In this episode of the BobbyCast, Bobby shares behind-the-scenes stories from his life in the music and radio industry. He shares why he has been mad at a country artist for years and whether or not he is justified. He reflects on the cliquey nature of the industry, the value of authentic relationships, and why he’s learned to cut out drama and dishonesty. Then, Bobby sits down with bestselling author Jeff Pearlman to dig into the stories behind his deep-dive on Tupac Shakur. Jeff talks about what he really learned while reporting the book—beyond the headlines and mythology—and why such a massive cultural force could still die broke. He breaks down his reporting playbook too: how you track down, organize, and verify insights from more than 650 interviews, and what surprised him most along the way. You’ll hear how money, management, and momentum collided in Tupac’s final years, the moments that reshaped Jeff’s understanding of who Pac was off-mic, and the practical nuts-and-bolts of building a biography at this scale.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Everybody just driving in back to my house. And there's
like this white BMW that was right next to me
driving on the road. But we've going only forty five
miles an hour. Wasn't like a highway or anything. And
these four kids started to wave. And if I'm in
a car and someone starts to wave to me, there
are a few things that can be. Number One, it
can be that I have a flat tire that's happened before.
(00:28):
Number Two, it can be that my gas cap is
hanging out because it is on like a little plastic
thread that you know, keeps it attached to the car.
That's happened before. It could be that they're fans of
the show. Now, being that they're seventeen to nineteen years old,
I probably don't think they're fans of the show. If
that happens, probably a little too young at this point.
(00:50):
But they're waving. They're waving. I'm waving back, and also
have a pretty cool car, and so sometimes it's that,
and so wind down and slowed down a little bit
because I don't want to hit the kids. I don't
want them to hit me either. And the kid in
the back seat he goes, hey, big fan, I was like,
oh cool, it is one of those times. And he
(01:11):
was like, you're Johnny Knoxville, right, No. I was like,
I'm not Johnny Knoxville, but thank you. So I wonder
if one time in his life, because Johnny Knoxville is
actually famous, but I wonder if one time in his
life Johnny Knoxville has been approched and someone has said like,
hey you Bobby Bones. Just once. But yeah, that happened
on the way here to do this, I've been the
(01:34):
last couple of days I don't want to say dealing
with because it's not really anything significant, but and this
has happened a lot through the last ten to eleven
years of my career where I will get dms or
texts from artists and it will always be kind of
like a warm up, a warm up before they ask.
(01:55):
And the thing is I really can't do much for them,
meaning I don't really program music, which is why when
people are like, you're what's wrong with country music? I
don't really have anything to do with country music as
far as putting it out there. There was a time
in my career five or six years ago where I
was playing a bit more music, but I don't program music.
I literally program two things. One the national Countdown on
(02:19):
the weekend, but not the actual countdown that's determined by
spens and radio stations all across the country. I play
one song. I pick the spotlight artist of the week
like I do that, and that's a significant spin, I guess,
because pretty much every city in the country plays that,
but it's only one time, one time on the weekend.
(02:40):
The other thing that I do, because I put it
in my contract, is the Women of iHeart Country Show.
So the quick story of that is six seven years ago,
in my contract, when I had a bit of leverage,
I said, hey, I want one hour every weekend to
just play female songs on every one of ours, which
is like two hundred plus stations. And at the time,
(03:04):
I think everybody thought that was a little weird because
they're like, you're not even a woman, and you know,
candidly speaking, they were, that's true, I'm not a woman.
But it was very much the beginning of hey, why
aren't there as many women being played on the radio?
And so I wanted to be out in the front
of that. I already was, but because I'm a dude,
(03:25):
you kind of don't get the credit. It wasn't wal
I look for the credit. But like when I would tour,
I had all for the most part, female openers. I
was constantly having female guests on the show that weren't
so I was already doing my part, but I really
wasn't doing anything national programming wise that was consistent. And
(03:47):
so I said, hey, give me this hour because I
wanted to get female artists a bit of a I
don't know if I should share this, like a bit
of a spike on the chart, because it was a
pretty heavy play on that show. Like i'd play a
couple songs from new artists, they'd get a big spike.
Program directors would see they got a whole bunch of
spins and they go, oh, maybe this song is good.
Give it a listen. And it really didn't change like
(04:10):
the total outcome of a record, but maybe it gave
some of those artists a chance earlier. So that was
a whole idea behind it. So I have an hour
and I programmed that, and you're gonna see my point here.
And if I want to, like they call it spike
a song in I can do that, which is just
on my show. If I decided I want to play
(04:30):
a song. I'll play a song, but I really don't
want to be the song guy, because with that comes
everybody wanting me to play their songs, and that's just
not me. And again, there was a time when I
was breaking songs like crazy, if it was buy Me
a Boat or Girl Crush or I Love This Life
Low Cash. There's six or seven of those songs that
(04:51):
I played a whole lot when nobody else was playing,
which really moved him up to the chart and then gave
them really strong I mean to go other places and
go like, look, it's getting a lot of play. I
stopped doing that because one, I don't want to base
my career on music I don't make. So it's been
something that I occasionally do, but I don't really put
(05:14):
any significant time, thought effort into it. But that doesn't
mean that people don't hit me up thinking either either
A I have more power than I actually do, which
is not a whole lot. I guess I have a
little sway with the president of iHeart Country. I mean,
I've worked with them for thirteen years. I know them
very well, but you know not anyway, I get the
(05:38):
warm up from these artists and it'll just be a
reach out out of nowhere to be like, what's up,
how's it going, how you been? And I can tell
immediately when the warm up is happening, because I know
the warm up is going to be possibly a day
a day and a half of hey, cool, we should
hang out sometime whatever else, and then bam, they'll be
(06:03):
you know, a file in my text message and hey,
if you don't mind, would you check this song out
and tell me what you think of it? And when
an artist asks you what do you think of a song,
they really don't want your opinion unless it's good. They
really just want you to go, oh, it's excellent. I'd
love to play it. And if you don't say that,
then they're going to ask, hey, is there any way
you can play it? So I mean getting the warm
(06:24):
up from a couple of artists, one through text, one
through DM around the same time ironically, and I know them,
but I'm not friends with them now. At the same time,
there's another artist that hit me up a couple of
weeks ago, who I don't know either. I don't know
(06:45):
how they got my cephone number, don't I mean, I
don't really care, but they just were like Hey, this
is so and so I got this new song out.
