The Daily Zeitgeist - Icon #11 - Tupac Shakur: When 25 Years = 3 Lifetimes

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

In this episode of The Iconograph, Jack and Miles are joined by journalist/podcaster Molly Lambert to discuss Jada Pinkett Smith's true soulmate: Tupac Shakur! They'll explore his his Black Panther beginnings, his many run-ins with the law, just how much he could get done in a day and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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On Monday mornings, we're looking at the Zykeyes through the powerful, pop culture, horrockses that are our icons. We use these figures, these characters to create meaning, to build identity, to learn what a double album is. I didn't realize this, but that was the first rap double album. How to picture someone rolling. Is it something we learned? And we learn that while it is objectively stupid and hilarious, that some people think Elvis

is still alive, some icons really do fake their own. deaths and leave behind a trail of clues for reasons that are unclear. That's right. Today we're talking about Tupac Shakur, probably the icon that meant the most to me of anyone we've covered so far with the obvious exception of Urkel. I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Hey, great to be here. Great to be here.

Great to talk about somebody also very, very important to my life. my love of hip-hop for sure, for sure. And in our third seat at resident California, L.A. Valley historian, the creator of Heidi World and Jenna World, it's Molly Lambert. What's up? What's up? Bring it, bring it. Don't sing it, sing it.

There you go. Yeah, exactly. Why did this guy like the west side of L.A. so much? He just really loved like Westwood. Santa Monica, Venice. Is that what he was talking about? St. Martin of Tours School? Yes, all of those, all of the haunts.

Yeah, this is the part of the episode, usually where up top, we're like, okay, here are the things that make this person like a bona fide icon, like they appear on a lot of dorm room walls or T-shirts or I don't think we need to do that with Tupac. It's just everything, you know, everything about him. iconic. I do want to just like kind of get into two of the central, they're almost like optical illusions about his life in the documentary. Did you guys watch Dear Mama, the documentary by the very Hughes brother whose ass Tupac kicked when his role in menace to society fell apart? Oh no, I didn't see that one. Okay. But one of his friends in that documentary says that Tupac lived

like three full lives every eight months basically. And that's why his life, feel so long. And it is like the central illusion of his life. Like he did so much stuff in such a short time, recorded so much, got into so much trouble, filmed so many movies. There are these moments in this research where it's like, yeah, so he like came from this concert that has like a famous bootleg recording of one of his songs, goes out, shoots to off-duty cops, goes up to his hotel room, throws a party, and, like, debuts dear mama to his friends. And it's all in, like, a two-hour span. It's just like, oh, fuck?

Yeah, 24 hours was a lot. Yeah. Look, we all have 24 hours each day. He, yeah. Exactly. He does have the thing that I've noticed a lot of our icons have, which is that I think he needs less sleep. Like, he's, everybody's like, he's up way later than us. And we wake up and he's been up for two hours like smoking blunts and like filling notebooks.

Like he's just got an insane motor. Miles Gray channeling the spirit today. Yeah, exactly. Two hours of me prolific with podcasting. Even when I die, there will be podcast episodes. They will on Earth. Oh, my God. Double, double podcast album.

I'll say the other optical illusion from this research is that he appears to be different people in different moments. Like, there's interviews from early in his life where he just seems like a very sensitive theater kid. There's interview where he's in jail or, like, spending a lot of time with the Black Panthers. And he's, like, very sober and focused and seems almost like a consciousness rapper. And then there are the times when he's the guy from his most popular songs. And, like, I just think that's, like, what he has this insane motor that won't quit. and then he seems to absorb whatever energy is around him and just be the most, like a lot of his

friends are like he will just take whatever is going on around him and become like the most charismatic, compelling version of that thing that he's channeling. And those seem to be some of his superpowers. But there's, again, he just packs in so much. Like other people talk about seizing the day. And by the time they've finished that sentence, Tupac has. Fucked Madonna, shot two off-duty cops, and written an album. It's just so crazy how much he did.

But I will also say it. I want to just, like, put these two questions to you guys. One, he does seem to be the one person after, like, going through this research, whose fame was not well served by dying young. Like most people, it's like, well, the attention for dying young, the romance of, like, dying young outweighs what they would have gone on to. do or at least like it could but with him I'm like

absolutely convinced he would have gotten bigger and more important if he had been allowed to live Oh yeah I would have won an Oscar Yeah I think he would have you got it Like he is fucking So I won a Nobel Peace Prize too Yeah like because he was so

ideologically focused towards the end Yeah politically he was ahead of his time And then like artistically he was just You know Burning so fast and brisked and just everything he put himself, too. He was really good at it. It's not like a simple what if where,

I mean, there are like some aspects of his death where it's like really bad luck. Like the killer just happening to like find them stopped at that red light is like kind of like the Franz Ferdinand thing where like Franz Ferdinand's car just happened to break down right in front of a guy who had been like looking to assassinate him all day. The guy had like given up on finding. Oh, that's how it happened?

Yeah, the guy, Gabrielle Princep, was trying to assassinate him all day, gave up because he couldn't, like, find him, was ordering a sandwich and Franz Ferdinand pulled up and his car broke down outside of the sandwich shop that he was at. And so he just like turned around and shot him. And that like kind of happened in the sense that like the people who killed him, like happened to be able to like pull up right next to him. Jack, do you think this is Franz Ferdinand icons? I'm saying this is a touchstone. Everybody knows. But he also just lived like he had the invincibility star Mario. Tupac did like towards the end of his life.

Like it was, so it's like if he hadn't died in the Vegas shooting, who knows what would have happened the next day. But I do think had he continued to live and create and like, were he working today, I think he would have done incredible things both politically and artistically. Yeah. And it's the one reason that I don't believe he's still alive

is because he would have made too much shit. Like, you couldn't, like, he had no off button. That was another kind of hypothetical I wanted to pose up top is why, like, Tupac and Elvis get the, no, they're definitely not dead thing from the zeitgeist, whereas, like, Biggie doesn't get it. Other, I don't know who. Yeah, what if Biggie's alive?

Come on, guy. That'd be so fucked up. Christopher Wallace is out there. He's like, man, I'm actually out here. Nobody cares. They just think I'm just Jamaican. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think with Elvis is more curious to me because like with Tupac, he was only 25 and you're like, okay, what else is coming out of this person? Like it seems like you are just getting started even though this beginning part of your career was already so legendary. And I think there's, at least for me, it was like there's so much unfinished. business, I was so in on Tupac being alive because I'm like, dude, there's no way, guys. Like, in my mind, like, you're like 25 and you're dead? No, dude. You're doing something else. So many of his songs are

like predicting his own death or being like, you can't kill me. And then he released an album called McAvelli. Posthumously, where like Machiavelli had talked about or written about faking your own death. And everybody figured out

that Machaveli is an anagram for M. Alive. K. So for some reason, he hid the truth. He hid the truth in a clue where he talks like Mr. Mackie from South Park. Yeah. I'm alive, Keng. Dude, Elvis Presley, Presley lives. Thank you.

Dude, you see, it's all right there. But that's the thing with, like, Elvis, I'm like, dude, this guy was so, like, unhealthy towards the end. It makes sense that passed away. So, but I guess I'm sure for people of that generation, they, also felt like there's still so much more that I want from you. Well, they both have that kind of Jesus energy as well. Yeah. Right.

Like a spiritual connection to their fans where their fans, like it's clearly more than that. They both wear leather. But like, I mean, there is like a weird similarity. Both love black music. They both have very influenced by black music. I can't wait to the same. actually we talk about how much Tupac stole from black artists.

I know. Oh, man. It's not good. Guys, not good. They both also had movie crew. I mean, Elvis's movie career was just basically like, stand here, Elvis, and then sing this song. Some of those movies are good. Some of them are good. But like, Tubbock actually had a movie crew.

Elvis also could have been a good actor if the colonel hadn't done what he did. Yeah. Yeah. Be played by Tom Hanks. managed careers, at least with Tupac towards the end, when Shug was his manager. We're not saying anything bad about Shug Knight here, guys. He's got

they got podcasts in prison, yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's coming out, and he's a genius and yeah. He's using nothing wrong. And I... Nothing wrong. I didn't realize that it's basically believed that he arranged the killing of Biggie.

Well, guys, I was going to watch some Tupac documentaries, but then I ended up only watching one Tupac documentary called Murder Rap on Tooby which I recommend because it is this cop this LAPD cop

Basically it was like the He's like retired right? Well it was like the one guy Russell Poole this one cop claimed to have solved the case and put forward this theory that was kind of everybody said was definitely

false. But then they were like, case closed. And that's the theory that's in Biggie and Tupac, the Nick Broomfield doc, and he wrote this book, Labyrinth with the L.A. Labyrinth. Oh, hell yeah, dude.

And then this other cop reopened the case because he was like, that's not, that wasn't it. This one guy they said did it was like a realtor in San Diego who clearly had nothing to do with it and had been clear. And so this other cop

Reop reopened the case, basically solved the case. Yeah. And then brought, you know, brought his results to the LAPD, and the LAPD was like, okay, great, you're off the case. Case closed. You know, we don't want to solve this, right? Well, yeah.

And this cop was also, he was like very, you know, I'm going to exonerate the LAPD in the case because they had been, you know, rumored to be involved. There were a lot of LAPD officers. maybe working as a security. Big mom sued the LAPD for involvement in the... Well, that's what like the LAPD were like,

we want just enough information so that we don't have to pay off the lawsuit, but then we're closing the case and no one's ever going to get arrested or anything, even though we know who did it. Right. Yes, we call that justice. Yes, we don't do this. Here. Oh, we know who did it, but...

The doc is crazy because it's just. just this one cop being like, I figured it out and nobody cares. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we'll get, we'll get to that. I'm interested to hear more about that. I think it's the one that I read up on to the theory that I read up on. But let's get into the beginning. We're going to start with Tupac's mom, Afeni Shakur, prominent member of the Black Panther Party's Harlem Chapter. And in 1969, she was arrested in the famous Panther 21 case in which 21 21, 21, 21, 21, Black Panther Party members were charged with conspiring to bomb buildings in New York City. The police and FBI used a tactic we saw after 9-11 where they, um, you know, infiltrated them with undercover operatives who

would suggest doing crazy shit and then use those suggestions of like from the undercover cops to like build a case. One of the undercover cops had also infiltrated Malcolm X's inner circle. When Malcolm X was shot, uh, the person who's giving him. CPR and mouth to mouth is this guy who was actually an undercover cop who also worked and helped them build the case against the Panther 21. Where's that? How's that guy doing? He must be loved.

