Thug Life Army

Marion "Suge" Knight (Death Row Records CEO)

"On the cover of Makaveli he's on a cross, you know, shot up, being crucified and you know, it's real, it's real deep. I mean Pac got shot on the seventh and that's deep. You know, Jesus on the seventh day. And you know he went on to a better place on the thirteenth."

Shock G/Money-B (Digital Underground)

"If you want to mourn, do it for your own personal loss. Don''t mourn for ''Pac, remember him for his art and don''t be sad for his death. ''Pac lived a short, fast, concentrated, an intense life. He lived a 70 year life in 25 years. He went out the way he wanted: in the glitter of the fast life, hit record on the charts, new movie in the can, and money in the pocket. All ''Pac wanted was to hear himself on the radio and see himself on the movie screen. He did all that --- and more."

Janet Jackson (Poetic Justice)

"I feel very fortunate to have seen another side of Tupac, someone who was very caring and loving, a contrast to his public image. He will be missed by many."

Omar Epps (Juice)

"Pac was just the truth. He always brought it from the heart. Sometimes the truth hurts or the truth can set you free. In his case, it did both. Some said he was the rappin'' Nostradamus, like he could prophesy. But he was just saying that ill shit that niggas be thinking and no one wanted to say. The thing was, he lived his life in a way that the lyrics had to come true. He just went all out. Everyday was his first and last"

E-40 (fellow Rapper)

"''Pac was hated by a few but loved by many, and those who hated him didn''t even know him, I truly believe that there will never be another rapper who can uplift spirits and explain the ups an downs of everyday life through rap music like ''Pac"

Snoop Doggy Dogg (fellow Rapper)

"I feel we need to come up with some soft of Tupac Black on Black Crime fund. And some sort of ceasefire. If it was an East Coast/West Coast or not, we need to put a stop to this before it gets out of hand"

Snoop on Tupac's Alive theory:

"People need to let him rest in peace, let that rumor rest in peace. Because, you know what I''m sayin'', it's a hard pill to swallow, people don''t want to accept it, we don''t want to accept it, first of all, and the public don''t want to accept it, so they gonna keep that myth or that philosophy going on as long as they can because his music lives on and he's a legend, you know what I''m sayin''. When you make legendary music, people don''t want to believe you''re gone. Like Elvis, they keep saying Elvis ain''t dead you know what I''m sayin'', but it's just all about the individual himself, he was a legend and everybody don''t wanna let it go."

Rev. Jesse Jackson

"This is so, so sad. Sometimes the lure of violent culture is so magnetic that even when one overcomes it with material success, it continues to call. Tupac just couldn''t break the cycle."

Havoc (Mobb Deep)

"I loved him before the confrontation; I loved him, and I loved his music. We was planning to see him but we didn''t even get the chance. It's sad, man. I think the streets killed him. It wasn''t no East Coast/West Coast thing, it was the streets. I think it was his mouth that killed him."

Prodigy (Mobb Deep)

"Between my crew and people over there on the West Coast, it's sad to see where it's going. I don''t know how this started, but we need to get together. Once everybody can calm down, relax and put our troubles behind us, we can strive for a better tomorrow."

Treach (Naughty by Nature)

"My man ''Pac, he didn''t have a criminal record until he made a record. Once you get into the light, a lot of stuff comes on to you. One thing I can say, he was one of the realest niggas that lived. He said whatever was on his mind; he never bit his tongue for nuthin''"

Minister Conrad Muhammad

"To lose a young man like Tupac Shakur will brilliance and talent, at 25 years old, is indicative of what black males in this society are facing. We are not living long enough to realize our full potential. Malcolm X, in his young years, was a gangbanger, a drug dealer. Tupac would have evolved naturally, but black men are dying before they get to"

John Singleton

"When I saw Juice, Tupac's performance jumped out at me like a tiger. Here was an actor who could portray the ultimate crazy nigga. A brother who could embody the freedom that an "I don''t give a fuck" mentality gives a black man. I thought this was some serious acting. Maybe I was wrong. During the filming of Poetic Justice, ''Pac both rebelled and accepted my attitude towards him as a director/advisor. This was our dance in life and work. We''d argue, then make up. Tupac spoke from a position that cannot be totally appreciated unless you understood the pathos of being a nigga, a displaced African soul, full of power, pain, and passion, with no focus or direction for all that energy except his art."

