Publicly, he always gave me all my shine. That is what was so dope to me about Tupac. He never stopped being a fan even though we became friends and brothers. He never changed. We could have not seen each other physically in a year. It was always consistently the same energy. And for him, at this time, being this uber celebrity, to come through, tell me he’s on the way to Queens. He came all the way from LA. He didn’t have to hit me up. But he did, and then I get there, and the world’s gone crazy.
KHALIL KAIN I was at a club in Los Angeles. I went to the bar to get some drinks. I had left the people that I was with just to, like, go to the bar, grab a drink. I got to the bar, ordered my drink. The next thing I knew there were like four women talking to me. I was chatting them up, just kind of chilling. My back was to the bar. I’m facing these women having a nice conversation. The next thing I know I see this very large Black man walking toward me—really large. He stops right behind these women, and he’s like, “You’re Khalil, right?” I was like, “Maybe.” He’s like, “I’m with Pac.” As far as I knew, Pac was still in jail. “We’re upstairs in a private room. We saw you walking in and Pac sent me over to come get you.” All right, ladies, excuse me. I get up, I go with this man. We walk upstairs into this private room. And there’s Pac with a few other people, and lo and behold, Faith Evans. Of course I’m excited. We hug and get drunk. He’s busting my balls about being a failure. He’s like, “What the fuck is going on? You’re supposed to be a movie star by now. What are you doing?” What the fuck I want to do.
He apologized because I wrote him a letter while he was in jail that he never responded to. He’s like, “Man, I saw that shit and it fucked me up. I’m trying to just do my bid and deal with them fucking knuckleheads and whatever.” He looked great. His volume was on fifteen. We had a great night. He told me how much he loved me, how much he believed in me, how much he was looking forward to seeing me blow up. Tupac was a great hype man. He gave his energy in a way that you felt bigger. He was talking about signing Faith Evans to his new record label, and she was just chilling.
Seeing Pac that night gave me life. You’re talking about going back to your roots, the very beginning of this journey for you. Juice will always be the start, the jump-off. And to see him that night, to see him at full power, that prison didn’t fuck with him, it didn’t sap his spirit in any way—it may have but he was not showing that. That’s not what he was giving. We had a lot of fun. I planned on seeing him and hanging out. That didn’t happen.
GOBI RAHIMI Tracy and I were at a pivotal point, because we were actually dealing with Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Tupac came into the picture, after he got out of Dannemora. He sent his assistant, Molly, up to take me up to the Malibu house that Suge Knight was renting from the assistant DA of Los Angeles, of all people. There was a water-gun fight with the Outlawz. Immediately Pac got on a call with Suge before I even got to say hi to him, and they started getting into an argument. They were arguing about money—“I’m selling millions of albums and you’re giving me pennies.” I was in the middle of a water-gun fight with the rest of the Outlawz and I was surrounded by them. I was holding my own and shooting them all with the water gun that Pac left on the table. And then he broke in, in the middle of the fight, and he was like, “That’s what I’m talking about! That’s a crazy Iranian. You outnumbered him, and he still held up.” That became my moniker. He started calling me the crazy Iranian from then on. And I instantly fell in love with him. I was like, I fucking love this guy!
NAHSHON ANDERSON In 1996, I turned eighteen, and it was time for my high school prom. So I asked a girl who I grew up with to be my date, and she agreed. She really, really had a crush on me even though she knew that I was gay. Tupac was already there.VII By the time we got there, everyone was already taking pictures with him. Once people got what they wanted and stuff, they would move on to the dance floor. By the time we got around to him, I saw him and I was just like, Wow, you know? I mean, that whole year, pretty much 1995 and ’96, I had been playing a great deal of his music, and my cousins—everyone, really—were just crazy about Tupac. And so we got closer and closer. I remember taking pictures of him, but I don’t have them anymore. But I just knew that that was going to be the only time that I would be around Tupac. I said, “Tupac, you know, hook me up, I want to work in TV and film production.” He could hear me; it wasn’t that loud. And he started squinting at me. He’s like, “Look here.” I’m thinking he’s about to start rapping, but then he repeats it: “Look Hear [Creations].” He was like, “That’s my film company. That’s doing my music videos. Look them up.”