Yeah, he's great. They didn't know it at the time, but they were being targeted by Cointel Pro, which is basically the full might of the U.S. government intelligence. community, you know, the same U.S. intelligence that, like, spent the 20th century toppling entire nations was being turned on the Black Panther Party. The only reason we know about it now is that a group of radicals, like literally broke into an FBI office and, like, found a cache of documents revealing that there was this massive intelligence operation that was targeting them. but her court case was ongoing when she learned she was pregnant with Tupac.

She represented herself, had like this heroic moment at the trial where she cross-examined one of the undercover cops. And she's like, so when you were sleeping with women in the Black Panther party, were you a cop or a panther? And when you would like stand up in the meetings, wild-eyed saying, let's go kill someone. were you a cop or a panther then?

And then like she was also like, okay, so did you ever see me carry a gun? Oh, no. Did you ever see me deal drugs? Did you ever see me like plan a bomb or work with bombs? No. Okay. Did you ever see me like advocate on behalf of the sick? Work of food bank, like all these things that they were doing.

And like got this undercover cop who was also like furious, you know, was probably like going through some intern. struggle at the time was probably doing a lot of like the end of the jinks burping at the like up on the stage they said he was like so angry that he was like fucking spitting like as he spoke um but like basically like backed him into a corner just the courage of this moment for she represented herself despite the fact that like other

members of the party were like this this is a bad idea also this is like right after her her trial starts right after the FBI, like, murders Fred Hampton. Like, there's, it's at the height of them being targeted and, uh, just horrific shit happening to the Black Panther parties. She represents herself. Um, she does an amazing job. Uh, they also note that like the cop's case is just wildly full of shit.

Uh, they used like, uh, their members of the Black Panther party at the time who were like, I would say dynamite, like, as a, like, as a, like, like saying cool. Like that's a, that's a cool thing, which was a slang that we used at the time. They would be like,

they're planning dynamite. Um, they also had, they had a slang for weed called brother Rugi. And the FBI had brother Rugi as a co-conspirator in the case. Also like, did they have Jimmy Walker on charge of me?

Like, I know my. He's like, I just, use that praise to mean things are cool things are all right um but yeah they were doing a lot of like uh if any was like really uh a strong proponent like behind the first patient bill of rights a kid had gone to a local hospital with sickle cell and they turned him away and we're like here take some aspirin you're probably fine and she just like took the kid back to the hospital

and was like we're not leaving here until you deliver like health care and then like stay got to know the doctors, worked with them to, like, create this patient bill of rights until there was, like, a healthcare system that wouldn't require an advocate for every single black patient to be treated like a human.

Yeah. So, yeah, just like, a lot of the progressive shit that, like, people are still looking for and talking about. She's just incredible. She's, like, really amazing. Tupac is born June 16th, 1971, less than a month after Afani and her co-defendants are acquitted of all 156 charges. So she successfully defends them. It's this huge news story.

Everybody's celebrating and less than a month later, Tupac is born. She names him Tupac Amarusha Korp. According to her, the nickname was in honor of the last, a chief to be tortured, brutalized, and murdered by Spanish conquistadors. And she said she wanted him to know that African Americans aren't the first people this has happened to. So like giving some like broad historical. Because his real name was like Lassane, right? And then it changed it after. Parrish Lassane Crooks is his name on his birth certificate.

Right, right, right. But he's immediately like Tupac Amarushik. Right. And in 1975, she marries Matulushikor, who's a prominent Black liberation activist with a degree in acupuncture who provided holistic health care to the local black community. And eventually is one of the FBI's ten most wanted for his potential involvement in a robbery in which two police officers and a guard were killed. But everything around this time is really hard. to know what actually happened because of Cohen-Cal pro.

There's levy accusations against anyone. They were like, dude, I hate this acupuncturist. Yes, exactly. Frame them for some shit. But so Tupac grows up, like having FBI agents come to his middle school lunchroom to ask if he'd seen his mom's husband, you know,

because he's like a 10 most wanted person. And then a lot of people who are, his godfather was Elmer Geronimo Pratt, who spent 27 years in prison for the robbery and murder of a teacher in 1991. It was ruled that the DA's office and LAPD withheld evidence denying him of a fair trial. So yeah, co-intel pros all over the place. It's like impossible to tell what was actually happening. but a lot of the people who are convicted of various crimes at this time for being part

of the Black Panther Party were later acquitted. But they were just set up and assassinated ceaselessly. So Tupac is growing up. He's writing poetry. There's a lot of stuff later in his rhymes where he just talks about

being having a really unhappy childhood and like being really, like everybody around him is like he's a ray of sunshine, but he talks about just like not really being able to cope and like being extremely unhappy and being in hell, like inside his own head when he's a, when he's a child. After his mom successfully defends herself, there's like a lot of money from well-wishers and like people are like putting the family up. But then the 80s happens and suddenly the political tides turn. And,

they fall into poverty and he estimates that he like moved 18 times by the time he got to middle school around high school they moved to Baltimore he transfers to Baltimore school for the arts and described it as heaven I learned ballet poetry jazz music everything Shakespeare acting everything as well as academics he played the mouse king and the nutcracker um and once when he was being interrogated a mouse king yeah that's that's amazing. Yeah. Once when he was

interrogated by the police in a deposition, they asked if he was gang affiliated, and he was like, I'm the head of the mouse gang and the nutcracker. And basically it was like,

I'm a theater kid, man. Like, essentially. You want to see me do a plea? Yeah. The mouse king runs, runs some shit. Yeah. I mean,

that's interesting to you. Because Baltimore, too, is kind of a real early, formative experience. from like his writing about it too and like the schools that he went to, I think that's when obviously through his upbringing

and his parents, like he learned a lot about the racial disparity. But in Baltimore it was very clear that there were like two Baltimore that you could live in white Baltimore or black Baltimore. Yeah. And I think that's like,

it's funny because every, with his music, like he contains all these multitudes, but you can track all of like these experiences along his way. They're like, yep, he's authentically, understanding all of these experiences

that allow him to sort of express all that in his lyrics. Yeah. It's like the movie Hairspray. Yeah, I was just going to say that. His life's a lot like the movie Hairspray. I can't wait for Nikki Blonsky to play him in the reboot. One scene from his childhood

that he's talked about a couple of times is he used to sit outside by the street lights and read the autobiography of Malcolm X because they didn't have lights inside their house. And he said that his mom always raised him to think that he was the black prince of the revolution. At the Baltimore School for the Performing Arts, he befriended a classmate named Jada Pinkett. She's said, like, when she talks about their relationship, I feel bad for Will Smith.

She's like, it's like, it's like someone being like, that was my real, my true love. She loves to do that to Will Smith for some reason. And he must be into it. He must be. Even like pre Will Smith, though, she's been pretty consistent about how she talks about it because she's like,

he was like a brother. Yeah. It's like the friendship we had, it's unlike anything you could ever experience something you only get once in a life. Whenever I read those, I'm like,

damn. I think some relationships, you just can't really give a title to. She's like, it encompasses so much. An incredible rapper. Yeah. I know it's so funny

just to be like, you put Pock and Will Smith on a just next to each other as rappers are like yeah if he does live whose career is like doesn't exist in the same way I don't know

I wonder if they would have just had beef over Jada yeah maybe and then Will would have been absolutely ethered in a rap battle if it went there because then Will Smith would have been like you want me to get me and you're like buddy buddy buddy buddy buddy you're a smart guy

you should have gone to MIT and been an engineer. He moves to California in 1988, does not immediately click with the California scene. Despite all this West Side business, he says, I was the outsider. I dressed like a hippie. They tease me all the time. His friend, it's kind of cute. He had this friend at the performing art school in Baltimore who was just this like nerdy white dude who like made all his clothes for him. Like he was like made like weird kind of like handmade clothes for. Tupac and Tupac was like, I fucking love it. Homespoken clothing. Yeah, yeah, like jeans with like little

designs and stuff on it. And then he like comes out to California wearing that shit and I was like, yo, who fuck is this? Especially in the 80s. Because he went, but he was in Mill Valley, right? When he moved to California. You can wear jeans with little designs in NorCal. Yeah, yeah. Mill Valley, you know, I love drawing little things on their jeans. Yeah. So at first he, he does eventually go to a performing art school in NorCal, but he said

when he first came out, I was the outsider, I dressed like a hippie, they teased me all the time, I couldn't play basketball. I didn't know who basketball players were. I was the target for the street gangs. They used to jump me, things like that. I thought I was weird because I was writing the poetry and I hated myself.

Again, like that really seems to be a lot of his childhood is like he's very uncomfortable in his own skin. I used to keep it a secret. I was really a nerd. Man, if he was alive and still saying this, it would be so important for, like, young black kids to hear about that. Yeah.

Like him truly be like, I didn't know who athletes were. I was so in the arts and, like, philosophy and things like that. I didn't fit in. Yet here I am. So he starts rapping. He does, like, kind of a lot of his early stuff is, like, he'll talk about the violence that he's witnessing around him, but there will still be, like, he has an early song.

is called Get the Gage, but he writes a disclaimer at the top. Composer's note, in no way is this song meant to stir up violence. So he's like still, you know, this is when he goes to this performing art school

in Northern California where there's this like really long interview with him at this time where he just like seems like a totally different kid and he's like working at round table pizza and like working as a grocery bagger and like he he's like annoyed that he has to he's he's like they send us to school but

they don't pay up you know like it it's almost like some of his complaints at that time are like reminiscent of like a high school class president things oh yeah yeah they just send us here to give us something to do while they're working and stuff like that but around this time he also writes this poem that is fucking awesome called government assistance or my soul. It says it would be like a panther asking a panther hunter for some meat. All high school dropouts are not dumb. All unemployed aren't lazy. And there are many days I hunger,

but I would go hungry and homeless before the American government gets my soul. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking rules. Like his politics are so fucking like on point and like ahead of their time. You know? Also it shows like, you know, like, I think we all, we're all products of like the homes we come from too. And like what you hear ambiently, the discussions, the kinds of discussions you hear. And it's clear like comes from a revolutionary home. And then I just, again, I keep thinking about Jada and Will and like Jaden Smith. Like, remember those early interviews? Him and Willow would do. And they're like, the thing about molecules is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you're like, shut the fuck up, you child. You know what I mean? And Tupac's like, I will never give my soul to the fucking American government.

that hates me. Yeah, yeah. Okay, very different kinds of conversation happening. So he uses his connections of this time to get in touch with the manager of the rap group Digital Underground. He auditions for Shakji with a rap called the Case of the Misplaced Mike. That feels very like nursery rhymy. It's like, they finally did it. They stole the mic I grip.