Chuck D

"To me he's like the James Dean of our times. Basically, a rebel without a cause. And the industry and the media are partially responsible for whatever goes down: in accenting the negative aspects of a black celebrity. It's the soup-up, gas-up treatment. They soup him up, they''re not there on the downside. People thing that this man's life was entertainment. One of our best talents is gone over some bullshit. I''m fuckin'' pissed. I ain''t putting up tears. Tears ain''t gonna do a damn thing. Interscope will go on to sell 10 million copies of this album. Make a scholarship fund out of their share of the money. That's what I call making things happen."

Marlon Wayans

"Me and ''Pac, we laughed a lot during Above the Rim. It's not like being with this ill gangsta that everyone portrayed his as. We used to go in the trailer and just crack jokes. We used to tease him and say he should cross out the T on his chest and change his image to HUG LIFE"

Gerard (High School Friend)

"First time I ever saw Tupac, he was in eighth grade. I seen this kid that had this shirt with the old school iron-on letters, MC NEW YORK. And he was rhyming. All these people was around him -- even back then. We was adversaries at first, but we formed a crew. Born Busy and shit, MC New York, DJ Plain Terror, Ace Rocker, and my man D on the beat box. Taking mad peoples out--the invincibles. Then we started writing little rhymes for Jada (Pinkett). Jada was rhyming a little bit too. Don''t Sleep."

Coolio (fellow Rapper)

"I know for a fact that it's not an East Coast/West Coast thang. What happened was, you know, it was a street thang. Sometimes when you put yourself in a situation, you get caught up in another situation. Tupac had a knack for doing that. Despite some of his shortcomings, he always gave you something with his music. He gave you some things to think about or he gave you something to laugh about or he gave you something to cry about."

Heavy D (fellow Rapper)

"The most unfortunate thing that has ever happened in the hip hop culture. It saddens me. I hope this is a wake up call for a lot of us. I pray for him and his loved ones."

Marcos, a friend of Shakur's at University Medical Center

"Nobody wants to help the police. What for? What are they going to do? I''m just saying that whoever did this is going to get found. The people who find him, I don''t know what they''ll do."

Rev. Al Sharpton, who counseled Shakur in prison

"I hope in the midst of this tragedy, we can put together an aggressive and strong drive against violence among young people and dedicate it to Tupac's memory."

Spinderella (Salt N'' Pepa)

"I hope his life is an example to a lot of kids out there. He spoke of a lot of things in his music, and that's because he went through a lot, ya know? So, the things that he said, hopefully, it''ll teach these kids out there that are tryin'' to run around, doin'' this, doin'' bad things and everything, that there is life ahead. Life goes on.

Method Man (fellow Rapper)

This is an eye-opener right here. Hopefully, for all the youth, kids, I mean, even the grown-ups, everybody, I hope this is an eye-opener, man. Word up. ''Cause they should see, right now, the violence is not the key, and that it's real. Bullets is real, guns is real, you know, all that stuff is real, man. It's up to us as artists to take responsibility for what we''re saying in our records and on our albums and things of that nature, you know. But it's like, you can''t water down the hip hop, you can''t water down the ghetto. It's like, when those shots go off, the kid, the average kid in the ghetto can''t close his eyes to it. This is not a television show, this is reality, real-life drama.

My name is Ed Lover, formerly of Yo! MTV Raps, and currently morning maniac on Hot 97 radio in NYC.

