The Seattle hip-hop community lost one of its most influential early ambassadors last week: “Nasty” Nes Rodriguez died Saturday in Los Angeles, his widow, Llola Rodriguez, announced the following morning on Facebook, calling the loss “immeasurable.”

The 63-year-old DJ, music promoter and co-founder of Nastymix Records played an essential role in bringing hip-hop to Seattle during the early 1980s, and in turn, bringing Seattle hip-hop to the rest of the world.

A cause of death was not stated in the Facebook announcement, but Rodriguez experienced a series of health issues last year, including a heart attack, pneumonia and kidney failure. The barrage of ailments sent Rodriguez to a hospital in L.A., where he underwent physical therapy and was relearning to walk in November.

“The last time I talked to him was two days before he passed and he told me he was going to be all right,” said Sir Mix-A-Lot, Seattle’s first bona fide rap star. Mix credits Rodriguez for discovering him. “He was feeling good, that’s what he told me. I was excited about that. He said, ‘I’m going to try to live, man. I’m going to do this stuff right.’ But I guess it wasn’t to pass.”

A GoFundMe campaign has been established to help Rodriguez’s family with funeral expenses and medical costs.

Rodriguez was a pioneering DJ behind 1250 KFOX’s “Freshtracks,” hailed as the first dedicated hip-hop show on West Coast radio after launching in 1981. He would continue his 17-year career in Seattle radio as a co-host of “Rap Attack” on KCMU (the precursor to KEXP’s “Street Sounds”) and “Hotmix” on KUBE 93.

In the early days, Rodriguez made regular trips to New York City, returning with fresh vinyl of the latest and greatest new music coming out of hip-hop’s epicenter. More than simply spinning the songs, the passionate hip-hop emissary injected his shows with detailed backstories about the artists and evolution of the burgeoning genre, Sir Mix-A-Lot recalled.

“He would give you these little history lessons on the radio and so you started to understand that the people that created this new genre were just like us,” Mix said. “It made you feel like, ‘Hey, I could do this. This is accessible.’”

“A lot of people consider him like a godfather of Northwest hip-hop,” said DJ B-Mello, aka Barry Williams, a longtime friend and collaborator.

B-Mello started listening to “Freshtracks” when he moved to Whidbey Island as a military brat, viewing Nasty Nes as a “larger than life” figure before the two became close friends. Rodriguez was a radio-world mentor to B-Mello, who first made his name as a mixtape DJ. Rodriguez gave B-Mello his first steady radio gig with a half-hour mix segment on “Rap Attack,” a show B-Mello would occasionally co-host with his friend and mentor.

“He taught me a lot as far as being more open-minded,” said B-Mello, who became a steady presence on KUBE 93 and a host of “Street Sounds” during the 2000s. “He played hip-hop from different regions,” including cities that often flew under the rap radar, “which was kind of unheard of back then.”

As passionate as Rodriguez was about spreading the hip-hop gospel, the proud Seattleite and die-hard Bruce Lee fan was an even stauncher advocate for Seattle music, playing local artists like Sir Mix-A-Lot and the Emerald Street Boys, who were regarded as the first prominent rap group in Seattle. (Rodriguez even served as the group’s official DJ for a spell.) Initially, all that local love was against his bosses’ wishes, said Sir Mix-A-Lot. Until all the requests started rolling in.

“If it wasn’t for him, there would be no Mix-A-Lot, I can tell you that,” Mix said.

The relationship between Rodriguez and Sir Mix-A-Lot went well beyond a couple of early radio plays. The two first met when, as Mix tells it, an unaccompanied Rodriguez introduced himself while Mix was DJing one of his fabled early shows at the Boys & Girls Club in the Central District. They spoke again later over the phone and Mix gave Rodriguez some songs he wound up playing on his show.

Alongside Sheila Locke and investor Greg Jones, Rodriguez later co-founded Nastymix Records, with Sir Mix-A-Lot signing on as its flagship artist. Hatched over a table at a Chinatown International District restaurant, the name was a portmanteau of Nasty Nes and Sir Mix-A-Lot, who released his first two albums — including 1988’s platinum-selling “Swass” — through Nastymix before signing with Def American Recordings and releasing “Baby Got Back” in 1992.

As “Swass” took off, the two men traveled the world together as savvy radio promoter Rodriguez helped Mix make inroads in Los Angeles and other markets, including a Wembley Arena show in London where Rodriguez fell off the 25-foot-high stage, saving himself from serious injury by grabbing onto a curtain on the way down.

Perhaps the most formative trip they took together came before Mix’s career began in earnest, when Rodriguez brought Sir Mix to New York for the first time.

“It really gave me a sense of history, a sense of belonging,” Mix said. “And more importantly, it gave me the rules for what not to do — don’t water down the product. Nes, he gave me access to stuff I would have never been able to see.”

In some sort of cosmic coincidence, a coterie of Nes’ peers gathered at Washington Hall in Seattle on the night he died. Local hip-hop nonprofit 206 Zulu held an event celebrating the history and people of Seattle hip-hop in conjunction with its video series, “OurStory: Legacy of Northwest Hip Hop.” News of Rodriguez’s death wasn’t widely known until the next day, though several in attendance noticed missed calls that night from Sir Mix-A-Lot and Rodriguez’s sister, B-Mello said.

Nes would have loved the event — sort of a class reunion for Seattle hip-hop pioneers. Even if he couldn’t be there physically, his presence was felt, B-Mello said, as Rodriguez’s image graced one of the trading cards that organizers printed depicting important figures in Seattle hip-hop history.

“It’s like we felt he was there,” B-Mello said. “Maybe he was overlooking us, you know?”

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