Now that it's gone, I'm feeling tired and sick. Oh, Bob, yes. But he joins the group. They're like, this guy's definitely got something. can like see like his rapping is like still 80 like a little 80s in the 80s but like he's just so fucking

like his state presence and like even just you know he's got I think one of the best voices in the history of rap even then even when it's like kind of sing-songy nursery rhyme so he joins Digital Underground starts recording his own demo the 90s hit he's touring

with Digital Underground he becomes friends with Rosie Perez then a dance for Heavy D. There's a good section in the Dear Mama documentary where there's just like footage from this era when he's touring with Digital Underground. And this is when he's like up all night smoking blunts. And then like they wake up in the morning.

He's like already filled like three notebooks with like rhymes and poetry. And then they get on the tour bus and he makes them listen to Mariah Carey because he like always wanted to have like emotion. in his music and he was like, he would just like listen to everything. Wow, what album? It was early Mariah.

So 1990, Mariah Carey. I think it was like the emotions. Yeah, you got me feeling emotions. Yeah, yeah. So like, guys, we need more emotion in our music. Check this track out by Mariah Carey. Meanwhile, Mariah is like, guys, we need rap on my songs. Exactly.

In February of 1991, he makes his film debut with Digital Underground in the movie. I always remember Juice as his film debut, but it was actually... Nothing but trouble. Dan Aykroyd's directorial debut and also his final film as a director. You guys have seen that movie, right?

I have. It's the scariest movie. Way back in the day. The scariest movie ever made. It is like so grotesque. It is a nightmare. I mean, I know some people who love it because it's so scary. It is. It's like such a specific

nightmarish vision. It's that kind of like long 80s too where it's like it's going to be the 90s in a minute but some people don't know that. Right. But what first time one of his verses appears on a digital

underground track is same song which is like the theme song for nothing but trouble. He appears there's like you can watch his first scene in nothing but trouble and he is the best actor in the scene, even though all he has to do is at one point Dan Aykroyd starts

riffing on an organ and like Tupac just has to look and be like, damn, that's pretty good. And he like just does it, does a great job. Also, mind you, Dan Aykroy is riffing on an organ in like the scariest. The scariest monster makeup you've ever seen. Chevy Chase, meanwhile, is just like doing, like, he looks so fucked up and bloated and like unhappy and probably thinking it's some racist shit and his mom. exactly you can see the racist thoughts reading across the space uh but uh yeah a lot a lot of the music video features a lot of straight-to-camera mugging by chevy chase and then his verse doesn't

make it into the movie but you know in the music video it's the whole song and he has like chevy chase's verse doesn't make it uh the out of he was just ad living the end word a bunch in the background what they said it uh around this time music executive Tom Wally brought one of Tupac's demo tapes to work at Interscope, which is at this time a small record company founded by Jimmy Iveen and Ted

Field. And Ted Field gives the demo to his daughter, who is like, this is fucking awesome. And so they signed Tupac. It's so weird how often it's just like the children of entertainment executives. They're often like, I'm out of touch.

Yeah, I'm out of touch. Hey, kid. You tell me. Yeah. What do you think of this? And they're like, Hey, this is any good kid? Yeah. Yes, Dad. So they sign him. He records an album in like 15 minutes.

And in October, 1991, just weeks before his first album, Tupaclapse now is coming out. He's stopped by two Oakland police officers for jaywalking, as we now know, a very racist crime in terms of how they choose to implement it. They go to him, beat him unconscious. He sues the Oakland Police Department for $10 million. The case was settled for $42,000. Yeah, $42,000.

This is, by the way, the first thing I ever hear about Tupac Shakur is this story on MTV News. For me, it was rapping that I prefer about. Tupac Shakur. Jack's like, that's my favorite J-Walker. Dude, who's your favorite J-W? He raps? It's, uh... But I do remember, like, seeing him talk about this prime, like, on MTV News.

And, uh, you know, they were, like, making fun of his name. Uh, they're also, like, mocking him for saying, I can't breathe. Like, a lot of, there's a lot of shit throughout this where his, like, interaction and, like, abuse. of the hands of police is like, you know, rhymes with a lot of the stuff that has since become very famous for horrifying reasons. They're mocking him for saying you can't breathe. Later on, like, what a cop says that he was like going to run him down with his car, which, as we've seen, the police love to use that as an excuse for just murdering someone in their car.

Yeah. I'm like, well, he was basically using a weapon because he was driving a weapon. Right. he was driving a car. But he talks in the documentary about how when he goes to sleep at night, those cops are on him again and again. And like he's just like thinking about what he's already experienced at this age, at the hands of cops,

like being questioned in middle school, being, you know, having your basically like father figure. You know, you're the guy who is your mom's, husband who's always around like have to go on the lamb because co-intel pro is like putting him on the FBI top 10 list and then being beaten so bad. This is actually at a time when like the stress from this, Jada Pinkett says that like he kept it quiet but like he developed alopecia from this and this is when he starts shaving his head and it's not like a fashion choice. It's because like he starts going, the stress was like giving him like bald spots.

Damn. And here I am just with male powder baldness. I wish I could lie about some shit. Doesn't Jada also have alopecia? Yeah, Jada. She was like, his is, was even worse than mine. Yeah. So.

Wow. Will Smith is always like, God, damn it. Who am I even to this woman? Fucking nothing. Yeah. A sperm donor. One of the themes that gets a lot of attention from his first album is killing of police officers, but he points out it's always in the context of self-defense

on these early tracks. Yeah, because there's a guy who like shot a cop and did his lawyer try and be like, he was inspired by Tupac, Your Honor? Yes. Yeah, yeah. That comes a little bit later, but yeah, they basically try to do the, you know, backmasking, like, heavy middle thing with him where they like blame him specifically. The music. Yeah. Yes. The music made him do it. Renda's Got a Baby is the big song from the first album, which is inspired by a newspaper story. He read about a 12-year-old who was impregnated by her own cousin, threw the baby into an incinerator. When he was growing up, one of his punishments was to have to read the New York Times. His mom was like...

That's a good punishment. Yeah. She was like, you... The op-eds is specifically... Go over there and read about how you're evil for defending Palestine. But he got exposed to reading the news and then that became a lifelong habit. And he's a voracious reader when he's in prison. He's like taking down two books a day, which is when he reads Machabelli and decides to fake his own death is my version of things.

He does like have a lot of sort of black power movement messaging in his early tracks. And kind of throughout, he'll always like name drop different people like from the, Black Panther Party who are on the run. He frequently referenced Latasha Harlins, who was the 15-year-old black girl who was shot in L.A. and her murderer received a particularly light sentence. Keep your head up opens with the text dedicated to the memory of Latasha Harlins. It's still on. So she was a 15-year-old girl who was in a grocery store and a Korean shop owner shot her.

her in the head. And the police, like, convicted her. And then the judge was like, yeah, we're going to put her on probation. And, like, Tupac would talk about how the punishment was on par with, like, what is given two people for harming a dog, you know? Right. And, yeah, he was just, like, always aware of how completely fucked the situation was and the wrongs that were being done.

And, yeah, I just think the resistance of the past. couple decades looks, looks a lot different if he's, if he's still around. But for instance, that crime, I hadn't realized, like,

they upheld that sentencing, like a week before the L.A. riot. So that was, like, in concert with the, uh, the simmering tensions, as they would say at the L.A.

times. Yeah. That's right. So in, uh, January, 1992, uh,

Ernest Dickinson's juice was released, marking Tupac's movie star debut. played the role of Bishop. The film is successful. Grosses over $20 million. And The New York Times says he's the film's most magnetic figure, as we mentioned already.

Like, I think he would definitely have an Oscar if he had survived. Yeah. Did you know he read for the part of Bubba Gump? Which, like, that's crazy to me even then, like, he was a lot for that. Yeah. He read for the part of...

Is he like a Forrest Gump type figure? He's just like in every part of his. I should have had a depiction of like when Forrest was at that Black Panther meeting, there's like little baby Tupac somewhere in the background. Forrest Gump goes to a Black Panther meeting. I've only seen it once. Oh my God. Yeah.

It is so crazy. The one time I saw it, I think I had the whole time I was just going, what? Oh, no, it's like very intentionally dismissive. Yeah. So when he goes, when Forrest goes to Washington, D.C., first of all, he like gets off the bus and there's just all these lines of protesters. Like the way they represent the counterculture movement is like a bunch of lines of protesters just getting in lines and moving around for the sake of moving around just

kind of aimlessly. But when he goes to the Black Panther Party headquarters, there's like this guy who's playing one of the leaders who's like speaking angrily at him is just like speechifying in his direction. And Forrest Gump sees like Jenny Get Hit or whatever. is like, I'm going to go beat up the guy hitter. And he walks away and the guy keeps yelling at the same

spot Forrest Gump was in. Like he's an anger robot. And like, he, like, he, like, doesn't even notice that Forrest Gump is gone. And it's, it's just such a fucking, it just reveals such a deep unwillingness to, uh, view Black,

the Black Panther party is like actual people who have actual complaints. and instead is just like, they're just like being angry for the sake of being angry. They're NPCs. Was he was, yeah, were they willing to confront what society had to reckon with there in that depiction or just like, we get it. Remember these people? They were, what were they mad about?

Yeah. It's sort of like what that whole scene feels like. That's so crazy. That movie won so many Oscars. I know. Yeah. If Tupac had been Bubba Gump, it would have been different. If things would have been different.

Tom Hanks' crew would be old. over. If Tupac was fucking Bubba. Yeah. Acted off the screen so hard that his body has been like the whole shrimp gumbo, shrimp stew, but like with more fucking angle like shrimp gumbo. Like a little more power. He had range.

He had range. I think Robert Z Vegas would not have been able to deal with. Yeah. Tupac's realness. You know he had like 15 minutes to prep for that juice audition? Yeah. Everything about like he just does things so quick. It also put shed some light because I was going back.

and listen to all eyes on me. And like some of the guest verses that I've always, I've always been like, yeah, this is like not that great, like the other people. Apparently he would make people write their verse and perform it in like 15 minutes. He would just be like, come on, come on, come on, go, go, go, go.

And like, you can kind of tell. What's your problem? That's how I do it. Let's go. Yeah, doesn't everyone have just an endless well of inspiration? Yeah, an endless well of inspiration that you're just constantly in touch with than ready to go.

Like, he, he recorded, like, two of the best songs on that album, uh, right, like, within 15 minutes of getting to the studio, less than 12 hours after still being in prison.

Like, he was just like, he had a lot. He had a lot to say. He had a lot to say. So, uh, 1992,

he moves to Los Angeles and starts hanging out with gang, and, you know, people in the bloods and crips and draws a lot of inspiration from them. His road manager, Manman, later said he started hang around thugs. He would suck it out of them and then use that in his music and his acting. Right method. Yes. But, like, he, that's just how I feel like he exists.