It hurts me a lot that Pac has been murdered. I saw him not even 15 minutes before he was killed. First I saw him at the fight with Suge Knight and we exchanged pleasantries from across the room. Next I saw him in the casino on his way out the door. It was quite a shock to learn that he had been brutally shot. I''ve known Pac since about 1991 or 1992. I first remember meeting him when I went to the set of the movie Juice with my now deceased friend and confidant, Big Stretch from the group Live Squad. Because of the friendship that Stretch and 2Pac shared we all became good friends but they became inseparable. I find it quite ironic that Stretch was murdered in Nov. of last year and not even one year later his main man 2Pac is gone. The sad thing is that they never got to settle the differences between them. Dave, how many more of our young soldiers of the Hip-Hop world do we have to lose to senseless violence until we wake up? Hip-Hop is all about the music. It was built on the music. It shall last because of the MUSIC!!!! Violence never has and never will be a welcome part of this music that we love. I know the Bay-Area agrees with me when I say that 2Pac will be sorely missed both on the East-Coast and on the West-Coast respectively. I am saddened that we will never get to see 2Pac live out his full potential. He was an intelligent, witty, bright, funny and multi- talented actor and performer. May God bless his soul and may the music keep him alive forever.

As- Salaam- Alaikum,
Ed Lover

Jada Pinkett on her relationship with Tupac
By Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY

The last time she saw the rapper - about two months before his September murder - it had not gone well.

"He did not want to hear anything I had to say," Pinkett remembers. "He was a very opinionated man. And I''m a very opinionated woman. So us together was always sparks and fire."

Shakur and Pinkett were close. They grew up poor, from dysfunctional homes, in Baltimore. But, she says, "We both had an inner light, an inner energy that moved us forward, you know what I''m saying?"

She still has a video of them at 16 goofing around together at Kings Dominion amusement park in Virginia.

Back then, it was Shakur who tried to set Pinkett straight. "I was hanging out with drug dealers and gangsters," says the actress.

"My mom was working all the time. I never grew up with my father. He wasn''t around."

Finally, Shakur headed for California, and Pinkett went to performing arts school in North Carolina. After a year, she moved to Los Angeles and landed her first acting job within three months.

She and Shakur kept in touch, sharing stories of the pressures of fame and the need for spirituality.

"Nobody knows the demons he carried on his shoulders," she says. "He was always fighting the world and always fighting himself. He would say, ''I can''t commit suicide, but I can''t be here like this.'' "

Pinkett have ideas about what went down with regard to Shakur's death, but if she talked about them, "somebody would probably put me six feet under," she says.

She has made peace with his passing and now hopes that he is reincarnated - as her baby.

"If he came back to me, as my child, I would love him, and I''d give him what he needed."

Thursday, October 9 1997

Jim Belushi on his friendship with Tupac Shakur
by Emory Holmes II, Special to The Times

Jim Belushi was recalling his first confrontation with the late Tupac Shakur, his co-star in "Gang Related," a cop and crook comic nightmare released Wednesday by MGM that is Shakur's final film.

"He was late for the first rehearsal, didn''t show up for the second [and was] late for the third, so I turned to him and I go, ''Before we start, I want to get something straight,'' " the actor says during an interview in his trailer on the set of the ABC series "Total Security." "I go, ''I don''t think you''re committed to this project, man. . . . So Tupac jumps up and yells: ''I couldn''t find parking; my lawyer advised me not to show.'' Yadda-yadda-yadda."

Belushi explains that Shakur was telling the truth--that there was no parking, his no-show was a calculated lawyer's trick to sweeten his deal--but he adds, "I wouldn''t give it to him. And so I said, ''If you listen to everything somebody tells you, you lose your power, and I don''t want a guy with no power in this role.'' I said, ''If you come late tomorrow, you might as well not show up.'' "

Executive producer Lynn Bigelow-Kouf, with her husband, writer-director Jim Kouf, was there, and she recalls the incident his way: "We had no idea of how Tupac was going to respond. We thought it was going to come to blows, and I said, ''Well, we are three days before shooting, and there goes our second lead.'' "

Producers and others rushed to break them apart. Shakur raised his hand.

