Dear Mama

Hello, I'm Tanya Hart, and welcome to our show.

My guest today has experienced truly horrendous life

to just be 20 years old.

His family portrait could well be a poster

for America's Most Wanted.

Please welcome a very streetwise young man

who wants to make a difference for all Black people.

- What's up? - Tupac Shakur.

Welcome to our show.

Thank you. I love it.

Boy, you know, I gotta tell you,

I heard about what happened to you

as a young man.

In retrospect, how would you say

that your life has been?

I would say it's been like a test on my faith.

You know what I'm saying? You know how,

I guess his name was Job in the Bible,

who God just did all of this crazy stuff to him

just to make sure his faith was straight.

And that's how it was. It made me--

If I didn't have all of this stuff,

I don't think that my feet would have been so firm.

Yeah. - If God ain't finished with me yet...

...let Him check me.

Your socks are high, dude.

Yeah, make sure y'all get the socks, man.

So, Billy, what is your relation to Tupac?

I am Tupac's oldest cousin.

I'm eight years older than him, so...

before he became who everybody know him as,

he was like this little dude

who used to follow me everywhere.

And I'd be, like, "Man, you can't go with me, man.

I'm getting ready to go do crime.

You can't come with me to do crime."

But I didn't really feel responsible about his safety

until... Halloween night, 1993.

I had just got out of jail,

and I hadn't seen Pac for several years.

My family had a ticket for me to come to Atlanta.

That's where he's performing a show.

- Great night.

First thing I see, panties flying.

But the night was too good to be true.

Tupac ends up getting into a beef

with the security guards about smoking this weed.

So we cut the show short...

- Fuck you, motherfuckers! -

...and we left with six or seven carloads full of people.

"Yo, we at such-and-such. Follow us to the room."

We're getting ready to take a left into the hotel,

but we can't 'cause there's a Black man

arguing with two White men.

He pushed him. He'll push him. It looked corny, but Pac still got out.

At that very moment,

one of the White guys hit the Black dude in the jaw.

And when Pac saw that, he freaked out.

The Black dude took off, started running.

One of the White guys pulled his gun out on Pac

and told him to run.

And that's when Pac pulled up his shirt:

"This is thug life. I don't run nowhere."

The dude took the gun and bang!

Cracks the car window out.

And started running.

Right past me.

So Tupac goes...

"I want my gun. Give me my gun."

No.

Nobody wanted to hand it to him.

He goes around and get it hisself.

No, no, no, no.

They, like, 40 feet away and it's dark.

And Tupac gets down on one knee.

- One knee. He aims.

You're not going to hit the--

Bang, bang, bang!

Three shots.

Just like a marksman. Trained.

All I remember seeing was fire coming from the gun.

He takes his gun, slams it on the ground,

and I picked it up and said, "You missed. You missed. I know you missed."

He said, "Nah. I got him. I got him."

So he's sitting there...

- -

..."Let's go, cuz."

So I'm thinking we about to skirt off.

- - But we makes the left

to go in the hotel room.

Now we at the hotel, and I look outside

and I see police all over the place.

And I could see they're comin' upstairs to the room.

The room is full of people.

Everybody is excited.

They just saw somebody get shot.

But Tupac, he's calm.

Cloud of smoke.

Weed.

His face is blank.

Not talking about it.

He's like in a peaceful trance.

But I can hear the cops outside the door.

Suddenly, he says,

"Yo, wait a minute. I want everybody to hear my new song."

Song? We're going to jail. This is over.

The song he played for the very first time...

It's a love song.

...with the police at the door

was "Dear Mama."

Dear Mama. -"Dear Mama."

Into it. Vibing. Smoking.

- He's grooving now. - Listen, listen.

He has no connection to what he just did.

That was the first time I realized...

Dear Mama. - ...that that motherfucker was for real.

That he's gonna protect Black people. Period.

Dear Mama.

That was how he was raised.

How does doing this project feel for you,

I guess, 30 years later?

That's pretty surreal,

to do a narrative that you were a part of.

And then to have it be so personal, you know, uh,

I didn't want to do it at first, and then I realized, shit,

I never processed the trauma.

But we have to take ownership of all of our collective journey,

and go, "This is part of us."

So how do we decant this?

Tupac's legacy?

Man, it's... it's really difficult to sum that up.

Man, listen. Anywhere I go,

Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan...

"How was Tupac? What was he like?"

Children soldiers from Uganda,

"What was Tupac like?"

Blows my mind.

Tupac was the first rapper to me that could make you cry.

Like, he was just, like, "Oh, my God, that's me."

I've had many people come up to me and say, "Tupac saved my life."

He was a great, great storyteller,

and I think the story that he told most effectively

was his own truth.

Tupac was a Zen master.

He lived in these moments more than any of us,

and if there wasn't something happening,

he was gonna make something happen.

They're teaching his poetry in college.

What are you talking about?

He was a legend in his own time.

And he would say that too.

Pac lived three niggas' lives in about eight months.

That's why his life seemed so long.

They say a man ain't a man 'til he's 27.

He's still a baby at 25.

But he just was like a special motherfucker,

and with a spirit that was only grown through his mother.

She was great before he even got here.

The myth builder, a fantasy rider.

Not mindin' his business, he never did.

His mother certainly didn't.

'Cause where did Tupac get the myth-building from, Afeni.

And Feni wanted the story told.

Correctly. That means blemishes and all.

So people can understand that whole thing

of what makes a human being as he

and the human being as she.

So, here we go.