Like, he's just pulling whatever is around him out, out of it. And, like, he's, you know, we, we, we, we, talked about that with Marilyn Monroe and like the, uh, gorgeous story about that theorizes that Shakespeare is like this empty vessel for like different characters and stories to flow through and like feels like he kind of had a bit of that. But he can do it in such a way that like you'd think people were like, you're a little artsy kid and now you're a thug. It's like, but his upbringing is identical to all just terribly oppressed black people in this country. Yeah. So it's like, It's not that far of a jump to connect to that anger and rage that maybe he would have been in a gang.

But he was just more in the book. So I think that's, I remember always being like, that was like one of the first sort of like myths people would tear down about Tupac when I was younger. It was like, you know, he's like from the East Coast. He's not even from the West Coast also. He's like, he did ballet. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, but even everything I see is so authentic. He's the Mouse King.

Yeah. Like the Mouse King. Like the Mouse King, bro. Yeah. So he around this time buys a gun, starts gaining muscle, starts getting tattoos. This is when he gets the Thug Life tattoo. Also, you got to remember he's like in his early 20s. People are changing rapidly.

Oh, yeah. Like, oh, you started acting a different way. It's like, yeah, so do. A lot of you. Yeah. The 15 lives he leads are like the 10 different careers that he spawns, like are all happening in a three-year period, like from 21 to 24 when he died. He has so many alter egos in that short period of time.

But shout out a daggo's tattoo in Houston, Texas, where he gets the Thug Life tattoo. So this is when... What Thug Life stands for? Yeah. The hate you give little infants fucks everyone. They did not know that. And that's why the book The Hate You Give is named The Hate You Give after Tupac's

tattoo because this was a huge part of his worldview was that, the criminalization and, you know, inhumane treatment of young black children manifests in creating people. Like, it has a boomerang effect on society that affects everyone. And so he was really, that was like, you know, towards the end of his career,

that's when he was really, really, get, like, leaning into some real societal change type shit. It was like, he was like, no, I really want to make thug life, this philosophy. I want to mainstream this for society because now I have the platform with my, with my fame and my rapping to really also go after something I really believe in, which is equity.

And yeah, like the author of The Hate You Give talks about that a lot about how she was inspired just by hearing him talk about that tattoo. And it was like, holy shit. Like what a fucking had no idea. Yeah, off the dome is always ready to like give a treatise on like, you know, shit like that that is, you know, really deep and well thought out. And, you know, there is footage of him because they, there are points. at this time where

the Black Panther Party or similar movements are like we should bring him into the movement like make him the new leader of the new Black Panther Party and he's like going to these speeches with like all these older people and

he's just like look I'm going to say fuck sorry just just up front I apologize I'm going to say fuck but I can't not say fuck and they're just like giving these extemporaneous speeches that are like fucking amazing And they're like dynamite. Yeah.

They're like, hey, this guy is dynamite. And then the FBI raids the building. This is when Ronald Ray Howard, the teenager, kills a Texas state trooper. And Dan Quail says that the album, Tupac Lips Now must be withdrawn, saying it has no place in our society. And at this time,

Tupac says this about his family. In my family, every black male with the last name of Shakur that ever passed the age of 15 has either been killed or put in jail. There are no black male Shakur's out right now, free breathing without bullet holes in them or cops on his hands, none.

And then from the New Yorker article about that uses that following that quote, the leaders of the black nationalist movement to which the other Shakur's belonged had been virtually eliminated largely through the efforts of the FBI. Hey. The FBI, always the villain in these stories, whether it be Marilyn Monroe.

That's like going to be such a hard rebrand for them. I don't know what they're going to do. But it's like also wildest to think too, like with that Dan Quail statement, like Tupac's whole inspiration for Tupacalyps now was that like I'm trying to, I'm just expressing what the experience is for young black men. That's what it is. This isn't me inciting anything. thing. This is me just accurately trying to depict what my life is like. Also to call it to Apocalypse Now. Yeah. It's like Apocalypse Now, which is also, you know, the FBI was mad about Apocalypse now too because it showed that war sucks.

Right. Yeah. And then to have like Dan Quill be like, this place has a place in society. I think it's just still sort of indicative of where we still are in terms of our reckoning with just people of color, especially black American people. to be like, this thing that is them expressing the oppression that they're experiencing, this has no place. Yeah, no place in society. Exactly.

Keep it to sugar pie honey bunch. You know that I love you. You know what I mean? Like that's, and I think that's what's really important too about him because he also felt that responsibility. And he's like, man, fuck it. If the entire media is going to just come at me for saying this, then it is what it is. But I'm not going to stop.

There are multiple times throughout this where I'm like, I guess. The U.S. government wasn't directly responsible for killing Tupac, but they must have been so glad that he was dead because there's so much about him that is so powerful and in a way that is everything they feared, like all that work they put into fucking Cointel Pro and like holding down the Black Panther party, like that he must have scared the shit out of them. Yeah, I mean, they can never make the U.S. government look cool. No, they definitely can't.

They certainly try, but they... So this was something, I knew that he was cast a menace to society and fired during pre-production and that he then assaulted Alan Hughes, one of the Hughes brothers who directed that movie and who directs the Dear Mama documentary. There's like a fun part where they're like, all right, we're going to turn the cameras around and now we're going to ask you about the time that Tupac beat the shit out of you. He was like,

it was an honor. Yeah, he was also right because you guys have seen men as to society. Yeah. They cast him, they cast Tupac

as the mild-mannered nation of Islam friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could see it, though. I could see him doing it.

But like, because he is such a good actor. I could see him. He is a good actor, but like, and he has that sensitive. O-Dog, like I feel like if he's playing O-Dog,

it's a, I don't know. I, like, that was my favorite movie for many years of my life, but like, it's a, like, such a, like, I feel like Lorenz Tate does a great job in that movie. He's playing Tupac, essentially. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, if Tupac is the Lorenz Tate character, I don't know if we would have been able to handle it. Like, but at the very least, he is, I think his frustration was like, he didn't like that character and was like, give me another character that is, like, more. in line with my vibe and they would do it. Yeah. So 93, his second album comes out. What's that one called?

Strictly for my never ignorant getting goals accomplished. Z. That's the acronym that he loves an acronym. He loves an acronym. He loves an acronym. Yeah, yeah. But this has I get around on it.

Keep your head up. some of those classics. I get around still so good. I mean, I'm shocked G, the one who put the satin on your panties. How? How do you do that? Shocked He's a magician. He is the...

Oh, see, those are pot and fruit of the looms. Not anymore. The best talking head in the documentary and it's so sad that he passed. He's great and like really, really just cool to hear talk about early Tupac.

around this time he starts wearing red around crips and blue around bloods and there are like a couple times where like the people like man man or like the people who he keeps around him to like advise him and who are like kind of understand the streets a little bit more are like and that was stupid your decision to wear red around crips and vice versa the other one is hanging out with this guy Haitian jack who we're about to get to and then uh the other one would trying to leave death row. He, like, fired the lawyer who was, uh, his, like, basically his, like, legal representation right before he went to Las Vegas.

And people are like, that's not, you're not going to survive that very long. So in March, he's arrested for allegedly attacking a limo driver. Uh, he attempts to hit rapper, Chonzie Wynn with a baseball bat during a Michigan concert, uh, charged with felonious assault. pleads guilty to a lesser case. But this is kind of what you were talking about, Miles. Like, people would test him because they heard the thing about, like, he used to do ballet. And so he felt like he had to prove how hard he was.

This is when he becomes a real point of fascination for the white media. There's this talking head at this time from the documentary. He was like, Tupac Shakur is a one-man crime wave. I just always remember them calling him Tupac Shacker. You know, one-man crime wave. One-man crime way. It was just like a fucking cool-ass thing to say about yourself. Yeah, seriously, a way.

You're just one guy and you're a weave. March 1993, he attends the Soul Train Music Awards, where Rosie Perez introduces them to Madonna, and they have a brief affair. July 93, poetic justice is released, and John Singleton cast two-trapers. Puck after seeing one of his interviews on TV. It's not his previous film work,

but it's just like, God damn. Like, every time this guy appears on camera, he's so fascinating. He was going to be in higher learning, too. Yeah. And then they went to all the arrest shit. They were like, okay, no. And he was also, John Singleton was also saying he wanted him to be in baby boy.

Yeah. When he first thought that up, but then it was tight guy. Like so many things, you're like, what would that have fucking, what would any of these things have looked like? So many what ifs of like, Man, he would have been so good in that. He meets Snoop at the Poetic Justice premiere. They become close friends.

His performance is generally praised. He's convicted of possessing a loaded and concealed weapon in L.A. around this time, sentenced to 45 days on a work crew. October 1993, he's arrested for shooting two off-duty police officers in Atlanta after he witnesses them harassing a black man. who, like, he pulls up, so he's coming from a concert, pulls up, there's these two plainclothes white guys beating up this black guy on the street. They have a gun, like he starts yelling at them.

They use their gun to, like, smash his window, the window of his car. And then I just want to read from this biography. He turned to everyone in his car all the while keeping his eyes on the man and his gun, saying, someone gave me the gun. no one moved. He yelled again, someone gave me my gun. Suddenly one of the men used the butt of his gun to smash one of the windows in Tupac's car before both took off running. The victim, the black man who had been punched to the ground moments before, crawled to his car and drove away. Hupac reached into his car, so he like gets out, walks around to the passenger side where his gun is,

gets his gun, quickly scanned the street, saw the two men, took a knee in a military stance, and aimed his gun. Everybody get the fuck down. He called out. Then he fired. According to the New York Times, two bullets found their way into his targets.

Both men were knocked to the ground. One was struck in the buttocks, the other in the abdomen. Then, as if none of it had just happened, Tupac invited his entourage up to his hotel room and starts rolling blunts and smoking weed and, like, having a party. As his friend is like,

I think those two men you shot were cops. I'm like, watch. I'm out here and the whole street is like crawling with cops. And he's just like, all right. Yeah. No, that's whatever. I shouldn't have been there. Yeah.

This is another one of those moments where just like everything happens at the same time because later in the chapter, Tupac yelled out to the room. Yo, wait a minute, everybody. I want everybody to hear my new song. Within seconds, Tupac's voice filled the room as Dear Mama began to play. Dante recounted the moment.

He's over there rolling up weed. laughing and playing music like he didn't just shoot two people. Shortly, Anag at the door, startled everyone in the room, except Tupac, who was calmly rolling a blunt. Someone looked through the peephole and announced it's the police. He said, okay, fine, let him in. I recalled, I said, what? What do you mean, let him in? You just killed two people outside.

