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

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

In this rewind 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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The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenberg. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet. It's me, Jack. Just a quick interlude to let you know we're doing a rerun of a previous icon episode this week. I was sick the week we were supposed to be researching and recording this week's new episode. So we're taking it back to episode number 11.

I think it's icon episode number 11 recorded on February 20. of this year 26. When we did Tupac Shakur, Tupac Shakur, as the media like to call him, a fan favorite episode, one of my favorites. It's got incredible moments.

Real life scenes that feel like they would have to be cut from the biopic for being too unbelievably cool. Thinking of the night in Atlanta. We'll leave it at that, a certain night in Atlanta. Also, up near the top of my list,

the most incredible larger-than-life characters we've encountered in these icon apps is his mom, Afini Shakur. So, you know, not even talking about him. But, yeah, we occasionally will have amazing side characters, and Afini Shakur definitely tops the list. Also, he makes a brief cameo in next week's icon episode, all reasons that we're revisiting the great Tupac Shakur with the great Molly Lambert. So without further ado, I invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy this classic iconograph.

And while you're listening, if you wouldn't mind doing me a little favor, picture me rolling. Picture me rolling, please. I'd be much obliged. All right, enjoy. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this spin-off episode of Dirtailies. What's time? It's a production of I-Heart Radio. This one we're calling the iconograph

instead of looking at the Zykeyes through the current events. On Monday mornings, we're looking at the Zikeyes through the powerful pop culture, horkruxes 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 learned that while it is a, 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. Great to be here. Great to be here. Great to talk about somebody also very, very important to my life and my love of hip hop. Yeah. 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. Brentwood. 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 tea.

t-shirts or I don't think we need to do that with Tupac. It's just everything, you know, everything about him is 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 of menace to society fell apart? Oh, no, I didn't see that one. Okay. But one of his friends in that documentary, he says that Tupac lived like three full lives every eight months, basically. And that's why his life feels 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 two 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. 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 podcasts. episodes they will honor. 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 an 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 time 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 I won a Nobel Peace Prize too 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 bright 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

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, Gavriel 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. Well itchy, well itchy. 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, you know,

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, guys. That'd be so fucked up. Christopher Wallace is out there. He's like, man, I'm, all right.

I'm actually out here. Nobody cares. They just think I'm just, I'm hiding. 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 McAvel. posthumously, where like Machiavelli had talked about or written about faking your own death. And everybody figured out that Machiavelli 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. Mackey from South Park. Yeah. Am alive, Keng.

Dude, Elvis Presley, Presley lives. Thank you. 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. 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. wearing, they both wear leather. They both wear leather. But like, I mean, there is like a weird similarity. Both love black music.

They both are very influenced by black music. I can't wait to the section. 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 career.

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. He also. He 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. Miseraged careers, at least with Tupac towards the end, when Shug was his manager. Oh, 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. 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. Oh, yeah? On Tooby. Hey. 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 cleared. And so this other cop reopened the case, basically solved the case. Yeah. And then 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's mom, like, sued the LAPD for involvement in the, that's what, that's what like the LAPD were like, we, 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. Yeah. Get arrested or anything. Even though we know who did it. Right. Yes. We call that justice. Yes, yes.

We don't do this. Here. Oh, we know who did it, but. The doc is crazy because it's just this one cop being like, I figured it out and nobody cares. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So 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, 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, 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 the person who's giving him CPR and mouth to mouth is this guy who was actually an undercover cop who also worked and like helped them build the case against the Panther 21.

where's that how's that guy doing he must be love right yeah he's he's great uh they didn't know it at the time but they were being targeted by co-intel pro which is basically the full might of the u.s. government intelligence community you know the the same u.s. intelligence that like spent the the 20th century toppling entire nations was being turned on the black panther party the only reason 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,

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? Do 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 internal struggle at the time. It was probably doing a lot of like the end of the jinx 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. 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 trial starts right after the FBI like murders Fred Hampton.

Like there's it's at the height of them being targeted and just horrific shit happening to the Black Panther parties. she represents herself. She does an amazing job. They also note that like the cop's case is just wildly full of shit. They used like their members of the Black Panther Party at the time who were like, I would say dynamite like as a like saying cool. Like that's a cool thing, which was a slang that we used at the time. They would be like they're planning dynamite.