Would you listen to it? And if you like it,
maybe you'll consider it. I respect that so much more,
and I don't think I ever played it, but I
don't like bad taste in my mouth, just because it
was right to the point, like it was honest, where
the other people are like, let me give you a
(07:06):
little massage, let me tickle you around the waist. Okay,
that'd be five hundred dollars. It's kind of I guess
it's not really the same, but that's what I've been
dealing with, and I just know when it's coming, and
so I guess I can be a little cold when
I see it coming because I don't respond. And one
of them, they were dming me, and I knew what
it was because it had already been like three messages
(07:28):
and this has probably happened to me before at some
point with the same artist, and so I didn't want
them to see that I had read their DM, so
I just would delete the message, and then like clockwork,
the next day, Boom got a new song. Would love
for you to check it out. It also sucks because
it makes me not trust anybody, and the thing is
I don't really have the power. I don't have power
to like shape our career, like I can put you
(07:48):
on the show or the podcast, and that's more of
a macro versus a micro thing, because if you come
on the show or you come on the Bobby Cast,
usually that translates into like social media. You know, the
podcast does really well now it's probably the second biggest
(08:09):
country music podcast. The Bobby Cast is behind our show,
which is number one, so there is some significance to that.
But I just don't have the power for the music.
But then it has me not not like the artists
who do that, which it isn't fair because I know
it's their job to hustle in a way, but I
don't like the grossness of it, like I did like
the guy who I didn't really know that hit me
(08:30):
up and was like, hey, I got the song. I
listen to it and if there's any chance you considered
to play, that'd be awesome. And there was no like question,
there was no like what do you think about it?
Because if you ever tell an artist what you think
about something a song and you're like, yeah, I don't
really think it was that good, it wasn't for me.
I wouldn't say that because I know that's not what
they're looking for. They're not looking for general feedback. That's
happened a couple of times with friends, and they're not
(08:51):
even asking like, hey, is it a good song? They're going, hey,
do you think if we took this to the vice
president of programming that they would like it? Do you think?
And those answers I can give, but I don't really
want to, like not like artists, because it affects other decisions,
Like there are times where it's like it's an interview
coming up with this person do you want it? And
(09:11):
it's been kind of gross like that, and I've just
been like, I don't think so, Like I don't want
to be around something that makes me feel weird, or
if I feel like somebody has I go to your
motives with something. So that's been the last couple of
days that in my tooth a tooth here is still broken.
I get a lot of messages from you guys that
(09:32):
are like, hey, why's your tooth gone? And my wife,
especially who calls it tiny, she's not a fan of it.
My dentist actually just text me because I think he
saw it online as well, and he's like, hey, come in,
let's fix your tooth. And I kind of decided that
I wasn't going to fix my tooth until I had
a reason to fix it, meaning if I was going
to go and do some television work of some sort.
(09:55):
So the thing was, I'll fix it when it needs
to be fixed, because I don't only like going to
the dentist. Although my dentist is good, but you see
here it's still gone, it's still jagged. But at this
point I did pay for it already, so I should
go and get it fixed. I'm hoping that this recording
here which you're watching either on YouTube or the audio,
(10:17):
sounds good. I'm trying in a different way, so hopefully
it doesn't look or sound too weird. And if it does,
don't worry done. I'll stop doing it this way, I
get a lot of I got a lot of response
to that YouTube video that I did on artists that
don't like each other. And if you go over onder
the YouTube page, which the YouTube page is different than
(10:38):
the Bobby Bone Show YouTube page, this is at Bobby
Bone's channel. I probably shouldn't change you back to the
Bobby cast, but over on the channel. I did all
these artists that had feuds, and then people that I
have fought with, I'm not even gonna say feuds because
who cares about me over the years, and I keep
(10:59):
getting messages in d like are you feuding with anybody now?
I'm really not, because like it's mostly energy and time waste,
Like it's all a suck of time and energy. And
also I just kind at this stage of my life
cut people out if that relationship isn't a net positive
(11:19):
for both of us. And I think relationships should be
romantic relationships, friendships, any relationship should be a net positive.
That doesn't mean it's always going to go good. As
a matter of fact, the longer that you're in them,
if they are substantial, it is not going to go good.
But at the end, when you tally it all out,
you should actually be a little better because of the relationship.
(11:42):
I can give you a story and I'm not beefing
or feuding with this person just because I've chosen not to.
But and I'll keep the timeline out. It was I
would have considered this person a friend. And so I
was doing a charity event and the chair already said
to me because we weren't getting paid because it's for charity. Hey,
(12:05):
do you have anybody that would want to hop on
and do this charity event with you, like a co headliner.
And so I called this person friend of mine and
I was like, Hey, here's the charity. I think it's
something you might want to be involved in. And they
were like, yeah, sounds great. And so we had signed
up to do this charity event like eight months ahead
of time, well a few weeks to a month leading
(12:29):
into it. And again I would have said I was
actual friends with this person, not just buddies that you
see or people could come on the show and you're like,
what's up, buddy, I'm seeing you in a while, but
you're really not friends, like not acquaintance, it's friends, Like
we're all friends. I would have considered us to be
(12:51):
right there at that level. And about a month before
I get a call from this person's manager, which is weird.
