Criticism Post # 9 “Picture Me Rollin”

The fourth persona is made up of “textual winks” and coded messages. According to Morris, one of his primary goals was to “Identify the tactics used in ‘passing’ as a response to the invisible audience ie the fourth persona.” The goal of this method is to identify the real audience and look for the clairvoyants and dupes.

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In Nipsey Hussle’s song “Picture Me Rollin” I want to outline those characteristics that are seen in the fourth persona and uncover the missed messages that many might not understand.

The first coded message is the lyric :

“Steppin’ on roaches, me and my locsters”

To many the word “locsters” is unknown, I was not aware of the meaning or that it was even a term until I started listening to Nipsey Hussle’s music. A “locster” is a crip with a reputation of being a “gangster.” This definition can fly right over the audiences head as it becomes just another word with no meaning behind it. Only a certain audience will understand that “steppin on roaches” does not have to do with a bug, but a person.

When it comes to rap music, and rappers like Nipsey Hussle sharing his story growing up in Los Angeles, being gang affiliated, not all listeners are going to understand the vocabulary used unless you are from the West Coast and have watched rap movies, listened to enough rap music, or are placed in an environment where that lingo is heavily used.

Nipsey reaches out to everybody, his goal is not to have one core audience, his goal is to have everyone listen to him and what he has to say. In numerous interviews and research throughout this semester he makes it clear that he wants to reach out to young gang members with his music to show that any man growing up the way Hussle did can make it out, and can make something of himself or herself.

When Nipsey raps lines such as :

“You might get a stripe man, but that ain’t gon’ pay for the strollers
Its never enough to console her
Telling, your daddy’s a soldier
She needs you right now in this moment
Not dead on your back pushing roses”

This makes me believe that Nipsey is not preaching to gang members, or the youth, he is talking to all the men in the world that “came from the gutter.” When listening to all of Nipsey Hussle’s song they are about being a man in the rap game and making it out, being a man that went to jail but having no other choice but to get out to support his family.

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As a woman that listens to Nipsey Hussle, I am obviously part of his audience, but minorities, especially male minorities who have had to fight to live everyday is the audience that Hussle is trying to reach. That is his REAL audience.

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