The moment the police entered the suite, they looked right at Tupac, and they said, you, come on. Tupac got up and made no bones about it. He said, I did it. Yeah, I did it. He was arrested and released on $55,000 bond. There's also, in the documentary, he talks about the shooting. He drops to one knee, took aim, and the guy who is in the car is like, dude, what are you doing?

Like, you can't hit them from there. They're, like, 45 feet away, and they're, like, running away. But his mom had just gotten sober and moved down to Atlanta with him, and they had a shooting range in the backyard. So he had been working on it. He, like, pulled up from the logo and just, like, nailed these guys in the ass. he seems like he's going to be in a lot of trouble for this, but then it turns out that they're off duty, they're drunk,

and the gun that they used to, uh, yeah, was stolen from the evidence locker, so they can't do shit to him. And it's almost like he knew that. He's just like, yeah,

fuck you. Yeah. So this is when he meets Biggie for the first time, uh, an LA drug dealer introduced them, uh, and he, whenever he was out in L.A.,

he would sleep on Tupac's couch. But like, Biggie was a huge Tupac. fan. He, they would like play with unloaded guns in his backyard because again, they're like kids essentially. Right. You want to play with my guns in my backyard? You don't play guns. Yeah. And around this time, Biggie asks Tupac to be his manager. He's like, I don't really like Puff. Like, you, yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Like, I'm getting a little bit of a sinister vibe from Yeah, yeah.

But Tuvok is like, that guy is going to make you a star. You should actually stick with him, which he was right. To a point. Unfortunately. Yeah, to a point. Another inflection point. What is? This is a big inflection point.

In 1993, he temporarily moves to New York City to film above the rim. As he's preparing for the role, he starts hanging out with Jacques, Haitian Jack Agnant. who is a music promoter, who everybody who's from New York is like, like Biggie is like, dude, you should not be hanging around that guy. He's like really fucked up. What's the worst thing to happen? Yeah. And then that November, so this is from a New Yorker article on Tupac.

On November 14th, 1993, Jock Agnont and Tupac went to Nels, the downtown New York club, a friend of Ignantz, identified only as Tim, introduced Tupac to a 19-year-old woman named Ianna Jackson. She expressed her interest in him. They danced together. She performed oral sex in the corner of the dance floor. They went to his hotel room where they had intercourse. The next day, she called and left many messages on his voicemail, saying, among other things, how much she'd enjoyed his prowess. Four days later on November 18th, she returned to his hotel suite. there she found Tupac, man-man,

Agnont, and an unidentified friend of Agnonts. They all watched television in the living room and then she and Tupac went into the bedroom. Later,

the three other men entered the room. What ensued is disputed, Jackson claims that she was forced to perform oral sex on Tupac while Agnott partly undressed her and grabbed her from behind and that they then made her perform oral sex on Agnant's friend

while Tupac held her. Tupac claimed that he left the room when the other men entered and did not witness whatever happened. In any case, Jackson testified that she left the suite in tears and that Egnott pulled her to calm down, saying that he would hate to see what happened to Mike Tyson happened to Tupac. That is a woman charging him a sexual assault, which is what Jackson promptly did. She summoned the hotel security officers who called the police. Tupac, Man, Man, and Egnott were arrested.

So he at the very least says, you know, I didn't do it, but I, was responsible for not stopping what happened, essentially. And there's a lot of weird shit with Egnott. So his lawyer is somebody from the patrolman's benevolent association. So he's like a cop lawyer moved that his client's case be severed from Tupac's on the ground that only Tupac had been charged with the weapons offenses and that therefore the indictment was improperly joined and the prosecutor did not oppose the motion, which two pups lawyer says it's highly unusual and the judge granted it so it's there are some questions

about like whether this was a setup but you know the victim has always said like i was not part of a setup and like this is what happened and you know i think we believe her that uh you know she she was assaulted yeah and there was like a huge settlement too after that too because yeah yeah There were, yeah, some of the charges were dropped. And I remember Tupac went on like the Arsenio Hall show. Yes. Like right after that. And, you know, was like, he said, I, like, I was hurt that a woman would accuse me of taking something from her.

Because, you know, and then he did this thing. I was like, I was raised in a house full of females. But it's like, dude. Yeah. You did. Like, at worst, you're a fucking predator. At best, you're an ain't shit man. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Uh, so he was like, hey, I just put out Dear Mama. Listen to this song. Yeah, listen to Dear Mama. When a man who wrote Dear Mama do such a thing and it's like, well, sir, this, uh, this is exactly how it works. Yeah.

Like, as he's waiting to go on trial, he is filming Bullet with Mickey Rourke and he and Mickey Rourke become friends and like start wrecking shit. Yeah. Mickey Rourke recalled, we'd be crossing the street to go to a club. You'd already hear the bouncer say, they're here together. What are we supposed to do? Uh, Jesus. Mickey Rourke and Tupac

Apparently, they were like, he, when Tupac was in jail, him and Mickey Rourke were like regularly writing letters. And Mickey Rourke's always like, man, Tupac was there for me when I was really down. This guy had my back. He's like, what a fucking wild crew.

Yeah. He also received letters from Jim Carrey. And the one that like meant the most. Tony Danza for some reason is Tony Danza wrote him a letter. I was like, Hey, liked your album. Keep your head up. Tony Danza. He was a 70s kid. He probably watched Who's the boss? You know, he was also close with Alonis Morissette. Yeah, he and Alonis Morissette

were going to open a restaurant together. Yeah. Wow, what kind of food would they have at the restaurant, I wonder. Canadian California. Canadian California. Yeah, salads. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm inalick Lamouba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was out of breaking point.

Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Almemata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King, Sr., and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought, was a revolution. I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of

Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind.

Listen to the A-building on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you do in the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me,

is where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope.

We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys' Five Rings podcast and the lead-up to the Milan Quartet, at 2026 Winter Olympic Games. We've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bob, hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt, hey, Bowen.

Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to two guys, five rings on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What if mind control is real? If you get control the behavior of anybody around you, kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was

used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user man, you for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted.

The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So this is around the time. time because of his multiple court cases. He also has many family members relying on him financially. His bank account is shrinking.

And during jury deliberation for his sexual assault trial, he is recording a guest birth for a rapper named Little Sean. Yeah. And Little Sean's a friend of Didy and Biggie. He's going to Quad Studios. Little Sean's manager is Jimmy Henschman Roseman, who knew Tupac through Haitian Jack and he's the one who made the offer.

Around this time, Tupac is openly in the media being like, weird that Haitian Jack is like being treated so well, almost like he's a government operative. And this is the guy who's like so dangerous. Everyone's like,

don't fucking hang out with that guy. He's like openly being like, guy's a cop. to anyone who will listen. So he comes to the studio. At first he has some hesitations because there's a bunch of dudes in the lobby

wearing army fatigues, but rapper Lil sees yells down to him that bigies upstairs and that ditty's there as well. So he goes in, the guys pull guns on him, and there's a shooting, there's like some question over

like how many times He was shot. Some people say that he accidentally shot himself and everything else was like getting pistol whipped and beat down. But he was shot, still went upstairs to the recording studio after being shot and was like everyone was really weird. Like nobody would kind of look at me. Everybody seemed really surprised to see me. This is where he starts to suspect that it was Biggie and Puff who had set him up. Right. So he goes to the hospital and then checks himself out within a few hours. Yep. He's just like, I'm out. To go to the Homegirls house. Yeah, Jasmine Guy.

Goes to the house of Jasmine Guy. Immediately after this, like he goes to the courthouse with like massive bandages around his head and, you know, all fucked up. In a wheelchair, yeah. In a wheelchair. He's acquitted of the three sodomy accounts and the charge for illegal possession of a firearm. convicted of two counts of sexual abuse. His bail was set at $3 million.

As time goes on, he came to believe that Biggie knew the shooting at quad recording studio was going to happen. And he starts receiving a lot of letters in the mail being like, hey, this is what I'm hearing. I'm hearing that they knew what happened. He's also certain that the song, Who Shotcha, is about him. Right. But that song was actually recorded before the shooting actually happened.

So I don't know. It's knowing what we know about Puff, it seems like anything's possible. It also seems very plausible that Haitian Jack was not thrilled with him saying that he was an FBI informant. And like the person who invited him to do the verse was someone whose name is literal henchman. Yeah. And he is an associate of Haitian Jack. And it would have been easy for him to organize it as well. It is wild, though, too, like, knowing who shot you wasn't about that.

And Trump was like, oh, okay. Well, I guess I'm just going to have to record hit him up now. Right. And fully blow the fucking lid off this thing, too. Yeah, yeah. Did you say Trump was like? Did I say that? Yeah, I think he said Trump was like.

Wow. Yeah, Jesus. Tupac. Yeah, I don't think Trump has a hit him up first. You're getting your New York rappers confused. Trump did sue Mickey Rourke and Tupac for like $100,000 for damages they did to his hotel at the time that they were on a tear. I didn't realize he factored into this.

Yeah, he always, he always does, unfortunately. He's for us gum. Yeah, seriously. February 7th, 1995, he sentenced to one and a half to four and a half years in prison. A few months later, the indictment against Haitian Jack is. dropped and he pleads guilty to two misdemeanors. So Tupac's maintained his innocence in an interview but said he should have intervened. Even though I'm innocent of the charge they gave me, I'm not innocent in terms of the way I was acting. I'm just as guilty for not doing nothing as I am for doing

things. He's incarcerated at the Clinton correctional facility, Danamora. Yeah. You know from escape from Danamora. And there's just like the the guards are fucking horrible to him. There's an anecdote from somebody who goes to visit him and they like do a cavity check on Tupac before he goes into the room and then also after they he comes out and like at the end of the thing like as this time's running out they're like oh Tupac and like waving the gloves at him so it's just like fucking horrific shit evil yeah evil evil shit that you know they hated him for a very long time telling me these COs are bad people I know you believe it.

I thought all the rappers were lying when they mentioned C.O's. But, wow. This is when Me Against the World was released, and this is his first album that just goes directly to number one and stays there for four weeks. This is one of my favorite albums. And, yeah, he recorded it all ahead of going to jail. I always assumed it was partially, like, his prison album,

just because it came out while he was in prison. Right, right, right. You know, it wasn't. It's crazy to be like, okay, I got to get this done. before I go to jail and then just... Oh, the album's doing well? Oh, cool. Good to hear.

Oh, they like so many tears? Great. Great. So many tears. It is crazy, though, too. Like, the more adversity he faces, the more creatively productive he becomes. Yeah, exactly.

He just... And, like, that's just always how he... Like, he is activated by bullshit. Like, he's activated by anybody pushing back against him or anything that, like, doesn't want him to... be who he is. Right. So because he has a lot of people,

depending on him financially, you know, he gets $600,000 in advances for me against the world, but it's not enough. And this is when Shug Knight starts visiting him, along with the lawyer, David Kenner. So Shug did not like Tupac as an artist at first.