And my manager gets a call from this person's manager,
which is weird because I know the person, like I've
spent significant personal time with the person, and they go, hey,
(13:13):
they got to back out of the event. They have
to have like to vocal Cord surgery, and I'm like, dang,
that sucks. My initial reaction is, thing, that sucks because
anytime you gotta have any surgery, that's not fortunate. Secondly,
if you're a singer and you have to have vocal
cord surgery, that has got to be scary as crap.
But I remember thinking, why didn't this person who's my
friend called me to tell me, because I know they're
(13:37):
still talking. I just I had seen them on social
media that day, and again I really felt like this
was a friend, So I thought it was weird that
the manager called me. By the way, if you have
to like get out of something for any reason, if
it's like a personal reason, a health reason, I don't
can just just say it. If your grandma sick, no problem. Also, well,
(14:00):
it's not my charity event, so just like, be for
real about it. I guess my whole point to this
is I hate when people aren't for real about stuff,
and so I'm like, okay, man, that sucks for them,
first of all, and second of all for this charity
event that I am co headlining, because I was doing
stand up there doing music, and so there's just a
few weeks left and I have to call the charity.
I had to call the charity and be like, hey,
(14:22):
this person is not doing this anymore, and so like,
so we had to find somebody new, and they ended
up having to pay a pretty significant amount of money
to get another person. And that's money that we're gone
to the charity. But because it was so last minute,
they had to pay a bunch and that sucked for them.
It didn't suck for me because whatever. And then I
find out the story changes from vocal cord surgery to
(14:44):
they needed to be on vocal rest. Same thing. Had
you just called and said that from the beginning, I
think that I'd been like, oh, I totally get it,
Like you can't play in a charity celebrity softball game
if your elbow if you elbow rest, because you've heard it,
do it. They're just common sense things, So you could
(15:06):
have said that. But it started with surgery. And then
they didn't call me. So I was pissed that the
person didn't call me. I was like why, And so
after I shared my frustration of especially when I found
out they didn't even need vocal rest, they were then
on a television show after that and they had no surgery,
(15:29):
I don't really quite know why they wanted out of
the event, but they were so dishonest about everything that
I thought, I don't really the kind of person that
I want to have in my life and I haven't
really spoken to him in like two years, and as
I say.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
That out loud, I don't love it.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
And I did get a call way after the fact,
but it was only after the fact that I was
like so irritated that they were so dishonest. Wan it
was surgery, then it was vocal rest, and then they
need vocal rest, but they're still going to go and
do a television It wasn't even my charity. It wasn't
my money. I had to pay for the extra person.
It was just weird. They didn't call me, So the
(16:06):
shadiness of it all felt weird and so negative that
I thought, if they can do this at this point,
they can also do this at a different point. So
I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to relax them
from my friendship group. And by the way, I don't
have a big friendship group. I really don't do anything.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I work.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I got like four people I hang out with and
all good, so they're not missing me in their life.
I'm not missing them in their life. But when it
comes to like shadiness, I don't have any room for it.
When it comes to drama, I don't have any room
for it, oh especially drama. I'm not a dramatic person.
This town is the most dramatic town too. It is.
(16:49):
It's easy to say it's so fake, but it's just
like high school. If I cared about having friends in
the artist community, I think I'd probably stay irritated and
upset about it. But it is so clicky, and it's
groups that want it to be known that other people
can't be in their group, and it's like artists and wives.
(17:11):
And it's kind of funny to watch from the outside,
especially when you see like pictures being posted on social
media because you know these people and you know why
they're doing it. But I think back in high school
it bothered me because I wasn't cool. Now I kind
am glad I'm not cool because I don't really have
an interest to be parts of some of these things.
(17:32):
And I hope wherever you live, I know this is
happening too. It's not just a Nashville thing. I think
this is every in Nashville is not a small town,
but the music, the performer community is a pretty small
community here and it happens here too, So just know
that it happens here too. So yeah, that's what's up.
(17:53):
That's the check in here. I think. Now we're going
to get over to the interview that I did with
Jeff Pearl and we talk about Tupac. He wrote a
Tupac book. It's very interesting, even if you're not really
a Tupac fan. I think it's interesting to hear the
stories about it he has written. I think it had
ten number one best sellers. So we're gonna get to that.
I'm hoping you're not hearing all the text messages come
(18:14):
through my computer as I've been recording this. This has
been a trial run. And thank you everybody, and I
will talk to you on the other side of this.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
All we have Jeff Peerlman on with us, who wrote
a book about Tupac. Only God can judge me the
many lies of Tupac Shakur. I think, as a performer myself,
it's all rooted in absolute, deep insecurity. I do not
look at Tupac from back when I would.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Listen to Tupac.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I mean, I guess I do occasionally now, But for
the most part I didn't look at him as a
super insecure guy, Like, what did you learn about him
in that element as a performer? Was its rooted in
insecurity at all?
Speaker 4 (19:04):
I think it was based more on insecurity brought forth
by abject poverty, by his mother's addiction to crack, by
spending hit much of his days, living in his youth
in Baltimore, with rats skirring up and down the base boards,
showing up at school in thrift store clothing, having bad teeth,
not smelling good, girls not being interested in him. Like
(19:26):
this background of rejection, poverty, sort of embarrassment, shame, I
think fueled a lot of what he was for good
and probably for bad too.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I found that with people that come from not a
lot I would even include myself a bit there is
that there are two ways to go. One like you
want to prove everybody wrong, and so you're gonna stop
at nothing until you do, or what's you know? Actually
a lot easier to do is just fall into it
and fall into that same system.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
What was Tupac's relationship with those choices.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Oh, you know. So he grew up in New York,
moved to Baltimore. He spent his freshman year Dunbar High School.