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 charges? I know. I know. I know.

I know, right? He's like, I just use that praise to mean. Things are cool. Things are all right. But, yeah, they were doing a lot of work. Like, if any, was, like, really a, a strong proponent 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 healthcare. And then like stayed, got to know the doctors, worked with them to like create this patient bill of rights

until there was like a health care 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 Corp. According to her, the nickname was in honor of the last Inca 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 Amarushikor. Right.

And in 1975, she marries Muntulu Shakur, 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 10 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 Coen Calpro there's levy accusations against anyone

they were like dude I hate this acupuncture Yes, exactly. Frame him for some shit. 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. He's,

there's a lot of stuff like later in his rhymes where he just like talks about being, uh, like having a really like 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. And once when he was being interrogated... The Mouse King? Yeah. 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 A? Yeah. The mouse king runs, runs some shit. Yeah.

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. Yeah. In his lyrics. Yeah. It's like the movie Hairspray. Yeah, I was just,

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 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 just like, it's like, it's like someone being like, that was my real, my true love. Look, she loves to do that to Will Smith for some reason. And he, he must be into it too a little bit. He must be into it. 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'm sorry. I think some relationships, you just can't really give a title to. 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, you're like, oh. Yeah, if he does live, whose career is like,

doesn't exist in the same way. I don't know. I wonder they would have just had beef over Jada. Yeah, maybe. And then Will would have been absolutely ethered in a rat 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. Will, 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 teased me all the time. His friend, uh, it's kind of cute. Like 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,

uh, handmade clothes for Tupac and Tupac like was like, I fucking love it. Yeah. Yeah. Like jeans with like little designs and stuff on it. And then he like, Yeah, yeah.

Comes out to California and wearing that shit and everyone's 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 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. It's 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's like annoyed that he has to he's like, they sent. 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, uh, 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, uh, stuff like that. But around this time, he also writes this poem that is fucking awesome called government assistance or my soul. Uh, 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 just 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. 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 Shockjee with a rap called the case of the misplaced mic 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. You can like see like his rapping is like still 80, like a little 80-ish in the 80s. But like he's just so fucking

like his stage 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 rosy Perez then a dancer for heavy D there's a good section in the dear mama documentary where there's just like footage from these 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. So 1990 Mariah Carey. I think it was like the emotions.

Yeah, you got him 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. Nothing but trouble. Dan Ayckroids direct. 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 nightmareish vision. It's 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 um 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 uh he appears there's like you can watch his first scene in nothing but trouble and he is the best actor like in the scene even though all he has to do is at one point dan acroids starts like riffing on an organ and like Tupac just has to like look and be like damn that's pretty good and he like just does it does a great job also mind you Dan Ackroyd 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 in his mind really likes to it exactly you can see the racist thoughts reading across the space

but 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, I think, the best verse. Chevy Chase's verse doesn't make it. He was just ad-libbing the N-word a bunch of the background. What?

They said it. 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 found 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 really good. They're often like, I'm out of touch. Yeah, I'm out of touch. Hey, kid, what do you think? Yeah, what do you think of this? And they're like, hey, this 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, Two Pococalypse 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 a 42-3rd. and... 42,000. Yeah, 42,000. This is, by the way, the first thing I ever hear about Tupac Shakur is...

He loves jaywalking? Is this story on MTV news? For me, it was rapping. Local rapper, Tupac Shakor. Jack's like, that's my favorite Jay Walker.

Dude, who's your favorite J-Walker? He raps? It's, uh... It's, uh... But I do remember like, seeing him talk about this prime, like on MTV News. And, you know, they were like making fun of his name.

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 and like well he was basically using a weapon because he was driving a car but he talks in the documentary about how when he goes to sleep at night he like 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 uh 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 mail powder baldness. I wish I could lie about some shit Okay

Doesn't Jada also have alopecia? Yeah Jada she was like His 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 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 Harlan. 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 in the head. And the police 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 i just think the resistance of the 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 January, 1992, uh, Ernest Dickinson's juice was released, Marking Tupac's movie star debut, uh, played the role of Bishop, the film is successful. Grosses is 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 alive for that. Yeah. He read for the part of. Is he like a Forrest Gump type figure? Yeah.

