Nipsey Hussle’s ‘The Marathon’ Gets 10th-Anniversary Interactive Production

The 10th anniversary of Nipsey Hussle’s The Marathon will be celebrated with an interactive production premiering on YouTube at 9 p.m. ET on Friday.

The Marathon Live Visual Album Experience contains previously unseen content and audio interviews, featuring a recreation of Hussle’s vehicle — a Mercedes SL550 — that travels to Los Angeles neighborhoods and landmarks that were integral to the making of the 2010 mixtape. The production was made by OkiDoki in collaboration with Puma and Marathon Clothing.

“We wanted to create a dream-like world set in the era of 2009-2010 Los Angeles, a time when Nipsey was crafting and preparing to release his Marathon mixtape,” Kam Burk, creative director of OkiDoki, said in a statement. “It’s almost like a virtual time capsule of this pivotal point in Nipsey’s career. We recreated his vehicle and a lot of the landmarks Nipsey frequented and some historic Los Angeles sites using Jorge Peniche’s photography, Google Maps, 3D-modeling software, and made it beautiful and interactive in Unreal Engine.”

“His family asked us to not make an avatar of Nipsey, so we had to cleverly use the vehicle, audio interviews, and projected imagery and videos in the virtual environment to allow the viewer to feel Nipsey’s presence,” he continued. “Nipsey loved using his car as a music venue for testing out unreleased tracks so we created the illusion that the car is always the source of audio in each of the scenes.”

Hussle, whose real name was Ermias Asghedom, was fatally shot in Los Angeles in 2019 — shortly after his album Victory Lap earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album. A memorial service at the Staples Center featured tributes by Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar, while Stevie Wonder performed a cover of Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.”