Then found out about the school, the Baltimore School for
Performing Arts, and he had to audition, and Tupac had nothing.
He wore two pairs of pants. He would rotate his pants.
He wear the same crappy thrift store shoes. Everything about
(20:19):
him was poor and sad and small. He was small
and kind of spinely. And he shows up for this
audition and he just knows he's going to nail it,
Like he knows. He doesn't think he's going to nail it.
He knows he's going to nail it. And he walks
into the grand ballroom of the Baltimore School for the
Arts and the four teachers are all sitting. There are
four white teachers, very stern, and he does a monologue
(20:41):
from Raising in the Sun, and the teachers when he's done,
stand up and applaud for him. And he gets a
spot in the School for the Arts. And he knew
he was going to like he was so driven, he
knew he was bigger than what surrounded him. He knew
he was more powerful, He knew he had this thing
in him like he always and I think everything going
on around him drove him to be bigger. It was
(21:03):
almost like this thing maybe you've gone through yourself. You
people don't understand what you have in me, Like you
don't see it, but I see it, you know. Like
he showed up and he's on the stage and he
knew it. He just knew it. And I think that
was all driven from what he came from.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Was there anything around him that led him to believe
that there is a reality and performance. He was on
the East Coast, so hey, you know, you're kind of
close to New York. Hey, like, how did he know
if it wasn't a tangible thing?
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Well, it kind of was. So he was in a
theater company in New York before he moved to Baltimore
as a young team and he actually performed at the
Apollo Theater at a Jesse Jackson presidential fundraiser in nineteen
eighty four in a Raisin in the Sun, and he
had this moment. He was the first person on stage
for the performance. He's in the Apollo Theater. It's filled
(21:53):
with people, Jesse Jackson is there, and it's this moment
where everything is quiet and you look out and they're
all looking at you. And I do think there's something really,
really profoundly true about people who always feel ignored and
underappreciated having everyone look at you and have the focus
on you and you feel seen. So I would say
(22:16):
that moment in particular was a real jolt to him
becoming what he became.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
And again just getting into like the fundamental parts of
him as a performer. I've found that a lot of
performers are in essence searching for love because they didn't
get it at one point in their life, and that,
you know, performing on a stage, performing behind a microphone,
like you're searching for adulation, for love to compensate for
what you did not have growing up. And I think
that's what you're saying. Would that be kind of the
(22:43):
reason he did any performance at all?
Speaker 4 (22:45):
I think so. I mean, it's really interesting his mom
of Fanny Shakur was a very famous black panther represented
herself in the famous Panther twenty one Child when she
was pregnant with Tupac. Was his civil rights icon. She
was his hero, his absolute hero, and then she became
an addict, and he's watching this woman he loves also
(23:07):
fall off into a state of disrepair. And all he
wants is something in his life that feels real and positive.
And the thing he gets is attention. His whole life.
The one thing everyone who knew Tupac from the beginning
to end fed Tupac more than love, more than money,
more than cars, was attention, being looked at, being seen,
(23:31):
being heard. I think that's a really powerful driver for
a lot of athletes I've written about. I'm sure for
a lot of musicians and people you've interviewed as well.
This need to be seen and heard. And I think
he was a guy who has ignored much as a child,
and all of a sudden people are lavishing attention on him.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Then when did it turn to hip hop? When did
it turn to I can be a rapper?
Speaker 4 (23:49):
I mean he started he started rapping when he was
in New York on the stoop in the Bronx, like
his mom, his aunt Glee. All these people would go
be upstairs in the apartment smoking weed and talking, and
all the kids would be on the stoop and they're
all listening. This is in the Bronx in New York
City in the nineteen eighties. They're all listening to Curtis
blow Houdini, you know, Sugar Hill Gang Run DMC, and
(24:10):
he's just rapping on the steps. And he moves to
Baltimore and he teams up with a guy named Mouse
and they start wrapping and they form a little rap
group and he has his moment, this great, great moment.
He's a student in Baltimore and there's a concert coming
to the Baltimore Arena including Salt and Pepper, and Salt
and Pepper's manager is Herbie Lovebug, and they go to
(24:31):
the show. It's Salt and Pepper and it's heavy Dan,
it's different performers, and they know the performers are all
staying at a comfort inn the other days in near
the Baltimore Arena. Before the show ends, they decide they're
going to go to the days in and show Herbie
love On what they could Bug, what they could do.
(24:52):
So they rush and they see him walking in and
Tupac walks up to him. It's a teenager, hasn't done
anything bad, haircut, shitty, crappy clothesxcuse me, and he's like, yo, Herbie, Herbie,
this is my crew. Can you do you want to
hear us sing? Do you want to hear us rap?
Blah blah blah. He's like, yeah, okay, and he's like
He's like, but I got to go up and he
never came back down right, And Tubac is waiting and
(25:13):
waiting and waiting, his game, more mad and more mad,
and finally he's like, we're going upstairs. And they spend
the night hanging out with the rappers outside their room.
Like he just had that audacity about him. You're gonna
hear me. Someone's gonna hear me. So throughout Baltimore he's rapping,
and then he moves to Marin City and that's where
it takes off in California.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
When you do a book like this, obviously you want
to talk to the people that knew Tupac and the
people that knew the people that knew Tupac. But when
you start, how many people do you think you're going
to have to interview? And does that list expand as
you're going I.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Usually consider you got to go at least four hundred
on a biography. To me, in my mind, if you
don't clear four hundred people, I interviewed six hundred and
fifty two for this book. So it was, it was
deep and I got. I had extensive time with his sister,
with the people who formed him along the way as
different managers, performers. I had a moment, like the greatest
(26:04):
reporting moment in my career came out of this book.