He was like, oh, he's like into his like artsy shit, you know? But then once Tupac started committing crimes, He was like, oh, wait a second. He started doing the kombucha face. Brittany Broski. Brittany Broski. So he starts courting Tupac at a time when Dre is thinking about leaving death row and Snoop is on trial for murder that I remember at the time.

It was the case that they gave him. Murder had, of course, been the case that they gave him. And I just remember everybody being like Snoop's going away for life. Yeah. This is, yeah, he's. And I remember, like, everyone's like, did you know his name's Calvin Brodus? That's such a dorky fucking name.

I remember that was like, I was a fucking nerd. I think as in the murder as a case video, it had his headstone with his, with his government name on everyone. And everyone was like, what the fuck? I don't even,

this was like pre-internet where you just figured, I don't know, his name was Snoop Doggy Dog. Yeah. And they're like, is Calvin Brodus. Okay. So he gives him a three-page contract

that's basically like, we'll advance you a million dollars. Always advancing. never like paying plus $125,000 for purchase of a car, $120,000 for expenses over a year, an additional $250,000 for legal fees. Shug becomes your manager, Kenner is your attorney. Just all these things that are like conflicts of interest and people, you know, legal analysts have like come back and been like, this could not hold up in a court of law because he's like obviously doing these things under duress.

but he tells his friends, I know I'm selling my soul to the devil. And it really, it's crazy. Like, within a week of signing the deal, he's granted leave to post bail, which the New Yorker is even like, what? How the fuck did they do that? Right.

They're like, what a stunning coincidence. They're just, like, it is truly like signing a deal with the devil. Like, all of a sudden, just like, the court system starts moving. And, like, the doors open on the judge. jail that you've been held in. Yeah, yeah.

They're like, yeah. Well, welcome. You're free. He gets out immediately, like, gets in Rolls-Royce is on a private jet to L.A. on October 13th, 1995, he lands in L.A. goes straight to Can-Am Recorders,

which is Death Row Records, San Fernando Valley Studio. Yeah. Within 45 minutes, he'd laid down a verse of ambitions as a ride to finish the track that day. Plus, I ain't mad at like on the first day. Doing ambitions as it right straight out of jail.

Just right out of jail. Wow. He starts working for 19-hour days, just recording the whole album and like a flurry. He had a lot to say. Yeah. Yeah. Between his release from prison and his death,

less than a year later, he cut hundreds of songs. I didn't realize he was dead less than a year after he left jail. Again, like three lifetimes. For like seven years. Yeah. Yeah.

laid down a career's worth of tracks in literally like eight months. People are like, oh, so you like wrote all these songs in jail? Because how do you have so many songs ready to go? He's like, I wrote one song in there. I've been in the studio every waking hour since I got out. We just keep coming up with new songs till people start passing out. Then we come back early in the morning and start over. Canham is in North Hollywood, I think also that's too.

Yeah, like many of the great recording studios. Shout out. Shout out our lovely North Hollywood. There it is. Look at us. The other thing is, the way people talk about it, I would have loved to see a Chris Farley show interview with Tupac.

So you like, write all your songs in jail or you just got a notebook? It's like, is everyone just so baffled by his, like, output. His prowess is just like how much is. I feel like I would even ask a question like that way. So you got a lot of notebooks and stuff. Cool, cool, yeah. Sometimes when you're just impressed by somebody,

it is just like, wow, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, truly. That's all you can say. Honestly, like, that's kind of the experience of doing this research. So you do that? What the fuck? So Shug would often be working, would just like kind of always be where Tupac was. Like, while Tupac was working, he'd be close by also working.

Then they would hang out afterwards. He would just hand Tupac stacks of $100 bills and they were just always together. at one point around this time he saves Tupac from drowning in Cabo because the current in Cabo is like super dangerous and Tupac decided to try swimming and should dove in and save him. So like he almost got pulled up like a riptide or something?

Yeah, yeah. That's, have you ever been to Cabo? Like they won't let you swim down there. No, yeah, I know there's only like the, I remember one of the first times I went. I'm like, let's go to the beach. You're like, oh no, you can sit on the sand. Yeah, that's right.

And I was like, what the fuck? Okay. yeah Brian the editor yeah Malcolm Jamal Warner yeah in Costa Rica it was a riptide I'm the the mental image of Shug saving someone from drowning

yeah well he's apparently a good athlete imagine if you were like on the beach yeah and Shook's like Tupac hold on I'm coming yeah just like Shug like swimming out so Shug was a football player

then he was a security guard just swimming is hard Swimming is a whole other skill set. Yeah. I know, exactly. But this is, again, people are like, Tupac is a chameleon, whatever he's around. That's what he turned into.

And when he got around Death Row, he became that with this like soldier mentality. They go on a fucking tear. Death Row does take care of his family better than Interscope did. They put him up at the Westwood Marquis. Fennie said, Death Row in the beginning, treated us much better than Interscope Head.

but November 1995, a wrongful death lawsuit against Tupac was settled out of court. This one was like, this was one of the early things. It was really fucked up. So they were doing an event and like this fan like started talking shit and Tupac reached for his gun and dropped it. And then his brother picked it up and started firing shots over the head of the crowd to like get people back. But it like struck a child. a six-year-old and killed him in the Bay Area. So this is when he settled that out of court.

I remember that was something, too, they really tried to not have get out or like was talked about very little because like the headlines were just like, Jesus Christ. So horrible. Yeah, yeah. This is when the East Coast, West Coast shit starts to like really pop off. So Tupac while he's in jail is being told like it was big. It was a puff.

And in September of this year, bodyguard and friend of Shug Knight was killed after a confrontation with Diddy. December at a Christmas party, an associate of Diddy, Mark Anthony Bell, comes to a death row of Christmas party, and Shug Knight is like, hey, why don't you come back here? Me and Tupac and, you know, some other people are smoking weed back there and is tortured by Shug Knight who, is basically, like, I want to know who killed my friend, and I want the address of Diddy and his mother,

which Shugnight would often, like, negotiate either by just, like, showing you his gun, like, while not saying anything, or showing you your mother's address. Like, that was one of his favorite negotiation tactics. So what they do in this, like, back room at this Christmas party results in death row having to pay this guy $600,000 settlement. And so this is when Tupac starts saying that he slept with Faith Evans. They worked together on a song.

She denies that they ever hooked up. And by February, he's already planning to leave death row. Tupac, he's starting plans for a production company called Euthanasia. And he's making steps to separate his business from death row. And then All Eyes on Me has released 27 tracks, first ever double-scent. CD by rap artist, debuted at number one. Because of it being two discs, it became, it was like extra profitable. It earned $10 million in revenue in its first week, putting it only behind the Beatles

anthology on the list of the most successful openings in the history of music at that time. Certified Diamond with 10 million copies sold. This is when the Vibe magazine cover story with Shug, Snoop, Dre, and Tupac posed like Goodfellas comes out. The All Black. Yeah. This is when Tupac and Biggie encounter each other at the Soul Train Awards and Biggie, like Pete, there's reports

that Tupac pulled a gun on him. Biggie says, nah, Pock didn't pull steel on me. He was on some tough shit, though. I can't knock them, dudes, for the way they go about their biz. They made everything seem so dramatic. I felt the darkness when he rolled up that night. Damn. He still seems like he's just a fan.

He's like, man, I can't knock him though. They've really got like pretty charismatic. The baseline was that they were friends. Like, they really admired each other. So, like, yeah, it's, yeah, like, I mean, I can totally see how even despite that. You're like, yeah, I mean, I get it. Yeah. During that spring, he films Gridlocked.

And he's just, like, making movies as he's, like, recorded. He's doing so much. He's doing so much. Gridlocked is the one with Tim Roth, where they play drug addicts. There's an interview with Tim Roth where he's like, and I was like, oh, fuck, I got to like act it across from this musician. I was so bummed. And then I'm of course bummed when I realize he's also a much better actor than me.

And then he's spending most of the summer of 1996 filming gang related with Jim Belushi. Yeah. Jesus. Like, that's one we could have not used one of the last months of life to be filming. Gridlocked is great, though. Yeah. Yeah. All of his performances are.

this time or getting like raves. He's also dating Kidada Jones, Quincy Jones's daughter at this time. Controversial though. Yeah. So he said some wild shit. I know. So the reason that he even meets up with her

is that Rashida Jones, famous from many things, wrote an open letter to Tupac and the source about something Tupac had said about her father. basically he said that like he's always like marrying white women and then having these fucked up children

with him. Was so against the interracial marriage. Yeah, yeah. And even when he was like talking to, there's like letters between him and Madonna where he's like for you, it's cool that you're like fucking me. For me, I don't like what it says

that I'm like fucking real. So but yeah, he approached Kadada thinking she was Rashida. to apologize and the two hit it off. And this is also, there's a weird rumor that around this time he called Kadada a bitch and Michael Jackson overheard him and fought Tupac. I don't know how. Yeah.

Record scratch sound. Yeah, there's somebody who like went on a radio show and was basically like, and Michael Jackson whooped his ass too. Who walked on him. All over him. Then he did that thing where he was on his. toes, but on Tupac's eyes. He was never right after that.

That all eyes on me. Yeah, Tupac tried to swing, and then Michael did the lean from the moonwalker. Yeah, yeah. From smooth criminal, just ducked it. You know when people talk about Michael Jackson using his real voice, though, when they're like, oh, when you would be with him alone, he'd be like, yeah, what's up? Yeah, yeah. Oh, you thought that was real?

Yeah, like he was like a different person. Here, I do have this quote. I just in the tradition of the Daily Zekeyes, I do just need you to read this quote from Quincy Jones on potentially having Tupac as his son-in-law. 2012 quote, I wouldn't have me at first. He'd attack me for having all these white wives.

And my daughter, Rashida, who was at Harvard, wrote a letter to the source taking him apart. I remember one night I was dropping Rashida at Jerry's delicatessen. Such a deep cut for L.A. people, bro. I was like, Jerry's Delicatine, Jerry's Deli, bro. Salute. Okay, shout out Jerry's Delacetat. I was dropping Rashid at Jerry's Delacetessin,

and Tupac was talking to Kadada because he was falling in love with her then. Like an idiot, I went over to him, put two arms on his shoulders and said, Pock, we got to sit down and talk, man. If he had a gun, I would have been done. But we talked. He apologized. We became very close after that. Once, I was having a date at the Hotel Belair,

and he came by and told the waiter that he would be back. he was going home to put on a tie. You like lobster bisque? What the fuck? Just what to? Yeah, some of the hotel he said he'd be, what a weird way to end that.