"This is between me and Jim," he said, according to Belushi, who told Shakur, "You''re not committed to this project, you''re not committed as an actor, you''re not committed to this process."

And Shakur exploded, "Committed? Whaddyamean, man? I made bail to loop the last movie."

Belushi relaxes, grinds out his cigar, his mood softening. "We had the most beautiful fight," he says wistfully. "And we shook hands at the end of that and, man, we were brothers, we were in love, we had the best time, and what happened was, that relationship--what happened at that moment--was what we made happen on screen."

In "Gang Related," Shakur displays a tenderness and vulnerability in the role of paranoid Det. Rodriguez. Belushi portrays the extremely felonious Det. Divinci, a comic monster.

Divinci is a bleaker, darker version of a character Belushi has been developing since his days at the famed Second City theater--the enchanting brute--and adheres to his brother John's theatrical admonition that Jim should "always go on stage like a bull charging into the bullring."

Belushi is philosophical about his own career and life when he considers the tragic fates of those he admires, artists who briefly shine with that undefinable light he terms "the burn."

He feels that Shakur's "thug" persona and tough-guy image were just that, an image, designed to sell records.

"Tupac and I both came from the bottom. Our street rhythms and our musical rhythms were magical. He was an artist first of all. He was a songwriter, a singer, an actor, and so I related to him on an artistic point of view. But because he was a young artist, he was pure in a sense. He felt that you didn''t need to do a scene more than once," he says. "He didn''t have the confidence that he could re-create magic. And I would argue with him, I''d say, ''OK, I''m a little older, I''m a craftsman and a spontaneous actor. I like to do as many takes as they''ll give me.'' And Tupac was, ''We got it!'' and imperfect as it was, that's how perfect it is. And I say, ''All right, [instead of] doing five takes, we''ll do three.'' So it was negotiation. He was pure, young."

The pair developed a strong bond during the filming. Belushi even turned the rapper on to Frank Sinatra, one of  his idols.

During breaks, he experimented with a rap version of Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon," Belushi recalled. "But the melody is so beautiful the way Frank does it, Tupac was having problems. You''ve got to have melody in that, so then we''d harmonize. Oh, we had a blast. He wasn''t hip to Frank Sinatra at all. How can you not know Frank Sinatra?"

After the film wrapped, and Shakur was slain on a packed Las Vegas street, Belushi fell apart. He couldn''t accept it, saying it reminded him of too many other shattering deaths of pure and gifted young talents he's known.

"I just kind of slipped into denial for a long time," Belushi says. "About six months after he passed away, I listened to his album over and over and over. The next week I was difficult to be with. I don''t deal with death very well. My brother, John Candy, my dad, my mom, Brandon Tartikoff just a couple of weeks ago. I mean, you lose a lot of people in your life, and that's one thing I am constantly working on--pain management."

Bracketed by the tragedies of his life, in the 15 years since the death of his brother John of an overdose in 1982, Belushi has aggressively pushed himself to experiment with wider and more challenging theatrical forms than straight comedy.

His resume includes improvisational comedy (Second City, "Saturday Night Live"), light opera ("The Pirates of Penzance"), animation ("The Pebble and the Dragon"), drama ("Conversations With My Father") and sexual farce ("Sexual Perversity in Chicago") for the stage and a wide range of roles for the big and small screen.

He has even begun performing as a harmonica player and blues singer with the Sacred Hearts, the house band for  the trendy Hollywood eatery, the House of Blues, in which he is an investor. Longevity and craft, as opposed to evanescence and genius, have been his standard, and, sometimes unsuccessfully, he has endeavored to push himself away from the destructive path of those "pure, young" talents he calls "the shooting stars."

