on Slauson Avenue in Crenshaw, was the site of his shooting.) "I think it's important that everybody exceed and do great in their primary thing that they do," he said. "But you got some hustlers in your crew, you got some entrepreneurs around you? If you come from that type of culture, it's going to be hard not to venture into some of those spaces where you see opportunity."
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