French Montana says the 2019 murder of Nipsey Hussle "scared" him away from taking a hands-on approach to helping his old neighborhood.
As fans know, Montana says as much in "Dirty Bronx Intro," the first track on his just-released Mac & Cheese 5 mixtape. In a conversational verse, French reflects on his own "Hollywood bullshit" and references the fatal 2015 shooting of Coke Boys artist Chinx.
Man, I was tryna buy the block, that Nipsey shit scared me
I lost Chinx, lost Max, but you don't hear me
During a Breakfast Club interview on Friday, Charlamagne asked French to elaborate on the lyrics.
"I feel like watching that video with Nip was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life," French said around the 8:11 mark in the video below. "All he was trying to do was just try to change his neighborhood and just bring some great things back and try to buy his block. I feel like watching that scared me away from trying to do the same thing. Look what happened to Chinx. Chinx got shot in Queens. Look what happened to a lot of people that don’t have a name, a lot of fallen soldiers. So why come back and do that?"
Asked how he “overcame” this feeling, French pointed to his present-day Calabasas lifestyle.
“Shit, I went to Calabasas,” the 39-year-old said. “I still come back. But at the end of the day, it always comes from the inside. So you just gotta be careful how you let people get in contact with you or touch you. You can’t be just easily touched or easy to get in contact with.”
Nipsey Hussle was fatally shot outside his Marathon Clothing store in Los Angeles in 2019. Three years later, Eric Holder Jr. was found guilty of first-degree murder in Nipsey's death. Holder was later sentenced to 60 years behind bars.
French went on to share more advice for “anybody that’s making real money,” at one point citing a Jay-Z line from “Streets Is Watching.” He also looked back on the 2020 shooting death of Pop Smoke.
"At the end of the day, Pop had no security," French said. "Pop had a gun on him, had the wrong people around him. I was supposed to meet up with Pop that night. He had a party at his crib. I went to the strip club and after the strip club we was supposed to go to his house because he sent everybody the address to the party He had put that [Instagram] post up a couple hours before."
See more from French above. Mac & Cheese 5 is out now and is notably available in several different versions.
