The feeling among the majority of people was that, Well, this is a pretty minor charge. Did he really get four years for that?XV
As the judge was wrapping up, he turned to the jury, and he said, “There’s no law preventing you from speaking to the press, but I would like to tell you that it’s not a very pleasant experience. You may find that there’s personal repercussions from having that kind of visibility. So, if you wish, I would advise you to leave the courtroom by one of the side doors so you don’t encounter the press who are waiting outside. You’ve been sequestered, so you don’t realize that there will be TV cameras and print reporters and a lot of press there.”
Most of the jury went out one side door and avoided the press. This NYU girl and I, I don’t know why, but we chose the other side. When we came out the door, boom, there we were, just me and her in front of this whole scrum of reporters and cameras and lights.
She was scared and she put her arm around my waist. One of the reporters said, “Is this a sequestered-jury love story like we had in the Bernie Goetz trial?”XVI
I said, “No, no, no, no, no. We’re just friends.”
So I did most of the talking, and she just kept her arm around my waist and she was shivering, she was so scared, but it was cold, too.
The reporter for MTV was right in the middle of the scrum in the front. He went down on one knee and held out his microphone to me. I was sort of aiming my comments at him because he was the one right in front of my face. First thing he asked me was: “There were two older women on this jury. Do you feel that the two older people were really competent to understand the music and the culture behind hip-hop?”
I, perhaps suffering from Stockholm syndrome myself, was far too generous to these two old ladies. I did not want to throw a wrench into the works and get myself in trouble by saying one of them was completely senile and had no idea what was going on most of the time—seriously, she did not—and the other one wanted to lock up every Black male that she could get her hands on. I was far too generous. I said, “Well, you know, there were two older women here, but remember, this is Manhattan. They’re not completely unsophisticated. They know a little bit more about the world.” That was wrong. I don’t know why I said that. Maybe because I was trying to protect them or protect the jury.
In retrospect, would I have said anything different? Probably not, because of the implications. It might have ended up in a mistrial had I said, “Listen, one of them was senile, another one was probably a crackhead, the other one wanted to crucify Tupac no matter what.” I just didn’t think that was the appropriate thing to say, even though it was the truth.
I said that, and unbeknownst to me, I was on every local news broadcast that night and I was on MTV News with Kurt Loder. My brother lives in Pennsylvania. He was shaving the next morning and he said he had on MTV and all of a sudden he said, “I heard your voice from the other room.”
CHARISSE JONES I think that it was a very racialized paradigm. I think that because he was hated by cops, because he was this fledgling rap icon becoming a movie star, there was a protectiveness around him, which obviously does a great disservice to the woman who was abused. I think there’s been a real awakening since then with R. Kelly and all of that, but at that time, I feel that Black women felt that they had to be loyal to this young brother. Even though they were, in doing that, denying the humanity and the emotion that this young woman had to be going through, having experienced this terrible assault. I got the sense that people were kind of Team Tupac, especially because he was a young Black man who was being vilified by some in the white community.
RICHARD DEVITT As soon as I got back to work, I hadn’t even gotten my coat off when three Black women walked into my office and shut the door behind them. They were furious at the girl. My own secretary, Michelle, was from Queens. She said, “What the hell is wrong with that girl? She walks into a room, there’s five men there and there was a gun on the table. Why the hell didn’t she just turn around and walk out of there?” They were vehemently in support of Tupac and they were mad at me for convicting him. I said, “Listen, I wanted to acquit on all charges. Most of the people in the room did. There were a couple of people there that kept us there forever. And so that’s what we ended up with.” Still, the MTV reporter had asked if the verdict was a compromise, and he was right. It was a compromise.
PUDGEE THA PHAT BASTARD After the shooting, he changed. He was more guarded. Not with me, but I could feel him being darker.
MOE Z MD I was supposed to be at that session when he got shot at Quad. I was in the studio doing something else. And I couldn’t even break away. It was rough living with each other after that.
D-SHOT I think he never got over when he got shot up in New York. I think he felt like he was betrayed and let down out there. He’ll pull up on you. He’d get on the plane and go there and get there expecting you to be a real dude and take care of him. Apparently somehow he got caught up out there and he can never live that down. So he started lashing out in his music; you can hear it in his music. The anger and all the stuff behind that.
MOE Z MD He was really depressed about how he was for the women and lifting them up. And then this girl was saying that he raped her. And he didn’t. He told me that whole story, too. He was just really frustrated with how all that was going down—people being against him.
PUDGEE THA PHAT BASTARD The rape case is the beginning of him understanding how poisonous this world is. He didn’t become vapid but he definitely became short with people more, and was way more selective. There weren’t as many people hanging around. But our relationship was one of authenticity. I just was gonna be brutally honest. He appreciated your honesty. There’s no component to stop me from saying something is some bullshit, and he was the same way.
ALEX ROBERTS When I told my lawyer I’d met Pac, he said, “Don’t ride any elevators with him.” When I saw Pac the next time after Quad, I brought it up.
“Is there going to be retaliation?”
He goes, “If I ever run into them.”
I go, “What if you don’t need to run into them?”
