He Talked About Killing Tupac for Years. Why Did It Take Three Decades to Bring Him to Trial?

Th- this was, um, a time when his music was being heavily scrutinized in Congress, and in 1994, senators were holding hearings about his music and other rappers.

Tell me a little bit about why these senators were holding these hearings.

Why did they care? What were they saying was the problem?

So, you know, rap had started to shift around the mid-'90s.

Like, first it's this, like, really fun party music, you know? And then it starts to get a little grittier, you know, as different people start moving into the industry.

And then some of the music becomes more profane, more violent.

Um, there's a point in Tupac's career at which a guy in Houston kills a state trooper and blames that act on Tupac's music.

He says, "I was listening to Tupac music." So you can imagine there were a lot of people like, "What the hell is going on here?" And they start holding, [laughs] holding hearings, and trying to get, uh, uh, trying to get that music banned, trying to stop the record labels, the record labels from selling it.

But in lieu of that, they start coming up with these, you know, p- parental advisory labels, things like that, to label this music.

They say, "Hey, kids should not be listening to this sort of stuff.

This is adult music." And his music was really at the forefront of that.

Um, so yeah, they, uh, you know, a lot of people...

T- Tupac would say, "Hey, look, they don't like the fact that, uh, I've come out of the Black Panthers and I'm talking about Black empowerment, fighting back against police brutality," stuff like that, but, you know, also there were plenty of Black people along the way, uh, C. DeLoris Tucker, uh, Reverend Calvin Butts in, in Harlem, people that were saying, "No, what you're doing is beyond the pale, and it's encouraging the worst in our youth, and something should be done about it."

And, and what was his response?

Oh, he thought that they were haters.

He thought that they were jealous of his platform, that he was speaking to people and activating people in a way that not very, you know, n- few other people were.

So he thinks that the, y- that, that this is all a scheme to stop him from making money and spreading his message to people.

But, you know, I mean, I guess it's, it, it, it kinda depends on which, which song you listen to, uh, is the version of Tupac that you take issue with, because he's not the same Tupac in every song.

But they really fixated on the music that was violent, that called women names, that was, you know, sexually explicit, that was about taking drugs, it was about shooting people.

That's the stuff that they took issue with, whereas Tupac is saying, "Hey, what about this other stuff that I talked about? What about all this other music that I make about, you know, uh, Black people empowering themselves, rising out of poverty, doing all these other things?" And so, you know, it was, I mean, it was, you know, the duality of man, so to speak.

[laughs]