"I''ve thought about that stuff a lot. I always consider guys like John, Tupac, Jimi Hendrix are shooting stars; you can''t take your eyes off them because of that burn, but it's . . . that quick," Belushi claps his hands, "Smack, they''re gone. John Candy, Tupac, my brother John. Thank God they captured their life on film. It makes me smile when I see them in a movie now.

"I like to consider myself a star--a star, that when you look in the sky, it's always there. And on a clear night . . . a shooting star comes by, and get a little thrill, and you make a little wish. You need both types of stars, the shooting and the constant stars. The heavens include them all. And I think it's good to be a star that's there every night."

Copyright 1997 / Los Angeles Times

This Diary is by Stephanie Covington and David Everitt.

Tim Roth on Tupac

Tim: He was actually the straight man in the film. The solid guy. My character as all over the place and he was like my dad in the film. He as constantly having to watch my back because I am always getting myself in trouble saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Stephanie: That as on screen but were those positions in reverse in real life?

Tim: A little bit. Yeah. I first met Pac before he was cast. He wanted to play the part of Spoon and he said to them, if he hasn''t at seen any of my movies, don''t let him see my movies, and if he hasn''t at listen to my music, then don''t let him listen to my music and don''t let him see my music videos. Let me meet him as I really am, not as my public persona." And he walked in and I met this guy who was twenty five years old and he knew the character. It was a guy who wanted to do a great film. I used to quietly slide into his trailer during the day at some point when no one was around. I ad kick back and have a beer and he ad be sitting there writing, which was good. Good to see. He worked at it. His success was not a fluke. He was a poet. There as this big tough guy performance that goes on in him and I have never seen anybody so scared in all my life. We were in a back alley shooting the stabbing scene and there were rats running around. And he literally was terrified. He kept jumping up and down shouting, "Did you see that, that was a rat!!" It was like suddenly he was four years old and it made me laugh.

Stephanie: You guys bonded during the filming?

Tim: Yeah, the thing about working with any actor if you are working with such depth is you have to bond real quick and you have to keep it there. As much as I may have been pissed off with him everyday and he may have been pissed off with me, we had to reveal a lot about ourselves real quick as if our relationship had gone back years and we did that.

Preston Holmes (Co-Executive Producer)

Big smile, he always had a big smile. He loved kids and my daughter was always with me and he had known her since she was a kid. He invited me to the set of his music video which was like a rappers convention, I mean everybody was in it. My daughter and her friend spent all day getting cute in these little outfits and I was not going to let them leave the house dressed like that. They wouldn''t listen so finally I gave in. We got to the set and Tupac took one look at them and said, "What are you doing dressed like that. Ya´ll had better go home and put some clothes on." And he was serious. It was typical of who he was.

Erica Huggins (Producer)

I was blown away by Tupac´s ability to bring his natural rhythm that's so prevalent in his music to the screen. He was a poet.

Damian Jones (Producer)

Initially everybody was nervous about Tupac, given his reputation. But he loved this film and by the end, everybody loved him.

Bokeem Woodbine (Mud)

I really feel that in years to come music and cinema of today will be considered a renaissance era of sorts and I think he was on the forefront of a lot of that. People will look back and say that Tupac was a true renaissance magician.

Jasen Govine (Medical Security Guard)

I was nervous because it was my first scene in a movie and it was with Tim Roth and Tupac. After we shot it Tupac came over and said, "That was very funny" and then he smiled. I´ll always remember that moment.

Howard Hesseman (Blind man)

Gridlock''d, the title, refers to a situation where there is not enough space and too many people fighting for not enough space. This is what Tupac's death seems to be about.

A RAP THING
1995 BY MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
Written 17 December 1995

Tupac Shakur's "Dear Mama" and "Keep Your Head Up" are shining examples of artistic expressions of loving oneness with one's family and people. Creative, moving, loving, funky, angry and real are that young man's works, as is a fair amount of the genre. Like any art form in America, it is also a business with the influences of the market place impacting upon its production.  The more conscious its artists, the more conscious the art.
Keep ya head up.