When Nipsey Hussle Teamed With Fatburger

Sure, he’s backing a product, but only because he really loves it.

“We had an idea to co-brand the Crenshaw collection for The Marathon Clothing with the Fatburger Logo, and it was just something organic and natural, ” he told MTV in a video at the time. “The Fatburger logo, it’s like the Hollywood sign or it’s like something: You come to LA and you think Los Angeles. We didn’t want to get in the way of that.”

He gestured to his black T-shirt, the big yellow and red Fatburger logo tagged with, “Crenshaw,” in smaller blue script underneath.

Hussle, born Ermias Joseph Asghedom, was gunned down Sunday afternoon, in front of the Marathon Clothing store he co-owned near that Fatburger. His death prompted an outpouring of grief. On Tuesday, a suspect was arrested.

Marqueece Harris-Dawson, a Los Angeles city councilman who worked with Hussle on the Destination Crenshaw project, told me he first met him in 2013, at a rally against gun violence.

“It was 8 in the morning at Crenshaw High School,” Harris-Dawson said. “And here was this guy who I knew had a show the night before. He was there with his daughter.”

Harris-Dawson said that tireless work ethic would be his legacy.

“Energy never dies,” he said. “We might’ve lost the body; we might’ve lost the person, but we don’t lose the energy.”

The Fatburger chain was founded by Lovie Yancey in South LA in 1952 and has been referenced by rappers over the years — most famously in Ice Cube’s love letter to a perfect 24 hours, “It Was a Good Day.”

Mark Webster, who is now the Fatburger food truck franchisee, said he first approached Hussle’s brother about working together when he realized the Crenshaw outpost and Marathon Clothing were going to be neighbors.

“I thought there’s an opportunity here,” Webster said. “And I think there was a snowball effect thereafter.”

Karen Civil, chief marketing officer of the Marathon Agency, was part of Hussle’s team at the time. She told me, her voice breaking, that the partnership exemplified the way he hoped to attract business to an area that might be dismissed as unsafe for an afternoon out.

“Nipsey’s goal was to make that strip mall feel like you were on Fairfax,” she said. “He wanted people to understand the importance of this urban environment and not feel like, ‘I have to shop somewhere else.’ ”

He threw his full weight behind the branding, although the end result was subtle.

“He wanted to keep the elements of what Fatburger was but added the small element,” Civil said. “So people still identified it, like, ‘Oh, snap, you got the Crenshaw on there.’ ”

It made the Fatburger and — by extension, Crenshaw — feel like a destination.

At the grand opening in May 2014, a line wound around the block, Webster said. Hussle kissed babies and took selfies.

“This wasn’t a generic marketing play,” he said. “It was something that was very authentic and hit home.”

Webster said the Fatburger truck will always have Nipsey Hussle’s burger — with Swiss cheese, relish, fresh onions and mustard — on the menu.

He calls it the Hussleburger.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.