You know, way. Yeah. Yeah. Every part of his thing of like when Forrest was at that Black Panther meeting, there's like little baby Tupac somewhere in the background. If 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 the whole time I was just going, what? Oh, no, it's like very intentionally dismissive. Yeah, so. So when he goes, when he 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 Hitter or whatever. and 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, that 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 it's

is just like, they're just like being angry for the sake of being angry. They're their NPCs. Was he was, yeah, were they willing to confront, uh, 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. Yeah. If Tupac had been Bubba Gump, it would have been different. If things would have been different. Tom Hanks's crew would be over.

if two pox was fucking baba yeah acted off the screen so hard that he's body like the whole shrimp gumbo shrimp stew but like with more fucking angle like shrimp gumbo

like a little more I don't think he had range I think Robert Z Vegas would not have been able to deal with 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 and 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, in 1992, he moves to Los Angeles and starts hanging out with gangsters and, you know, people in the bloods and crips and draws a lot of inspiration from them. His road manager, Man Man,

man later said he started hanging 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 of it. And like he's, you know, we talked about that with like,

Marilyn Monroe and like the 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 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 just so authentic. He's the mouse king. Yeah. Like the mouse king. Like the mouse king. Like the mouse king. 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. It was everyone. 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. Right.

He has so many alter egos in that short period of time. But shout out a daggos tattoo in Houston, Texas, where he gets the Thug Life tattoo. So this is when... You know what Thug Life stands right? 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 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 fame and my rapping to really also go after something I really believe in, which is equity. And yeah, like the, you know, 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 gonna say fuck sorry just just up front I apologize I'm gonna 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 the 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. And my family, every black male with the last name of, Chakur that ever past the age of 15 has either been killed or put in jail. There are no blackmail Shikors out right now, free breathing, without bullet holes in them are cuffs 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 Chikors belonged had

been virtually eliminated largely through the efforts of the FBI. Hey, the FBI, always 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. I know. But it's like also wild is just to think too, like with that Dan Quail statement, like Tupac's

whole inspiration for Tupacalypse 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. This is me just accurately trying to

depict what my life is like. Also to call it to Apocalypse now. Yeah. 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. 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. but he he was like it was an honor yeah he was also right because

you guys have seen menace to society yeah they cast him they cast Tupac as the mild-mannered nation of Islam friend yeah yeah yeah

yeah 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 like I feel like if he's playing O-Dog it's a I don't know. That was my favorite movie for many years of my life. But like it's like such a, like I feel like Lorenz Tate does a great job in that movie.

He's playing Tupac essentially. Like if Tupac is the Lorenz Tate character, I don't know if we would have been able to handle it. 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 because of it's 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, you know, classics.

I get around still so good. I mean, I'm Shock-G, the one who put the satin on your panties. How? How did you do that, Shock-G? He's a magician. Yeah. 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.

Like 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 was. 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 Chauncey Win 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, uh, Tupac after seeing one of his interviews on TV. It's not his previous film work,

but it's just like, goddamn. 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. He said his gun. He quickly scanned the street, saw the two men, took a knee in a military stance, and aimed his gun. 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 in 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, a knock at the door started everyone in the room, except Tupac, who was calmly rolling a blunt. Someone looked through the peephole and announced it's the police. And he said, okay, fine, let him in. You're called.

I said, 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, 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. So this is when he meets Biggie for the first time, an LA drug dealer introduced them. 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, all right. And around this time, Biggie asks Tupac to be his manager. He's like, I don't really like Puff. Like, can you be my manager?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Like, I'm getting a little bit of a sinister vibe from this. 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. 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 Agnott and Tupac went to Nell 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, Man, Agnant, and an unidentified friend of Agnontz.

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 Agnont'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 Egnaut 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 Egnaut 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 Tupac's lawyer says is highly unusual. 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 was, she was assaulted. Yeah. And there was like a huge settlement too after that too.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the charges were dropped. And I remember Tupac went on like, Arsenio Hall show. like right after that and you know

it was like he said I quote 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 you did like at worst you're a fucking predator at best you're an ain't shit man yeah yeah exactly

so he was like hey I just put out dear mama listen to this song yeah listen to dear mom When a man who wrote Dear Mama do such a thing, and it's like, well, sir, this is a bad situation. Yeah.