It's a story. If you want to tell it.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Not yeah, no, tell please do okay?
Speaker 4 (26:13):
So do you know the song Brenda's Got a Baby?
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I do okay.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Tubac is filming Juice in New York City. It's nineteen
ninety and every day when he was growing up, he
would read the New York Times. His mom would read
him the newspaper. It was very important to her that
he knew what was going on. So every day, while
filming Juice in New York, they would bring a pa
would bring him a copy of the New York Daily News.
And one day there's an article and it's Cries in
the Night and it's about a twelve year old girl
(26:39):
who was raped by a cousin, delivered the baby without
anyone knowing she was pregnant on the bathroom floor, wrap
the baby up in an odd job bag plastic bag,
threw the baby down the trash chute, and that was
the inspiration. Tubac reads this article, says to omar Aps,
I gotta go in my trailer. I gotta go in
my trailer, sits in his trailer, writes the words to
(27:00):
Brenda's got a baby, Brenda's got a baby, Brenda's barely
got a brain. The damn Shane, the girl cam Harley
spo her name. So this song is his first big song.
And I decided I really wanted to find the baby
who's thrown down the trash heap all those years ago,
who inspired this song. And I work with a genealogist
named Michelle Sooley who's just incredible, and I told her
about this and one day she's like, I think I
(27:21):
have a number for this guy. His name's Devon. I
text because no one answers their phones. I text this
guy Devon and I'm like, hey, by any chance is
this you? And I tatched the article. My name's Jeff pearlme.
He writes me back. He's like, he's like, call me tomorrow.
Long story. I go to Las Vegas. He lives in
(27:42):
Las Vegas. He's thirty three years old.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Now.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
He was the baby at the time. He was the
baby who's thrown down the trash sheep by Tupac. I'm
talking with him about it. Amazing story. Basically, he was
adopted after he's thrown down the trash sheep. His uh,
his parents moved to Las Vegas. They died. An ancestry
dot com search is not that long ago. All these
tentacles point back to the Noble Dura Lei housing projects
(28:07):
in Brooklyn. He reaches out to different relatives. They're like,
we've been looking for you for years. We didn't know
what happened to you. Also, are you a fan of Tupac?
He's like, I love Tupac. They're like, do you know
the song Brenda's Got a Baby? Of course I know
the song Brendon's Got a Baby. We think you're the
baby and Brenda's got a baby. He flies back to
the housing projects where he was born. They show him
(28:28):
the shoot where his mom threw him down. He poses
with it. He meets all these relatives. It's this beautiful moment.
He hasn't seen his mom in the gazillion years, Like
shortly after he was born. We decide we have to
find the mom. My genealogist Michelle Solely thinks she has
a number. She calls this woman. She goes, is this Janine,
I'm using a fake name. She goes, is this Janine?
(28:49):
She says, yeah, did you have a baby when you
were twelve years old? The woman starts screaming, do you
know where my baby is? Do you know where my
baby is? She goes, well, my name is Michelle, I'm
a genealogist. Jepher. Oh my god, do you know where
my baby is? She's screaming and crying. Michelle says, I mean.
The woman says, I need to I need to take
care of that. She goes, I live in Newark, New Jersey.
(29:11):
But I'm I'm I'm away because I'm going to see
the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And Michelle says, where are
the Chili Pepper's playing? And she said in Las Vegas.
She goes, your son lives in Vegas. They met that night.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Wow, the Bobby cast will be right back. This is
the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
So how does that make you feel this as a person, like,
aside from the book, aside from what we're talking about here,
Like that's like like fundamentally shifting. That's one of those
events for them and probably for you as well.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
It gives me chills even telling that story right now,
having told it several times already, you know, to my
relatives and friends. It's an amazing feeling. It's fantastic. It's
one of the best. It's the best fine I've ever
been a part of in my career by far Man.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
I don't questions about that, like, how did the meeting go?
Speaker 4 (30:11):
It was great, It was beautiful at first. In fact,
she showed up and she hadn't seen the baby. She
hadn't seen her son in years and years. She had
visitation for a brief period of time after he was
born where she was able to see him, and that
was it. And she shows up and when they were
in the house after she gave birth, they found her,
brought her to the hospital, brought the baby to the hospital.
(30:31):
They let her hold the baby and named the baby,
and she actually named the baby Devan. She gave him
his first name, and the adoptive parents kept the name.
She shows up. They met in a casino in Vegas
in a lobby, and she has his name tattooed on
his arm, on her arm because she had just always
been thinking about him from years and years ago, from
decades ago. She tattooed his name on her arm and
(30:53):
they're just hugging and crying and they talked through the night.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I mean, if that is what comes of the book, like,
that's a lot onegree Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So as far as Tupac goes, you know, everybody thinks
about him as being a West Coast guy, which isn't
I've known that that's not where he grew up, but
that's where he became the Tupac that we know.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Did Tupac consider himself a West Coast guy?
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah, he definitely did. Over time. He did. He basically
when before his senior year of high school, he went
two years at school for the Arts in Baltimore and
he moves to Marin City and he's very upset about it.
And Marin City he lives in a it's called the
jungle and he basically lives in public housing in Marin City.