We went into the main ballroom, and we danced, and he danced with us for a while. Then he and Tushana, my high school classmate, left early. It was only Tupac, her, and Tupac’s bodyguard. We had an after-party and Tupac was all anyone could talk about. In the next few weeks, I contacted Look Hear. I spoke with Tracy Robinson—my relationship was more with her than Gobi. I told them Tupac was at my prom and that I had met him and that he had referred me. I started that summer.
D-SHOT We were doing the Click album and at an LA resort shooting a music video for one of our songs. He was saying, “Hey, man, you know what, you guys come be in my video,” which was “California Love”—not the Mad Max one, but the one he did in LA. During the weekend, we did a video for an E-40 and Too Short song in this mansion. He came to the hotel after and told us if we had time to come down to Can-Am Studios, let’s make a song together.
TIM NITZ Can-Am Studios was a place that Death Row had leased for like two years—that was a studio that was like no other.
At most studios, you have to gain entry normally through an intercom; you have to go through a gate. At Can-Am, you went in through the front entrance, and it was really weird, because it kind of looked like it was in a commercial area. You feel like you’re going into Joe’s Plumbing and Repair. But then you go to the door, and there’s like two fully suited security guards at the front, like fully armed. They pat you down—that never happened to me before in a studio—and then once you’re in there, there was this constant I gotta watch my back in here vibe. It’s a little rough in there.
There were stories of Suge Knight apparently having a big office called the Red Room. There were rumors about how this one guy, this videographer guy, did a video for them. And something went wrong and they made him go in there and drink piss. It wasn’t the ideal environment for an engineer.
I remember walking into the studio; they pat me down. They opened the briefcase I had with me and everything. And then I go sit in the room and like, Nate Dogg is sitting behind me on the couch with a pistol. And I’m like, Wow, my back’s to the guy with the gun. It was definitely a hairy studio.
D-SHOT We had a little time to kill before we had to go do what we had to do. Pulled up and hung out over there. Tupac had a 500 Benz. Suge pulled up in a red Ferrari. Of course, Suge, he’s a big guy, but we some big guys, too. He had paper, and it was longer than ours, but we had paper, too. Richie Rich was there. It was a room full of young bosses in there.
Pac put his producers to work for a second and those songs wasn’t working for us. So he stopped the music and he turned to me and said, “What do you want to do with this song? You tell me. Who do you want to produce it?” At the time, Mike Mosley was in there. Rick Rock, too. I said, “Let Mike Mosley do it.” They got on it and then once they finished the music, Pac looked over at me again. I’m like, Why are you messing with me? To me, I’m not the best dude in the building. Forty was gifted for dear life with music. I’m just rapping because I like to do it. But Pac’s asking me, “Shot, what’s the name of the song?” It’s a whole bunch of people in there, ain’t nobody saying nothing. It’s quiet in there. So I just came off the top of my head with “We Ain’t Hard to Find.”
C-Bo was the first in the booth, hitting the gas on the microphone like he’s driving a car 150 miles per hour. He hit it so hard that he upped the stakes. We all had to step up to the plate. I get on it. For
ty does his thing. B does his thing, and here’s this song.
Pac’s IQ must have been one of the highest IQs I’ve ever seen. Because I sat there to see the man write his entire rap in less than two minutes. I mean, he had a blank piece of paper and wrote his part in less than two minutes. He got to be the fastest dude in the world. No wonder he made all the songs. He was quick.
TOMMY “D” DAUGHERTY What I liked about Death Row was the music was fucking the bomb. I mean, the beats were just slamming, it was real shit from the hood, it wasn’t a bunch of commercial garbage.