I know, such a weird. He was going home to put on a tie, the end. Tupac's not wearing a fucking time. I'd be like, I had a man-to-man talk with him. If he had a gun,

I would have been dead. It's like, no, you wouldn't have. Yeah. He would have just continued talking to you, music legend, Quincy Jones.

Unless he's trying to be like he was tough, talking Tupac. And so he said, if he had a gun on him, maybe I would have, he would have blasted me or some shit. Yeah. Oh, Quincy, we'll never know what's real with you, but it doesn't matter. So August 27th, he directs one of his longtime friends who's helping him with his business to write a letter firing Kenner, the lawyer who came in and was like given power of attorney with the death row contract. Then they go to New York for the VMAs and around this time Snoop like goes on a radio show and is like yeah not you know like I would still work with like big or like puff like because they make good music and Tupac like won't talk to

Snoop after that and Shug won't let Snoop bring his security on the flight home from New York so Snoop like when he's on the plane like puts a blanket up to his neck but then is holding like his knife and fork under his thing like in case they attack him and like pretending to sleep. He's going to eat them. They're going to fucking kill me. Holy shit. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why

Snoop is not in Vegas when they go to Vegas on September 7th. They're there for the Mike Tyson, Bruce Selden fight. After the fight, Shug is throwing a party at his Las Vegas Club 662 mob on a phone

keypad. and Tupac wanted to go to Atlanta, but Shug convinced him to go to Vegas. Kadada Jones is there. Now Tupac's fiance is also in Vegas. So it takes... It seems like at a hotel or something, right? Like waiting for him.

Yeah. Like, but yeah, right. Takes Tyson two minutes to knock out Selden. The fight's over by 840. Tupac hugs Tyson. They're very close friends. He wrote a song. He wrote an entry song.

Yeah. In the documentary, some of Tupac's friends kind of blame Bruce Selden for what happens the next because they're like, well, you see, like, we went there for a fight, and then like we barely got a fight. So we were like looking for a fight now. After the fight is over.

Fucking Bruce Selden. So, Knight, Tupac, and their entourage leave the fight, and they see Orlando Baby Lane Anderson, who is a member of the South Side Compton Crips, Shug's affiliated with the Bloods, the Pairo. So Anderson's uncle, D. Davis, is also there.

About a month before member of the Crips had robbed Trayvon Lane from death row of his chain. And so Lane tells Tupac that Anderson was the person who robbed him. They run after Anderson, beat him up, stomp him, security guards, come break it up. Tupac goes back to his hotel room tells people like well I just beat the shit out of the sky hangs out there for a little bit Check out my new video for California love

Like it feels like after Tupac does some violent shit And like also How about this for a ditty? California love Do we feel in that? No, okay, okay. But the guy that they'd beat up Anderson was like a murderer

with like many bodies on his name Like they kind of picked the wrong one A little bit before nine, Shug, Tupac, and their crew leave the MGM Grand. There's two hours where I think he's like back in his room getting ready. And then this is when Keefe D. Davis goes and gets a gun. They're in a lineup of cars set to depart for the club. Knight gets in the driver's seat of his black BMW. Tupac sits next to him in the passenger seat with the window down.

normally they would have had armed bodyguards riding with them so it's unusual that they're alone the outlaws are in the car behind them and i don't know it's it's like a little weird shug was like i feel like shug was like you need to ride with me and is kind of i don't know if you wanted to talk to him about firing the lawyer or what at around 11 the police pool over shug and Tupac because their music is too loud and they don't have license plates, but they just like kind of let them go without giving a ticket. And then 1115, they're stopped at a red light, talking to girls in a car next to them. And then the women pull away. A white Cadillac pulls up next to them and starts firing on them. 13 shots from a 40 caliber, Glock Pistol. Tupac tried to

crawl into the back seat and Shug pulls them down. Four bullets hit Tupac. Shug's forehead gets grazed by a bullet fragment. There's a story, like he's awake for a while after he got shot. Shug told him to hang on and he said, you're the one who got shot in the head. That's according to Shug. That could just be a story of Shug's making up to be like, me and Tupac,

butch and Sundance, and Tupac's like kind of marveling at how tough he is. But the police and paramedics are on the scene by around 1120. He's rushed to the University Medical Center, goes into emergency surgery. I think his ring finger had been shot off and they have to remove his right lung and he stays in critical condition for several days

and then dies on September 13th, Friday the 13th at age 25. And yeah, I mean, even, so there's this New Yorker article about, like, from a couple years after where they're like, the Las Vegas police would appear to have been almost lackadaisical in their approach

to Tupac's murder. No. They made only perfunctory attempt to question Tupac's cousins who are riding in the car behind nights, for example. But then it's also, you know, Shug is not cooperating. Yeah, at all. Yeah. Someone asks him, if you knew who killed Tupac, would you tell the police?

And he said, absolutely not. I don't get paid to solve homicides. But Orlando Anderson was suspected by authorities of being involved. He denied involvement and died in 1998. But according to his uncle later, his uncle later, wrote a book and was like, yeah, no, so I bought the gun, handed it to him, he shot. So, they were really like telling everybody for years after. Yeah, it was like an open secret.

At this time, Puffy had like had meetings with Crips where he was like, man, I would pay a million dollars for someone to murder Shogun Tupac. Like that was kind of a known thing. So he never, he never paid out on it. but it is interesting that that was... That's one of the many fucked up things I learned from murder rap

in a documentary I keep talking about which is yeah that it was like one of the guys like the not did he not pay them it was like KFEDE was told that like the other guy had gotten the money and not him or something

but it was like that was unprovable too so it's just all such a like a senseless tragedy I know. And then March 1997 Biggie is murdered in Los Angeles. And I'm pretty sure, like that same guy who solved the Tupac crime or like kind of figured out what happened there believes that that one was, you know, Shug was in prison and like kind of had his girlfriend, you know, contact this guy who was like a known blood, like, you know, a sad. who like did did the killing, right? Is essentially what it is? Yeah. Yeah.

And, uh, and maybe some cops were involved, but we'll never know. We'll never know. But yeah, like, I remember in the Dedy documentary, right? Like, Biggie didn't want to go, but didn't want to be there in L.A. Well, that's like one of the fucked up things is Ditty was like, you got to go to L.A. And he was like, I don't think I should go to L.A. seems like a bad idea. He's like, I want to go to London in it. And he's like, no.

You're coming here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. both of the murders were done kind of like in front of everybody. That's what's so crazy is they were both like, you know, the Las Vegas strip and Miracle Mile are just like such public places. Right. Yeah. For all that to happen. So there is just a lot of like unfortunate coincidence type stuff of like, yeah, if they hadn't, the car hadn't pulled up, if those girls hadn't pulled up in the car because they said they figured out where Tupac and Shig were because those girls were like, it's Tupac. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It sucks.

Yeah. That was wild too. I remember when he died, I just, I remember it so vividly. I had this like weird little tiny TV in my room. And like the news came up. And I was so,

that was like one of the first times. Actually, when Miles Davis died, that was the first celebrity I felt bad about because I was like, I was named after this person. You were named after Miles Davis? Yeah, yeah.

But I didn't. know much about Miles Davis's career until I got much older. And I was like, oh, this, like, the, the furthest it got for me was like, I started playing trumpet because I was like, well, I was named after Miles Davis. I better play the trumpet. But with Tupac, I just remember so much like that, like you were saying, Molly, before we were recording, it was a Friday. My birthday was that weekend. And I was just like, man, nothing matters. Tupac's dead. Yeah. First, first dance with those. the world might be not that great, actually. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just a, and I think there's just, you know, so much of his music is so powerful too because like, you know, of all the people, you have more like the real West Coast gangster rap that wasn't really talking about like your own vulnerabilities or your own trauma. You're like you're describing really dark shit. But with Tupac's, you know, lyrics, the pros of it really open the door to really let

a lot more emotion out in rap. And I, you know, credit so much of like what we see like, you know, I don't know. I don't know what DMX, if his career exists in the same way without Tupac, because Tupac had that sort of same, like, has that intensity to talk about. Intensity, interiority. Yeah. Doing like intersectional politics in his rap, which is, you know.

Yeah. Full of contradiction. Yeah. Like, I was obviously, like, very into him as a California person. But also because I was like, wow, he's like, women are oppressed. Right. I know. Yeah, he was.

And it's tied. but they're also hoes. Right. Okay. Okay. Did you know that Jada was going to direct the California love video? No. That was another interesting tip.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She, I'm pretty sure she gave him the concept. She's really all over the place. I know, right? She had the concept for the video. Oh, really? The Mad Mad Madge shit? Yeah, and then she was going to direct it,

but for whatever reason just didn't end up directing it. It's such a weird direction for that video. It's a great video, but it's like a song that you would expect to be like, you know, celebrating things of that Cali. There's the second, there's the part two video where it's like more of a traditional whole party and a mansion video.

Yeah, yeah. But it makes sense. It's kind of burning. Yeah, Thunderdome. Let's do it. Yeah. It's the Thunderdome. Yeah. I will say like to be in Los Angeles when that came out. Yeah. Like I... Nothing like it. Yeah, like honestly, I'm like, wow, we grew up in an amazing time

actually. Maybe like, So the closest thing was like when Not Like Us came out. Yeah, that too. No, it is like I was like, wow, when Not Like Us came out, it was like everywhere you went in California, people were playing it. Why the fuck aren't you listening? This is our song. Yeah, that one, man.

In California, it's like if a song is good, it has to sound good coming out of a car. Right, yeah, yeah. And that song sounds great coming up. And then to live and die in LA because when McAvelli came out, that was another one you had to blast out of your car was to live and die in L.A. Come with me. It's just funny, too. It's like all these songs that are so kind of serious in a way,

but they're all just like fun to listen to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of those songs have great production and just great, you know, they're all a little bouncy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I said, like the historic, you know, tradition that he was born into of, like, you know, systemic white supremacy and, like, violent oppression of the Black Panther Party and just the fact that,

Yeah, it is such a tragedy that even without like the FBI actively being the ones who pulled the trigger, I think they must have been very relieved when he went away. And that fucking sucks, you know, because he could have been so powerful. I remember I had a meeting with his brother briefly, his half brother. Yeah. And he talked about really what the most interesting thing to him was that the beginning of, of what thug life was going to be. Yeah. And really trying to like mainstream

this outrage over inequality and systemic racism. Because that was like, that was always on like the vision board for Tupac of like what he could be doing too. And I know. And it is like after he died, you did have the sort of the big suits rap era.