His mom dives heavy duty in the crack and while there,
Tupac moves in with the kid his aige named Demetri Striplan,
(31:41):
who's a DJ and just a nice guy who takes
him in. And during that time period, Tupac is writing
raps non stop, and he's listening to Too Short and
Ant Banks and all these Bay Area rappers and he's
absorbing it. But he has a moment. Near where he lives,
they would have these rap battles, and he gets his
ass kicked in a wrap battle one day by this
guy named Tack who's like thirteen year old rapper, and
(32:02):
he's just demolishes Tupac. Tubac goes back to the apartment
and he's devastated and he vanishes for a week. For
one week, nobody sees Tupac, And basically he spent the
week hanging out with the biggest crack dealer in Marin City,
and he asks a guy if he could follow him around.
His name was Bobby Burton, if you could follow him
(32:22):
around and just take notes about what it is to
deal crack and to be a gangbanger and to be
a badass in the inner city. And he comes back
and he has a song written called All in the
Days of a Criminal and he wraps it for his
roommates immediately and they're like, WHOA. And it really did
show the guy was a student. And I actually it's
one of the joys of this book, was I spent
a lot of time with the old crack dealers of
(32:44):
Marin City, and like, I went to a diner with
Bobby Burton and his grandson, and this guy was the
most terrified, terrifying crack dealer in Marin City. We're sitting
there eating eggs with his grandson and there's a very
full circle kind of moment for me as a reporter.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
I'm assuming the grandson doesn't know his granddad as that
criik dealer.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
Now, there was a lot of like this. It's a
lot of like, all right, don't listen over that. You
go over there for a minute. Great guy though, the
guy was awesome, he was delightful.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, when you interview six hundred and fifty plus people
and they give you stories that well are exactly the opposite,
how do you deal with that.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
It's a lot of cross checking. It's a lot of
triple checking. It's also a lot of who has a
history of being a reliable subject, who might exaggerate one
thing that I have found with Tupac. I'm sure you've
seen it also with celebrity young deaths. As the years pass,
people who weren't that close that person suddenly are amazing
to close that person. People who had five minutes with
that person spent hours with that person. So it is
(33:41):
a lot of like checking and rechecking and double checking
and just making sure someone says, no, this is a
person you can trust, A trustworthy person. Telling you someone
is trustworthy goes a long way.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
What about the development of truth into like hyperbole and
not for any other reason than time.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
That has to happen too, right, of.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Course, And the truth of the matter is biography is
a flawed medium to a small degree. Right, my book
before this was about bo Jackson. Most of what bo
Jackson did athletically wasn't recorded. You know, he was timed
running a four to one three forty. I can see
the notation for the four one three forty in the
Auburn log. Do I know for a one million trillion
(34:19):
percent fact that it wasn't for two three forty. I
don't like. Part of this is believing what is written
and believing stories that are reputable. It's a flawed there's
no doubt. The other flaw of biography is you can't
be in the person's head. So Tubac is walking down
the street, Tubac is in the MGM grand and he
sees Orlando Anderson and he goes punch him. I'm thinking
(34:40):
he's probably thinking, oh, crap, I gotta punch this guy.
Before I know he's thinking about the Jets quarterback situation.
You know, you can't know. You can't be in someone's head.
It's the hardest part of biography by far as you
can't be in someone's head.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I would think too, when you are writing a story
on a dead legend, which is what Tubac is, you
want to make sure you get the good, the bad,
the middle, the background all. But when it's something uncomfortable,
like a rape accusation, like how did you deal with that?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
I had something I haven't even talked about this yet,
but you know it's in the book. I found all right,
So the rape accusation was obviously tough, and I reported
it and reported it and reported it, and I found
people who were around there and different people. But the
interesting thing is, four months before that happened, another woman
(35:32):
accused Chupac of rape. It's never been reported before. And
I found the police reports that were filed, and it
happened at a club in LA who was a woman
who was celebrating her twenty first birthday. I found a
adacted police report and then an unadapted police report. So
I had all the names and I found this woman
and she basically she needed a ride hunt. She was
(35:53):
twenty one. She was out a club in LA. She
was out with her friends. Her friends kind of ditched her.
She had been talking with Tupac and his crew. They
offered her a ride home. She was staying with her boyfriend,
who was a football player at USC. They instead of
going home, according to her, tupocs like, we got to
(36:14):
stop at the house real quick. He at a house
not far far away, she said. According to her, she said,
just come in for a minute, Just come in. He
goes in. She said he had a gun on his
on his bookshelf, and said he raped her. And then
he said one of his friends drove her home and
also forced her to have sex. So she I got
(36:37):
this police report, and I know I have to try
to talk to this woman, right, And this was four
months before the incident at Nell's in New York City
involving Aana Jackson, four months before I have this police report.
I'm writing a biography. I know for a fact Tupac
fans do not want to read this, right If you're
a Tupac fan, you understandably want to believe that Tupac
(37:00):
wudn't have done such a thing, was innocent there. But
I feel responsibility to biography more than I respond feel
responsibility to pleasing fans and selling books, if that makes sense.
I have this police sport, I have the name. I
find the woman. I reach out to her. At first,
she tells me it's all true, but she's like, I
(37:20):
don't want to talk about it. And when I found
the I found a few months later, I reached out
to her again and I said, I'm just curious. Do
you have any interest in seeing the police report? Like
do you want to see it? And she said, yeah,
actually I do, And I sent it to her and
she called me back and she's like, Okay, I want
to talk to you because this is making me really mad.