He said, “Why would you want to be involved?”
“I’m not involved,” I said. “You know who your mom runs with, right? Well, have you ever seen the name Calabrese on some of the garbage trucks?”
“I have.”
I go, “That’s my mother’s maiden name.”
“Oh shit! You’re the real deal. You’re a real OG.”
I said, “Fuck you, man. I’m not that much older than you.”
He liked that. We both spoke our mind with a bit of an attitude.
KHALIL KAIN I mean, the shit he said to the judge—that he’s not trying to get less time and he’s not trying to be part of the system; the system is fuckedXVII—you can’t go into court and tell them that. But he did that anyway.
MOE Z MD He was thinking about signing us to his label Out Da GuttaXVIII and merging our label with his. I said, “Man, we can even demo stuff in my studio and the crib so you don’t have to spend money and reinvent it in the studio.” He never got to do that because of the situation with him going to jail.
KHALIL KAIN My cousin was there while he was there. My cousin asked me about him: “What’s good? Do we look out for him?” I’m like, “Make sure nothing happens to that muthafucker, man.”
ETHAN BROWN The thing that always struck me about that case is that he gets sent up to Dannemora. That’s a terrible state prison. My feeling is that being sent upstate destroyed his life. I think he’s deeply traumatized by that prison, and I think it puts him directly into the arms of Suge. He’s angry. He’s traumatized. His career has really taken this mega blow. That sequence of events seems like the most important part of the story.
STELLA NAIR So Pumacahua, who is originally from Chinchero, is the one who leads the capture of Túpac Amaru II. In the end, he regrets it, and he goes against the Spanish and he also dies. You would think that the people of Chinchero in particul
ar would maybe have some ambiguity. On the church, there’s a picture showing a lion and a dragon fighting—Pumacahua, a name referencing the puma, and then Tupac is the serpent. So that battle is memorialized. But they all side with Túpac Amaru II and his legacy. And it really symbolizes indigenous persistence.
VII
WENDY DAY After I connected Pac with the FOI [Fruit of Islam], I forgot about it. My intention wasn’t for anybody to know that I had asked [the FOI] to help him. It wasn’t anything more than just offering help because I had access and I saw somebody in need. But I guess somebody told Pac, because later I got a letter from Rikers, from him, thanking me for securing him. “It’s nice to know that somebody respects my music so much that they would do this for me.” And, you know, when I read that, I thought about that time I was standing in line at the Palladium. I was not necessarily a fan of his music. I did it for him because I would have done it for any rapper. For some reason, I felt obligated to tell him that, and I don’t know why. Age brings wisdom. If it had transpired today, I would have just let it go. But back then my attitude was, How dare he misconstrue my actions?
In a response letter, I basically said to him, a lot of what you do you bring upon yourself, and then you complain in the media that people are profiling you, because, you know, you’re a rapper, but, you know, my experience of you is you were so loud and obnoxious in line to get into a club that I had to get off the fucking line and move to the back, putting myself in a worse position to get in. At that point in time, I think I was only really aware of a couple of his songs. And I explained to him that I [helped him] because I saw he was in need, and I would have done it for anybody. So, a couple weeks later, when a letter came back to me with his return address, my initial response in my head was like, Oh, he’s gonna crush me. But when I read the letter, it was so respectful. I think it started “Dear Queen,” and it was so humbling. He came so opposite of what I thought. He was peaceful and he thanked me again for what I did. And the amazing part to me was that he understood what I was saying. I mean, he really understood.
His response was: Here’s where I come from. This is the kind of life I had. Here’s why I’m the way I am. It was very genuine, and he really put himself out there. I wrote back to him, and I came as humble and as open as he did. We just started to discuss things back and forth. I sent him a box of books; I was only able to send one or two boxes, I can’t remember which, because he got caught smoking weed pretty soon thereafter, and they killed all his packages, but I sent him some of my favorites and then we corresponded about those books. I sent him The Prince by Machiavelli, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Afrocentricity by Dr. Molefi Asante. At first he was a little bit shocked because I’m white and I had sent him some very Afrocentric books, but that’s what I like and that’s where the lyrics at the time were taking me. That was my education at that point in time. I think he was kind of amazed by that. Because he had been so vulnerable with me and I had shown my vulnerability to him, it really developed a friendship.
ANGELA ARDIS I worked in the marketing department at Junior AchievementI in 1995. I was doing a little bit of acting, a little bit of modeling. Nothing heavy. We were putting together the board books and MC Lyte’s “Ruffneck” came on—it was about ten thirty at night; we had had a long day. We got up and we danced or what have you and they were like, “If you could have a roughneck, who would you want?” I said Tupac. My roommate at the time said Treach, and so then somehow it became a situation where they bet that I couldn’t get in touch with Tupac. And I said of course I can’t. He’s in jail—a celebrity in jail at that. I left it alone. I didn’t think any more about it.
