During a sitdown with HipHopDX, a smiling Kevin Gates reflected on the moments he spent with the late Nipsey Hussle, and continuously reaffirmed just how “tapped in” he was.

“Every time we was supposed to work or make music, we never recorded we would just sit there and talk all night,” Gates said. “About like interesting shit, dude was very intelligent. He was tapped in. He was tapped in. He was tapped in.”

He continued, “It was refreshing I’d talk to him and it was like I was talking to myself because the things that he would say, he would present them in a way that would be like, ‘yeah that’s cool.’ But me, I’m so passionate and don’t give a fuck [so] people look at me like, ‘you’re weird you’re crazy’, but people judge me so much. People just love to judge me for no reason I ain’t never do nothing. But you know, dude was tapped in.”

When asked if Nip ever bestowed any meaningful wisdom onto Gates, the New Orleans rapper instead recalled the last few times they ran into each other before he was gunned down outside his Maraton Clothing Store in Southern Los Angeles.

“I was with my family at Disneyland and he was with his family at Disneyland,” Gates recalled. “This was so crazy. When I seen him at Disneyland we was both fasting…and then the time before his passing and his changing of form we was both fasting at the same time again. I was like, ‘man I’m just breaking my fast,’ he’s like, ‘me too come have some champagne.’ We both had on the same thing just a bow tie, a white shirt and some black pants.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Kevin Gates spoke about his forthcoming album Khaza, which he revealed the tracklist for on Sunday (June 12). The project is Gates’ first since 2019’s I’m Him, and includes one lone feature from Juicy J.

Watch Gates talk about Nipsey Hussle below.