And basically what happened is everything she said she swore
(37:42):
happened all these years later, Anonymous she had no reason
to lie or not, like, there was no incentive for
her to lie. She's a fifty year old woman now
living not at in California. But she said after she
filed the report, the officer who is going to decide
whether to go The detective was going to decide whether
to follow through with the with the charges, said why
didn't you run away when you had a chance to
(38:03):
run away? And she's like, I was drunk and scared,
and they're basically like, no, you had a chance to
run away, and you didn't run away, and they didn't
pursue it. And she was so mad relivering that that
she talked to me at length about it. Now she
talked to me anonymously, which is fair because it's a
rape case. So that's knowing that he had a very
(38:24):
similar intent. There are a lot of parallels between what
happened to this woman in la what happened to Tayana
Jackson in New York. So that's a big part of
the reporting of it.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I would think that the human nature part of writing
a biography would be and I'm glad you spoke on that,
feeling like you have an allegiance to the biography more
than the fans of Tupac, that if you're writing about Tupac,
you want his fans to buy the book. So I'm
sure that there's a part of you that's like, man,
if I just don't write about this I think more
people want to buy the book because it's just a
glowing part of Tupac. I mean, is that an internal
(38:54):
struggle that a writer like yourself have to deal with?
Speaker 4 (38:56):
And it is not, but I understand why it would be.
I just long ago starting at the University of Delaware
and as a news writer at the Nashville Tennessee and like,
that's not how I think, you know, like probably maybe
to my own financial detriment. I just don't think, Oh man,
I have to this is going to be Tupac fans
are going to love this. I mean, like, I want
a historic record of Tupac. The goal is always and
(39:19):
I'm not saying it's always achieved. The goal is someone
reads your Tupac book and they say, well, there's no
other reason to write a Tupac book, Like what, There's
nothing more, there's no other reason to write a Tupac work.
And I'm not saying that's real, but that's kind of
your goal, and I can't. It's not. I'm not a
fan writer. I'm not writing for Team Beat or Boppa
or whatever it would be in twenty twenty five, and
just not that guy. So it is what it is.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
You're a white guy writing about hip hop artist. I
don't know that's that's weird.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Hell yeah yeah. My agent, it's my first non sportsbook.
It's obviously my first hip hop book. Yeah, no doubt
about him. My agent was like, are you do you
really think? Do you think you're the guy to write
this book? And the truth of the matter is this
is weird with true. The writer Kevin Powell had on
his website four years next book at Tupac book right
(40:07):
for years, and I kind of just assumed Kevin Powell
was going to write this Tupac book and I was
just not going to write it. But he never did it.
And I wanted the book where six hundred and fifty
people were interviewed about Tupac. I didn't want the book
why Topac is the greatest rapper of all time? Or
Tupac and Me my wild Adventures, you know, Like, I
wanted the book about Tupac, so I just I know
(40:30):
him white. I come from an outsider's view. I tried
to be honest about it and open about it and.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Do my best whenever I think about hip hop in
the nineties, even late eighties, two thousands, right, because I
was like my time, and I think about the rappers
that were I'd call the best culturally and also but
then the best like that sounded the best. Like for me,
it was always like Biggie always sounded the best, but
Tupac meant more to the culture.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
And I grew up in not a white neighborhood, so.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Never like Tupac sounds better than Biggie, but he says
more than Biggie, although Biggie did say a lot because
Biggie had stories too, right, Like he's he's doing his
he's doing his thing East Coast. Uh, what are your
thoughts on my possibly incorrect narrative?
Speaker 4 (41:13):
All right, I think Shakgi from Digital Underground said it perfectly.
He has passed away, but when he was live, he said,
a lot of rappers rap. I'm gonna paraphrase. It's a
lot of rappers wrap from the news. Some rappers wrap
from the lips, some rappers wrap from the throat, he said.
Tupac rap from the stomach where it was guttural, you know.
And the other only other rapper, really great rapper who
(41:35):
could compare to that is DMX where it's like you
feel it and you feel every word and There's a
song Tupac Haa has. It's probably my favorite Tupac song.
It's called Shorty Want to Be a Thug. It's just
about a sixteen year old kid who's trying to, you know, gangbanger,
and you just feel every word of it, like you
feel every word of it. And I think about rappers
(41:55):
from who came up alongside Tupac. Biggie was a great rapper.
He was a brilliant, brilliant lyricist. His delivery was flawless,
it was beautiful, it was almost symphonic, and how beautiful
his rapping was, but it wasn't guttural, you know. And
I feel like with Tupac he was able to relate
to people and make people feel what he was saying,
(42:17):
not just by the words which were powerful, but by
the way he said it. I think he was very
unique in that regard.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
And the reason that I compared the two obviously is
because the whole East West Coast and how that tragically ended,
how much of that started as wrestling and ended real
or was it all real?
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Well, it started at Quad Studios and Tupac is going
to Quad Studios and to put Tubac is on try
on New York and at the same time, an artist
named Little Sean is releasing, is putting together an album,
and Tubac needs money. You know, Tubac died very he
had less than two hundred thousand dollars in his bank
account when he died, like he did not have a
(42:54):
lot of money. And he has the legal fees and
everything's mounting, and he's going to go to Quad Studios
and record a track for Little Sean and he's getting paid.
This is crazy. Seven thousand dollars, that's how much Tupac
was going to Quad Studios to do a track for
some guy, Little Sean. So he he's going there and
(43:14):
he pulls up and he gets out, and you know,
he's he's he's in the lobby and he gets shot
and he gets he gets robbed, and he gets shot,
and he goes upstairs and there's Biggie and there's a
little CS. He was down in the elevator and these
guys are there, and Tupac at that moment, forever more
(43:35):
believes that either Biggie was directly responsible for it or
if nothing else, I'm in New York City, this is
your city. How could you in this building? How could
you not know. And I interviewed a lot of guys
who are in prison with Tupac at Clinton, and he
did not let that go. He held that tight Biggie
did this. I know Biggie did this, That m Effort
(43:57):
did this. He wrote lyrics about it. He was so
angry about it, irrationally so that when he got out
and then he writes hit him up obviously, and it
just inflames everything. So I don't think Biggie tried visiting
Teubac in the hospital. He tried visiting him again at Clinton.