Right, exactly. People who like conscious rap were mad about because they were like. Yeah, the bling bling era came. through. Yeah, exactly. And the bling-bling era definitely changed the course of it. But I think... I'm not ignoring the problems. I acknowledge that there are problems

that come from me having so much fucking money. Because I mean, you look at it too. That's Diddy resting control of the hip-hop narrative too at that time. Yeah. Being like, hey, just make a lot of money. Don't worry about systematic oppression. Right. Just bootstrap your way out of it. Bling-bling. No straight for bling-bling.

Your Rolley's in the sky. Yeah, I think cash money is it's in no limit or their own, their own episode will have to do sometime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But such a different style, though, too, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's like, it's grimy. Yeah, yeah, like that's still, yeah, New York projects still have a little bit of grime to it,

whereas like the Puff Daddy, we're in Times Square, we're wearing batting gloves and weird. Yeah, and we're like, we purchased a really expensive sample, Whereas cash money, it sounds like you're driving a... Like the worst warriors click, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cash money song calls sound like you're like driving a clown car over a street full of thumb tax kind of in a possible way. Yeah, exactly.

Like it was such a less polished sound. I mean, yeah, there's no limit soldier episode soon. I love Master P. I love Master P. Yeah, good God. I really do think like there was just so much unfinished business. like to the amount of question marks over what that trajectory looks like. That's what's crazy.

When I watched murder rap, it is like, I was like, this is like just so Shakespearean. Yeah. Like everybody is dead at the end and, and it's, it's horror. It's just, it's just, it's a bummer. It is an incredible story. There, like, there's been lots of articles written about it. I will say the lack of, like, definitive, rigorous biographies of Tupac. Like having like done this research and being like, oh, this is the best story like I've ever heard.

Like the lack of like movies. Like there are plenty of documentaries and stuff like that. But it's like, well, I does make you think too. Like if he had lived and he had continued to become more political and more famous and more. Yeah. Influential. Like I'm sure they would have sicked Cointel Pro on him. Oh yeah.

Again, you know. But he knew what Cointel Pro was, whereas I feel like a lot of, You know what I mean? He was talking about Cointel Pro in middle school, you know? Yeah. Not that that makes it any easier to deal with. No, but it was like, you know, to bring a bunch of, get introduced all these kids, such as Miles and I,

to like the Black Panther ideologies. Yeah. Through music after the American government had tried to completely stamp it out, you know. I think about that a lot because it was like, you know, you had Tupac revolutions. all these Black Panther concepts. And then we also had like,

rage against the machine sort of, you know, mainstreaming all these kind of like Chicano rights things. It was very just like, oh, the 60s are not over. Yeah.

He didn't fix it. And so it's going to keep coming back. I remember when Geronimo Pratt got out of jail, my dad took a portrait for him for a magazine and he went up to Oakland to take the picture. And I was like, what is this? And then I was like,

he's Tupac's godfather? Yeah. And then I was like, then I became interested in Geronimo Pratt. Yeah. And it's just interesting how you kind of sometimes need a person to co-sign a thing. And you're like, okay, now I'm really into it, which I wouldn't have been before. And yeah, it's, I think a very underrated aspect of his career that I think most people don't realize, too, that as it resonates into now and the way people talk about civil rights now. Yeah.

And it was cool to me that his mother was like the civil rights activist. Yeah. Like the center of it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Like probably the most successful of anybody of like pushing back against Cointel Pro. Yeah. All right.

Well, thank you. I know that was a long one, but there's a lot to say about Tupac Shakur. Rapper Tupac Shakur. I still like have that burned in my brain. Just like all those early news reports. Molly, where can people find you, follow you all that good stuff? You can find me on Instagram at Molly. underscore Lambert, and you should check out Jenna World, where there is one episode, Tupac shows up in in the Heather

Hunter episode episode 10, because Heather Hunter, a famous black vivid girl, the first black vivid girl, was in the How Do You Want It video, which was directed by a porn director named Ron Hightower. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, a lot of overlap between those worlds. So check out. It is like there's all these funny outtakes from the video of Heather Hunter sitting on Tupac's lap and both of them trying to not laugh.

Oh, really? Well, you know, you're trying to look sexy, but you're kind of all scrolling. Shooting a music video. Right. So yeah, check out Jenna World and more to come from the Molly Lambert universe

sometime soon. Yeah, MCU, the Molly Cinematic Universe. Yeah, that's what we call. Miles... Sorry, me? Yeah, where can people find you? Oh, find me everywhere. Miles of Gray and check out Ain't a footy.

It's the new show I'm doing, talking about soccer. But you already know, because if you listen to this shit, you already heard me say this 3,000 times. So please join me. There you go. All right. That's going to do it for this part of the episode. I will be back in a moment to do the notebook dump

where I talk about stuff that I realize an hour after we record this that I forgot to say. And then I say it to you guys. a little bit later. All right. Thanks, Good. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Inalick Lamoma. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

had both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Almemata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King's senior, and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A building on the I-Heart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What do you do in the headlines? Don't explain what's happening inside of you. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story.

We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bowen Yang And I'm Matt Rogers During this season of the

Two Guys Five Rings podcast In the lead-up to the Milan Cortina 2020 26 Winter Olympic Games We've been joined by some of our friends Hi Bowen Hey LLO Hey Matt hey Bowen Hi Cookie

Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway And we are in Italy To give you experiences from our hearts to your ears Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might add. actually work. This is wild. Listen to mind games on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. All right. That was our Tupac conversation. Thanks to Miles. Thanks to Molly Lambert, obviously. And our researcher, Meredith Danko, this is the No, No, No, No. Book. Dump, don't, don't.

Where I go through and talk about the stuff I'd wish I'd spent more time on. I wish I'd spent more time on just what it felt like. like to be alive when Tupac was alive, being a fan of Tupac while he was making music while he was starring in movies. There's this thing I talk about every once in a while on TDZ and definitely on our old NBA show. There's this thing that happens every once in a while where in sports, it will feel like a movie is being written. Like a player reaches such a level of greatness that it's not just that they're dominating, it's that they're scripting the outcome of a series or a game

in the way that the best possible writer would script reality. Like it's not just winning, it's like winning in the most dramatic way. Like I remember it happening with Jordan when he, like his last title with the Bulls, it wasn't enough to, you know, beat the jazz again. And he had this amazing what's called the flu game where he was like clearly very sick and came out and just like still played one of the best games of his career. And then came out the next game and hit the game winning shot and like stole the ball.

Just like the most dramatic shit. I would say LeBron, you know, coming back from 3-1 and beating the 70 win warriors. It's just like it feels like they have entered a new level of control. where everything's being done to create the best movie, the best story, to tell the best story. And I bring that up here just because it feels like that's

what Tupac's entire life was. Like just at every turn, doing the most interesting, the most dramatic, the most scary, the most funny thing, just doing research for this. But even at the time, it was just like twists and turns

and, you know, dramatic shit happening every other week in a way that like it feels like reality is cooperating with him to write the great American novel into his life like from the time he's in his mother's belly and she's defending herself against co-intel pro and successfully doing it like every like you could not write that shit it would be too far fat uh so anyways i just wanted to you know as a fan Like this is what I fell in love with about his career as a teenager, you know, as a, I guess I was 12 or 13 when he passed. It was very sad to learn, speaking of people passing during the research of this episode, the shockjee, the one who put the satin on your panties, the man who gave us Humpty. And the person who really, like in doing research for this, seemed like he really loved Tupac, gave Tupac, a lot of, like, artistic support that he, uh, shock G recently.

died of a drug overdose a few years back in Florida. So RIP to one of the greats. We do end up talking a lot about drugs on these icon episodes, but I don't mean to glorify them in any way. I find it, you know, I am 10 years sober. I do find it interesting because it's a part of these people's stories that usually gets written out of the official account a lot of the time, especially in the United States. But yes, they can have horrible, horrible consequences. One detail that had always gotten left out of his story, his mom goes from being this massive, you know, celebrity

for defending herself and getting, you know, the Panthers off, to their family being out on the street. Tupac basically described that as like polite society moving on in the 80s, essentially. Like he was just like the, the political tides turned. And, you know, we're in Reagan's America and nobody wants to have Black Panther speaking at their event or, you know, sleeping on their couch anymore. And I do think that that's important context for why he isn't impressed by celebrity, or at least he wasn't

going to, you know, change who he was or what he said because, you know, he had this fame and he was afraid of losing it. Like, that didn't impress him much, to quote Shania Twain. And I feel like that gave him the ability to have political takes that now seem decades ahead of their time during the research for this. I just, again, kept imagining a version of history where he's still alive for the past 10, 15 years, I really think he would have become important politically. He was already making the points everyone was making in 2020, but he was making them in the early 90s, you know. He said his mom raised him

to believe he was the Black Prince of the Revolution. That's how he lived his life. Not a detail, but a joke that I had. When I was talking about Shug saving Tupac from the Riptide in Cabo, and everyone was having a hard time

imagining that, imagining Shug swimming. Brian, the editor, wrote in the chat that it was probably like, If you've ever seen a hippo kind of run swim through a river where they're just like kind of bouncing off the bottom, I did not see that in the chat until we had stopped recording. But that was very funny. And I do feel like Chugnight is probably like incredibly dense.

And like that's how he makes his way through the water. And then I do just want to put it to the listener. I want to hear from you guys. So we talked about how the role of O'Do Dug and Menace does this. was not written for him, but I think that was like what the conflict was. Like, Tupac was like, well,

don't put me in here as this less interesting character. And I do really think, like, as good as Lawrence Tate is in menista society, like Tupac would have been transcendent. But that does, that did get me thinking, because we also kept saying that he probably wins an Oscar if he doesn't die.

What movie would it have been for? I put that to you, the listener. You know, like, could training day in 2001 have made sense either role, you know? Because I think Ethan Hawk was

nominated for his role as well. I think he would have been awesome in either role, which says something about his range. But yeah, pitch me your best. Tupac role we missed out on because he died. I mean, one that ties

into his story really well is Fred Hampton and Judas and the Black Messiah, or maybe the Judas character. One that, like, popped into my head was Leo in one battle after another as, like, sort of a washed-up revolutionary. I feel like they're about the same age. So I don't know. I want to hear your pitches. I feel like I haven't landed on the right one just yet, but let me know what's the movie

that Tupac would have won his Oscar for had he survived? That's going to do it for the Tupac episode. we're back next week with another icon, another one who went on an incredible tear of just making drug-fueled classics, despite being probably maybe the nerdiest person that we've covered yet on this show. And that's saying something because we have covered Urkel. We're back next week with Stephen King, and we will talk to y'all then. Bye. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair,

was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama. This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B, unpacks black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hair styles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move.

These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in a McLembourg. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins and if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on my iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers.

During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead-up to the Milan-Cortina-26 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Boen, hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt, hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi.

Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you. get your podcast. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.