Everything was spontaneous. Songs would happen so quickly. He’d be ready to record halfway to the studio. He was so fast it was ridiculous. His best songs he did by himself. When he had to take everybody along with him and have them do work and stuff, all that did was slow everything down. We did “Hail Mary” in fifteen minutes. Me and Lance, the other engineer, just looked at each other like, Can you believe what just happened? We wanted to listen to it more but he was ready to do the next song. We listened to it over and over like fifty times after he left. He never came into the studio and said, “Let me hear the song from yesterday.”
We must’ve recorded 125 to 150 songs. He only signed on to do three albums, which is like forty songs. He just kept going and going.
JUSTIN TINSLEY Pac’s solo career was only from 1991 to 1996, and he basically spent all of 1995 in jail. His career was very short. He was such a maniacal worker that it always felt like he’d never slept. Whether he was filming a movie, whether he was making an album, whether you’re doing wild stuff in the streets, it’s like, Dude, when do you sleep?
TOMMY “D” DAUGHERTY One thing about Tupac in the studio was he was way cool. If you were down with what you were doing, he was 100 percent with you as well. He just didn’t tolerate too many mistakes. He’d be like, “Do you like your job?” But if you were delivering a pizza to the studio and you said, “Tupac, man, I’d love to get on a song with you someday,” he would say, “Okay, you’re next in the booth.” I swear to god, that’s what he would say. He’d get you in there and he’d let you rap. And if you fucked up, he’d say, “Come back in six months and I’ll put you on the mic again and you’ll be on the song.” That’s how cool he was. Most artists wouldn’t even let you in the room. If you look at all the people I’ve worked with—Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Prince—nobody could touch him in the studio.
MOE Z MD We were at a studio. We had just finished the one that they put out called “Sucker for Love.” Originally it was called “Do for Love.” We just finished that track. And it had my dude G Money, who was Radio’s singer, on it. We were trying to get them out, get them going some kind of way. So we had him sing on that. After the session, Pac had this Cameo tape, and he goes, “Hey, do you think you can flip ‘She’s Strange’?” I told him it was no problem. He said we’d be back in that studio that Friday. I went to my homeboy’s house and used his equipment because mine was broken at the time. Pac said, “This is perfect to get your brother in here to sing.” My brother was doing some talent show or something and was like, “I can’t do it.” I’m like, “Huh??? You’re doing a talent show in Carson. Tupac is asking you to come sing on a number one record!” He wouldn’t do it. So Pac was mad. He said, “Go get G Money,” and I had him sing the hook I wrote.
There was a kid who was on one of those competition TV shows. He ended up going solo and wanted me to do this track. So I made a track for him. A couple months go by, he was like, “My dad wants me to get the money back because I can’t really do anything with the song.” I came up with it and gave it back to him.
It was not even three months later that I made that cassette tape for Pac. That track was not on there as far as me putting it on there for him to hear. I was trying to tape over it. When I went to Quad, he had me looking for the beat. I played all the beats that I put on there that I knew. He was like, “No, that’s not it.” And then he played the cassette and I said, “Oh, that’s an R & B track, man.” And he said, “Well, it’s a rap now, nigga.”
TIM NITZ He didn’t interact with the engineers that much, but this one particular session we’re looping the track and we’re at Can-Am. I was working with a new assistant that I did not know and who didn’t really know the room that well. I asked him to hook up some gear, particularly in Tupac’s vocal chain, and he didn’t do it right.
Johnny J was the producer, and he’s like, “Okay, Tupac is ready to start doing this vocal.” So I’m getting ready to record and then I go to record them and there’s no sound. So after about thirty seconds, we’re going, “What’s going on?” I’m trying to figure out what the issue is. And then—this is the only time I’ve ever seen any kind of emotion out of Tupac. He started getting agitated, like, very upset out in the studio. Then Johnny J was like, “You better get up. Like, now.”
So I told the assistant to just pull the stuff he had plugged in that was going into the channel I wanted to use. The whole point was I was trying to have the assistant engineer plug in a higher-quality mic pre for his vocal. When that didn’t work out, I had to go back to using the mic pre-built into the console, which was good but not the best. This is happening all in, like, a two-minute span. It was pretty gnarly. And once we’re getting sound again, he’s instantly calm.