Like, as he's waiting to go on trial, he is filming Bullet with Mickey Rourke, and he and Mickey Rourke become friends. So tight. Start wrecking shit. Yeah. Mickey Rourke recalled, we'd be crossing the street to go to a club,

and you'd already hear the bouncer say, they're here together. What are we supposed to do? Jesus. Mickey Rourke and. Tupac rolling up. 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

for some reason is Tony Danza wrote him a letter. I was like, hey, I really liked your album. Keep your head up. Tony Danza. Tony Danza. He was a 70s kid. He probably watched Who's the Boss?

He was also close with Alonis Morissette. Yeah, he and Alonis Morissette were going to open a restaurant together. Wow, what kind of food would they have at the restaurant, I wonder? Canadian California. Canadian California, yeah, salads. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pasto survive the first off?

Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements.

We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show is famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stillard. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere, too, right? What do you think it is now?

It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves Nova. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him tarot read. It's a good name.

They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. Oh, gotcha. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachy Sobieski. Yeah, I don't think she was an American Pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time. Yeah.

Then Mary Steenbergin. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm worried. Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play, play game? I just really. I get it.

trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Solita, we share the messy stories of traveling alone as a woman. Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us.

Not a lot of people smile around here. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is, and not the lies you're sold about it. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your. your first trip. I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Totoro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza. And on my new podcast delivering happiness with Nick Totoro, I deliver pizza from Prince Street Pizza to a new guest.

Are you delivering pizza now? Then we sit down for a real conversation. I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins. What are you doing, my belt? To Alex Rodriguez. Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the goats here. To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody

so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. Mariano Rivera. Oh my God. And many, many more. Open your free High Heart Radio app.

Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tutro. And listen now. So this is around the 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 Diddy and Biggie. He's going to Quad Studios. Little Sean's manager is Jimmy Henschman Rosemond 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 guys 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 Biggie's upstairs And that Diddy's there as well So he goes in The guys pull guns on him And there's a shoot 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 Homegirl's 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 in 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. 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. Jesus.

Tupac. Yeah, I don't think Trump has a hit him up first. You're getting your New York rappers. few. Trump did sue Mickey Rurick 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 does, unfortunately. He's Forrest Gump. 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 guard are fucking horrible to him. There's an anecdote from somebody

who goes to visit him and they 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. But, you know, they hated him for a very long time. Telling me, these CEOs are bad people. I know. You believe it?

I thought all the rappers were lying when they mentioned CEOs. But, oh, this is when Me Against the World was released, and this is this 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, like, 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, 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, you know? 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. Britney Broski.

Britney Broski, Kambuja bit. So he starts courting Tupac at a time when Drey 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. Yeah. 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, fucking nerd.

I think as in the murder of the case video, it had his headstone with his, with his government name on everyone. 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, it's 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 a 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 do 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 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 13, 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 riota, finish the track that day plus I ain't mad at you like on the first day he's 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. Layed 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 until people start passing out. Then we come back early in the morning and start over. K&M is in North Hollywood, I think also that's too. Yeah, like many of the great recording studio. 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, because everyone's 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 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. 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. Yeah. I'm 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. He was a football player, right? Yeah. And Shug'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 saying 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. Fenni said,

Death Row in the beginning, treated us much better than Interscope. 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, a 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 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, uh, 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 is released 27 tracks, first ever double CD by rap artists, 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, fuck, I got to like act across from this musician and 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 his life to be filming. Gridlocked is great though. Yeah. Yeah. All of his performance

is around this time are 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 shit. 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. In the tradition of the Daily Zykeyes, 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 happy at first.

He'd attacked 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 Deliqat.

Okay, shout out Jerry's Delicat. I was dropping Rashid at Jerry's Delicatessen, 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 way? Just what to? Yeah, some of those that 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 was like, no, you wouldn't have. You 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 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 goes on a radio show

and is like, yeah, 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 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 gonna 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 6-6-2. 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 fiancé is also in Vegas. So it takes... It seems like at a hotel or something, right?

