"Tupac Shakur: Exclusive Interview!"

November 15, 2020·30 min·2 clips

Tupac Shakur reveals the bizarre truth about what happened to his ashes after being cremated.

The episode opens with host Melissa Robbins at the Peace Garden Park Amphitheater, formerly the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Performing Arts. The voiceover Tupac character explains that he was born Lassan Parrish Crooks in 1971 in East Harlem, and his mother renamed him after an executed Incan chief. His mother, an active Black Panther member, was charged with conspiracy to bomb buildings in New York while pregnant with him and successfully represented herself in court for eight months before being acquitted. The character describes moving to Baltimore at 15 and attending the Baltimore School for the Arts alongside Jada Pinkett Smith, with whom he remained close throughout his life. He moved to California at 17, joined Layla Steinberg's poetry classes, and began performing with the group Strictly Dope before connecting with Digital Underground. His film debut came on the Nothing But Trouble soundtrack and was followed by his first album, Tupacalypse Now. The character disputes the gangsta rap label, comparing himself to actors like Marlon Brando who play tough roles without being defined by them. He describes being arrested for jaywalking and beaten by police, suing for $10 million and settling for $42,000. In 1993, while filming Above the Rim, he met Haitian Jack and Jimmy Henchman, whom he later connected to a sexual assault accusation that he denied. After being invited to Quad Studios in Times Square, he was shot five times in the lobby and later found Biggie Smalls and Puffy Combs waiting upstairs. He was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse and sentenced to 18 months in prison. While in solitary confinement, his album Me Against the World debuted at number one, making him the first artist with a chart-topping album while incarcerated. He was released after Death Row Records head Suge Knight paid his bail, and he joined Death Row with the intent to destroy Bad Boy Records. His album All Eyes on Me became the first double-disc rap release. He recounts a visit to terminally ill Joshua Torres, renaming his publishing company Joshua's Dream after the boy died two hours post-visit. The character describes his death on September 13, 1996, six days after being shot in Las Vegas following the Mike Tyson fight, and notes he died broke and in debt to Death Row. The episode ends with Suge Knight currently imprisoned on manslaughter charges. Producer Steve Kunis credits the show's concept to Johnny Carson's idea of interviewing fantasy guests and thanks mentor Norman Lear.

As heard by us

A dead-serious Tupac interview that turns rumor, fame, and afterlife lore into dry joke material.

Melissa Robbins' interview with Tupac Shakur at Peace Garden Park Amphitheater in Stone Mountain, Georgia lands as a dry joke about celebrity afterlife lore.

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Why you'd press play

When you want a fantasy Tupac interview set at a Stone Mountain amphitheater and played straight.

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