A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Tupac Shakur was one of the most influential pop culture figures of the '90s. His rap lyrics echoed the voices of disaffected Black youth, and in some songs, he sought to lift his community out of that anguish.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KEEP YA HEAD UP")
2PAC: (Rapping) Ayo, I remember Marvin Gaye used to sing to me. He had me feeling like Black was the thing to be. And suddenly, the ghetto didn't seem so tough. And though we had it rough, we always had enough.
MARTÍNEZ: But Tupac Shakur's life ended in tragedy when he was just 25 years old. Writer Jeff Pearlman wanted to know more about those 25 years, so he interviewed hundreds of people for a new book called "Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives Of Tupac Shakur." When I sat down with Pearlman, I asked about the incredible story of Tupac' mother, Afeni Shakur, who inspired the song "Dear Mama."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEAR MAMA")
2PAC: (Rapping) 'Cause when I was low, you was there for me, and never left me alone, because you cared for me. And I can see you coming home after work late. You're in the kitchen trying to fix us a hot plate.
MARTÍNEZ: So, Jeff, who was Afeni Shakur? And what was it like for Tupac to be raised by her?
JEFF PEARLMAN: Afeni Shakur was a Black Panther. When she was 21 years old, she was pregnant with Tupac. She was being shuttled from jail to a courthouse in Manhattan for something called the Panther 21 trial, which was that the government had infiltrated the Panthers and accused 21 members of the Black Panthers of trying to blow up different landmarks. And she was one of the people on trial. She turned down a court appointed attorney, represented herself and won while pregnant with Tupac. And later in her life, but not that much later, develops into a very, very, very serious crack addict, who isn't there for her kids.
So you have this guy who worships his mother and tells everyone he meets, oh, my mom was a Black Panther. In Panther 21, my mom represented herself. And then at the same time has the sadness and the heartbreak of watching her fall into a state of disrepair. And there's this one moment when Tupac was 19 years old. He was supposed to fly to Atlanta. And a group he was hoping to help sent him $300 in cash to buy the plane ticket. And when he gets home, the money is gone, and his mother had used it to buy crack. And a friend of his named Kendrick Wells, who I interviewed, said the mom he wanted wasn't the mother he had. He had a hero, but he didn't have a mother.
MARTÍNEZ: So what you said right there, he had a hero, but he didn't have a mother. I'm wondering how that thought maybe extends toward his relationship with women over the years, because he had a complicated one.
PEARLMAN: Oh, man, it's heartbreaking. He was 14 years old when he had his first sexual experience, and it was with a cousin. When he was 15 years old, he had a second sexual experience, and it was with an adult friend of his mother. He had no father around. His dad, Billy Garland, was not around for the vast majority of his life. He never learned about sex, never learned about how to treat people in that way and then became this guy known as a sex symbol.
But throughout his youth, throughout middle school, much of high school, he was a kid with gapped teeth, really bad braces. He walked like a duck. He wore thrift store clothes. He was not a guy the women were interested in. And his whole life was kind of a yin and yang of being a sex symbol, being an ugly duckling, being a guy who didn't understand sex, being a guy who dove into sex.
MARTÍNEZ: So in 1995, Tupac was in prison for sexual abuse. And he began to form a partnership with Suge Knight, who founded Death Row Records. Knight posted a $1.4 million bond before he signed Tupac to Death Row. And then the next year, they released "All Eyez On Me," his most successful commercial album and his last before he was shot to death. And it included arguably his biggest hit, "California Love."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALIFORNIA LOVE")
2PAC: (Rapping) Out on bail, fresh out of jail, California dreaming. Soon as I step on the scene, I'm hearing hoochies screaming. Fiending for money and alcohol, the life of a West Side player where cowards die and the strong ball.
MARTÍNEZ: Jeff, it always felt to me that, even back then, Tupac in a way sold his soul during this time in his life. What did he see in Suge Knight that others maybe didn't? Because Suge Knight is a scary guy. He's in prison right now serving a 28-year sentence for a hit-and-run, a fatal hit-and-run. But what did he see in Suge Knight that others couldn't?
PEARLMAN: It's interesting. Tupac is in prison at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. And as he's there, Suge Knight is greasing the wheels. He is sending his mother money. He's sending his mother gifts. He visits Tupac multiple times, and he basically shows up one day and provides the bail. And for Tupac that was liberation. And the other thing is that Suge Knight actually supplied is amazing musical opportunities. He hired the best producers.
But he also had expectations. Suge Knight's line for writers was, write a hit or get hit. I interviewed one guy who was hired. And as soon as he was hired, he said Suge Knight walked him over to a window and said, just so you know, we don't take failed employees and fire them. We take failed employees and throw them out windows. And Suge Knight expected Tupac to exemplify sort of thug life. And he sold Tupac on this lifestyle. And Tupac really wasn't that, but he kind of bought into.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, because that album, as good as it was, it was not what he was doing before. Before, it was a little more socially conscious. This was all about, as you say, this thug life that Suge Knight wanted him to kind of put out there. Now, he died in Las Vegas in September of 1996. As someone who has chronicled Tupac Shakur's whole life, all the accomplishments, all the pain, everything he's endured, all the mistakes he's made, what do you think about how his life ended?
PEARLMAN: It sucks. It's the worst death I've ever written about or really even read about in regards to the pointlessness of it. They're in Las Vegas. It was the aftermath, immediate aftermath, of the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon fight at the MGM Grand. Tupac is walking through the lobby. He's with a bunch of Death Row guys. Standing there in the middle of the lobby is a guy named Orlando Anderson, who is a South Side Compton Crip. And a guy with Tupac says, yeah, that's the guy who stole my chain. Tupac walks up to him, says - you from the south? - and then punches him in the face. And all the Death Row guys come in and stomp on him and beat him up. Then they leave.
Later that night, Orlando Anderson, Keefe D's, his uncle, two other guys driving around kind of looking for Tupac. There he is at one point along the strip, dangling out of Suge Knight's car hollering at women, and he shot him. And it's so stupid. Tupac had so many gifts and was so talented and had so much to contribute. His mom was a Black Panther. He was raised on this idea about raising up Black people as a community in this country and fighting for them, and this is how you die. And one of his friends said to me, if you really want to understand Tupac, his life and his death, you have to understand the idea that he swam in waters too deep. And I feel like that was a perfect example of a guy who wasn't a gang banger swimming in waters that were way too deep for him.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Jeff Pearlman, author of "Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives Of Tupac Shakur." Jeff, thanks a lot.
PEARLMAN: Oh, thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHANGES")
2PAC: (Rapping) I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.
MARTÍNEZ: And we should mention that Orlando Anderson, who is now deceased, consistently denied his involvement in Tupac's murder. And he was never tried. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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