Like waiting for him. Yeah. It 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 really amped up 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, Shugg's affiliated with the Bloods, the Pyrou. So Anderson's uncle, D. 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 this guy. Hangs out there for a little bit.

Check out my new video for California love. It feels like after Tupac does some violent shit. Also, like also, how about this for a ditty? California love. Do we feel in that? No. Okay, okay. But the guy that they had 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 Kee-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

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 pull 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 knights, 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. They were apparently like telling everybody for years after. Yeah, it was kind of like an open secret. At this time,

Puffy had like had meetings with, uh, Cripps 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.

Um, but it is interesting that like that was. That's one of the many fucked up things. I learned. from murder rap 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 Keefidi 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, assassin who, like, 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 Ditty 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 Dity 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. 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 lost video. biggest 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 Shug were because those girls were like, it's Tupac. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It sucks. Yeah. 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 as actually the first, 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 furthest it got from me was like, I started playing trumpet because I was like, well, 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, I was like,

man, nothing matters. Tupac's dead. Yeah. Yeah. First, first dance with, 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 opened 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. 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.

Women are oppressed and it's tied. But they're also hoax. Huh. Right. Okay. Okay. Did you know that Jada was going to direct the California love video?

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 Mad 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.

It would look like Calian. There's the second, there's the part two video where that's like more of a traditional whole party in 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, nothing like it. Yeah, like, honestly, I'm like, wow, we grew up in an amazing time, actually. Maybe like, the closest thing was like when Not Like Us came out. Yeah, that too. No, it is like, I was like,

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 then it's 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 LA. 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. all of those songs have great production and just great, you know, they're all a little bouncy. 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. And he talked about really what the most interesting thing to him was that the beginnings 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 his like after he died you did have the sort of

the big suits rap era right exactly like 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, like that's ditty 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 straights for bling bling bling. Throw your rollies in the sky. Yeah, I think cash money is it's in no limit or their own, their own episode. We'll have to do sometime.

Yeah, 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. Project still had 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 will 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. I mean, yeah, no limit soldier episode soon. I love Master P. I love Master P. I really do think, like, there was just so much unfinished business and 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 in a, 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, like, 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 influential, like, I'm sure they would have sicked Cointel Pro on him. Oh, yeah. Again, you know, it is...

But he knew what Coentel Pro was, whereas I feel like a lot of people who, 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 reviving 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. 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-sumacons. 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 the 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 Shacker.

Rapper Tupac Shacker. 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 throwing. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Shooting a music video. Right. So, yeah, check out Jenna World and more to come from the Molly Lambert universe. Molly.

Yeah, I'm 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. The new show I'm doing talking about. soccer, but you already know, because if you listen to this shit, you already heard and you 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. Behind every night spent making the kids lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox

come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood, would handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show is famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of

our recent episodes with Ben Stillard. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves over. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on you make your own that's great i call him taro reed it's a good name they're all named after cast members of american pie yeah i call i don't i never looked up if she was in this but i call him leachie sobieski yet i don't think she was an american pie but i still like that haven't looked it up haven't looked it up she was prominent around the same time yeah then mary steenbergen why are you guys

talking to me like i'm worried why are you talking so down to me that you think i don't understand little play game. I just really, I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Solita, we share the messy stories of traveling alone as a woman. Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without

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Then we sit down for a real conversation. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing my belt? To Alex Rodriguez. Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the goats here. To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Titoro.

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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 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 like 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. 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, uh, 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-and-tel pro

and successfully doing it. Like, you could not write that shit. It would be too far-fetched. 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. 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, um, that he, uh, shock G recently died of a drug overdose of 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 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. and 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, 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'Dug and Menace to Society 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 menace to society like Tupac would have been transcendent but that does just 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 um you know like hood training day in two

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 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. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend, Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes

with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenberg. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. Your duolingo is not going to come back to you

when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie B. and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Lease Black Klansman.

And on my new podcast delivering happiness with Nick Tutorough, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, delivering happiness. And many, many more.

Open your free High Heart Radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tutro. And listen now. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.