Before his untimely death this March, Nipsey Hussle was rap’s hardest-working multi-hyphenate. In addition to his music career, Nip also had a thriving business (Marathon Clothing in Crenshaw) and was dedicated to community-building and activism in Los Angeles. All this, and apparently Nip also had acting aspirations.
As reported by Complex, in a new interview with TooFab, director Benny Boom said that Nip was tapped to play Snoop Dogg in the 2017 Tupac biopic All Eyez On Me.
“Nipsey was supposed to play Snoop,” Benny said. “We wanted him to play Snoop in All Eyez On Me… We didn’t have any other person that we wanted to play him.” But apparently Nip’s schedule was too packed.
“It’s crazy because I didn’t realize, as much as I knew Nipsey — I didn’t realize how much he was driving things in his community,” Boom went on. “And to take him out of LA for that amount of time that we needed to come to Atlanta where we shot, would’ve just threw him off his square a little bit. Just the timing didn’t work out.”
Newcomer Jarrett Ellis ended up playing Snoop in the biopic, but Boom also mentioned that before his death Nip was set to play a major role on the CW TV series All American. Though he will not be acting in the series, All American will feature storylines inspired by the rapper’s life and career. “From what I’m hearing from the writers, this season, there’s going to be a lot of Nipsey stuff in there,” Boom said.