GOBI RAHIMI He lost his cool a couple of times when the engineers weren’t queuing up the song when he was in the booth or once when one of them turned the light off while he was in there. He would call them goat-mouthed motherfuckers. But for most of it, he was at ease.
In April 1996, he was still only three, four months out of Dannemora. It was all peace and love at that point. For “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” he and Snoop were straight chums. That was the follow-up to “California Love.” In fact, it was a three-day shoot, and after the second day, Pac turned to me and Tracy like, “Y’all have enough for a video, me and Snoop are out.” Then they just jumped in his Rolls and just mashed out.
Tracy did the physical shoot for “How Do You Want It” because I was prepping “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” which was shooting the week after. A guy by the name of Black was supposed to be directing that and he backed out. We got on a call with him and he’s like, “I’m not doing it because I’m not sharing credit with Tupac.” Because it was Pac’s concept, and he wanted to be the codirector on it. I was like, “Dude, you’ve got Tupac and Snoop, two of the biggest artists on the planet right now, and you don’t want to do the video because of a codirecting credit?!”
KENDRICK WELLS We went through this weird trip where we had just finished recording All Eyez on Me and he was staying at this beautiful hotel for a month. And as soon as the album was wrapped up, we got moved two hotels over to a place called the Mondrian. It was this hotel where the cats from New York stayed. I don’t know why it seemed that way—like your grumpy neighbors or something. It was right by the House of Blues. It was just the weirdest thing. I remember we all sat in the room like, “What’s going on?” Pac was like, “Don’t worry about it; it’s nothing.” But then he told me he was sending the gun collection out from Atlanta. I’m supposed to meet somebody and make this happen. Whatever Pac says, that’s what I’m doing. My loyalty was with him; it wasn’t with Death Row. And that caused problems for him and me. The record came out, shit went fucking double platinum the first hour or whatever. And now everybody’s at ease. Tupac is in his new penthouse. It’s out of the hood. No dudes are turning the corner. Suge gets wind of this gun collection—Pac tells him or whatever—and Suge tells me to go get rid of it. Which made sense because everything had calmed down.
TOMMY “D” DAUGHERTY There was one night I was drunk and I got pissed at Pac because he was doing a stupid fucking song dissing Nas. He did like five or six of them. I was like, “Dude, how many songs are you going to do this kind of shit for? You sound stupid. You could do political and social stuff for the people, not stuff for Nas.” He said, “You’re right, tomorrow we start the Makaveli album.”VIII That got m
e excited. I’m like, “What’s the Makaveli album?” Suge wanted him to do a diss album where he’s dissing all the New York rappers. Instead of spending any more time on that, we switch over to do Makaveli.
GOBI RAHIMI I think the fuel on the fire was the record labels, because they’re the ones that profited the most. And, you know, Suge had his own little-boy complex or whatever, flexing on who’s a bigger CEO between him and P. Diddy.
TOMMY “D” DAUGHERTY Suge didn’t have any respect from the Bloods and everything. They were just taking advantage of him. They didn’t consider him a gang member at all.
VIRGIL ROBERTS Suge was the hunter that got captured by the game. If you’re going to be the leader of thugs, you’re supposed to be the baddest thug of them all. So he started playing this Humphrey Bogart role.
ALEX ROBERTS Suge could get whatever he wanted from Interscope—or anybody—because people were so intimidated. What annoyed me was you have all the money, all the money, and you don’t take care of the right things. Nobody could control him. He didn’t need to be on the cover of Vibe magazine with Dre, Pac, and Snoop. Everything was over the top.
TOMMY “D” DAUGHERTY Death Row wasn’t as fun as [Tupac] thought it was gonna be. I could just tell he wasn’t digging it at all. I remember one day he picked up the phone after they sent us to some bullshit studio and he was on the phone yelling at Suge: “Why am I over here in this shitty-ass studio? People are using the good studio when I just bailed out Death Row.” He was really pissed, too, because he realized he wasn’t getting paid shit for what he was selling on those records.
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