Went to bed that night and woke up the next morning and my roommate is like, “So how are you going to get in touch with Tupac? You have to do this bet.” My whole day, I was hearing Tupac. Everywhere I went, I was hearing Tupac. I said, Okay, I’m into signs and “the universe” and all these things. I had an uncle who’s in jail, and I knew you needed the prison number [to write to an inmate]. He’s at Rikers Island. If I call Rikers Island, will they give me his prison number? I had to call information. They gave me the Rikers Island phone number. A nice lady answered the phone. And five seconds later, I had Tupac’s prison number and the Rikers Island address. I’m a Gemini, too. So my mind is spinning. How is he going to find my letters? I’m thinking he’s getting bags and bags of mail—that if it was that easy for me, there’s thousands of people who know how to do that already.
I said, I’m going to get a colored envelope. I went to Kinkos the next morning and when I looked at all the colors that they had on display, the fuchsia one stuck out. I bought the one envelope, very happy with my purchase. I came home and wrote out a letter. I typed it when I got to work. I put a picture of myself in there. I put my phone number in there, and I FedExed it off using the company FedEx and didn’t think about it again. I sprayed a little perfume on the envelope, like, That’ll be cute.
Two or three days later, I went on a date and there was a message on my machine when I got home. “Hey, this is Tupac.” I ran across the house to my roommate’s room and completely destroyed her life. I’m like, “You got to wake up. Tupac is on my machine.” I had a machine that rewinds itself back to zero, but I didn’t think it was actually gone because nothing has been recorded over it yet—it was one of those little cassettes. I said, “We’ve got to go to the job and get the recorders that we have there.” She was like, “Are you kidding me?” We went and we couldn’t find the recorder. So I didn’t have that. That would have been the most amazing thing, to still have that recorded. But I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was just super excited that he even got the letter.
WENDY DAY We talked about me running Rap Coalition as a white person and how difficult that was, and, you know, what his plans were in life and what he wanted to do. Because of my savvy on the business side, we talked about how his business manager—I think Mutulu Shakur was the person handling his finances—how terribly he was doing financially, how much he owed in taxes, how much he owed to so many people. And this was not foreign to me, because in the industry that’s very accurate. When you’re struggling to come up, you actually owe more than you have and it’s just sort of the nature of the music business. It’s kind of like getting out of college and you go to get your first job and you’ve got all this friggin’ debt from your student loans. The music industry is kind of the same way: you’ve got all this debt that you have to pay off before you can really start to succeed. That was a source of frustration for him, because he had songs that so many people knew, yet behind the scenes, he was struggling, and he just couldn’t come to grips with that; he couldn’t really understand how that was possible.
ANGELA ARDIS I really did think he was a roughneck. That’s how they painted him. But I remembered watching an interview that he did and it was just something in his eye. There was something else in there. I knew it was thug this and thug that, but there’s a real person in there. There’s somebody’s baby boy in there. I used to say, “I think he needs a hug.” If you look at his interviews before he became Tupac, when he was talking about the school that he used to go to, it’s a completely different guy.
MARK ANTHONY NEAL I think Tupac contemporaries understood what he was trying to do with “THUGLIFE.”II I think it was important to Tupac at the time, because he knew that it was language that would resonate with people that he was trying to connect with.
I don’t think we’ve ever had a problem being called thugs. But the white framing of what a thug was didn’t represent the fullness of how we thought about it in the context of our communities. So what he attempted to do was to take this word that we knew already had so many multiple meanings and framings within Black communities, and tried to actually theorize about what that meant.
None of that was ever going to move white folks from seeing a bunch of young Black kids and calling them thugs, or more importantly, older Black folks seeing a group of younger Black folks [and] calling them
thugs. What you get there is an example of the way that Tupac was a conceptual thinker. How he talks about thugs was the first draft of him working through conceptually how to balance who Black folks are as humans, who Black men are as humans, along with all these other kinds of pressures that we all know Black men are dealing with on a daily basis.
ANGELA ARDIS As we started exchanging letters I was struck by his vulnerability—the swiftness with which he was open. And maybe that’s how he normally was; I didn’t know. First of all, I wasn’t expecting any letters, and then when they started coming, especially when he wasn’t getting mine—when they moved him, he thought I’d given up on him. I always call it a connection. He didn’t love me. I didn’t love him. There was love for each other per se. It was not a love thing. It read like it could have been something magical, but I think that it was more of him needing something while he was in there. The level of his poetry and all that kind of stuff was surprising. I wasn’t expecting any of that. He is the only person in my entire life that I’ve ever had what I would consider a platonic situation where it was completely mental.
In the process, I learned he wasn’t who I thought he was, but then it became kind of sad, knowing that you’re trapped inside of something that you wish you could change. I think that, had he had the ability to stay and clean some house, he would have found another level, and how people see him now would have shifted.
WENDY DAY Pac had just hired Charles Ogletree, a professor from Harvard, and he felt like this guy could really get him out of jail. He was sharing that with me, and he was really excited about it. But it made me a little sad because he had been incarcerated at that point like eight or nine months. I kept thinking to myself: You just not only wasted nine months of your life but nine months of your life at a time where your album had just dropped. And back then, history taught us that if you weren’t out and about to work your record, it would tank. His record didn’t tank; it actually did quite well. But it could have done so much better if Pac had been out and about to be able to market and promote himself. And that kind of pissed me off.
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