Literally called his manager Watani and said, can I want
(44:18):
to go visit Pac? And Tubac said, no, I'm not
seeing that guy. I think Biggie was dumb founded the
whole time. Why am I getting blamed for all this?
But Tupac saw it as a certainty.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Then okay, let's just say it wasn't Biggie. Who do
we think it was? Puffy?
Speaker 4 (44:36):
I mean, most of the eyes point to Haitian Jack,
who took Tupac kind of under his wing. He was
actually Tupac's amuse for above the rim when he played Birdie.
And then they started having this growing divide and Tubac
started calling him out as a hanger on. There's a lot,
but there's no certainty. There is no certainty. I will
(44:56):
say one thing that was interesting when I did find
for the book, Tupac was shot. It was always noted incorrectly.
He saw three times in the head, in the hand,
in the tesco as it went into his leg. And
for years there are always these rumors that that Tupac,
(45:16):
that Tupac shot himself in the balls. And I found
a the first EMT to ever get to Tupac, and
he'd never been he'd never been interviewed before, and he's like, Wow,
how'd you find me? And I'm like, I don't know.
I found him one. He was listening one little article
of this guy, and I tracked him down. The first
EMT to get to Tupac. He's sitting there in Quad studios.
(45:38):
The EMT comes up, he gets out, Tupac is there.
He's a bullet LODs in his head between the skin
and the skull. It was this closed from penetrating his
brain instead skin it was embedded in. The guy said
he never saw it like that before. It shot in
the hand, and Tupac pulls down his trousers. He's wearing jeans, trousers,
jeans and his boxer briefs, and he's there's a there's
(46:02):
a hole in his testicle. But there's no entrance area, right,
there's no there's no gunpower residue, and there's no entrance
shot through the jeans or the underwear. And the guy
said to me he had to have shot himself in
the balls because he did have the gun here. He
used to carry his gun in the waistband. And there
(46:23):
was no entrance wound from outside, no entrance mark from outside.
So he's like, I've known for years that he shot
himself in the in the boss. And it was a
debate for years and years, and hip hop out of
two bak shoot himself, who shot Tupac blah blah blah,
and the one was in the balls?
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Okay, So if he got shot in the hit because
I hear a hand and then I heard balls, obviously
in the head.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
But if you get shot in the head, they're trying
to kill you.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
If you get shot in the hand, in the balls
only they're trying to scare or hurt you. When Tupac
was shot, were they trying to kill him?
Speaker 4 (46:50):
I honestly don't know, I just don't know. You have
to admit some times you don't know. I don't know
the intent because I don't know who shot him, Like
I don't know who shot him, so I don't know.
I think they were trying, probably trying to rob him
and scare him, you know. And Tupac didn't just you know,
he didn't just cower, which you're supposed to do. He
never did, so I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Though.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
All the people that you've interviewed, I'm sure there's a
takeaway with each person, probably gives you perspective you've never had, because,
right you're basically getting as close inside of someone's life
as you can get without actually being in their life.
What about studying Tupac like made you look at life
a bit different?
Speaker 4 (47:39):
I mean, you were asked earlier about being a white writer,
and I think you you go into a subject and
you think you understand a perspective and then you realize
you don't understand a perspective at all. And to me, truly,
obviously i've seen poverty. I've never been I've never lived
in poverty, but I've seen poverty in the different athletes
I've written about. I feel like Tupac's sister describing, literally
(48:05):
describing the sound of the rats scurring up and down
the base board in their Baltimore rowhouse pad, digging into
food and eating their food, and her saying how haunted
she was by that all these years later, I feel
like that her describing the level of poverty that they
emerged from was deeper and more profound and more painful
(48:30):
than my experience writing about people who rise from impover's situations.
And I think it was important for me.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
What is your feelings on Suge Knight after you finished
the book on Tupac?
Speaker 4 (48:41):
Terrible? Absolutely sug Knight to me, I put sug Knight
in a trio. If he were starting a do walk group,
it would be him, it'd be Don King, and it'd
be Donald Trump. Guys who just take advantage of people taking.
You know, he goes to Clinton to bail Tupac out.
I'm going to bail you out. I think it was
one point six million bail. Tupac thinks this is money
(49:04):
that Shug is giving him. It's not. It's advanced earnings,
and I'll tell you a great, truly great Sugar Night story,
the emblematic two real quick emblematic Sugar Night Stories. Number one,
Tubac is filming Gang Related the movie with Jim Belushi.
One day, sug Knight shows up on set with a
car as a gift for Tupac, which he was prone
to do. He lavish him with gifts and material possessions
and he shows up and the whole crew is what.
(49:25):
They stop filming and yo, Pac, this is I just
want to thank you for all you're doing for the
death Row family. This is amazing. Blah blah blah blah.
I want to give you this car, bro, this is
for you. They hug, Sugar leaves. Tubac turns to the
assistant producer and says, this is mine, Like, what do
you mean? I don't own this. I don't own anything.
(49:47):
Like all the cars I have, they're all least the
place I live least. I don't own anything. My entire
life is controlled. Number two. Tubac dies in Las Vegas
after the Mike Tyson Bruce seven to fight. Week later,
the family Sugar is there in Vegas. He was obviously
driving the car. He's there kind of hanging around the family.
He promises the family he'll take care of Tupac's ashes.
(50:08):
Tupac is cremated. A couple of days later, a fed
Ex delivery guy shows up where Tubac was living and
all the family congregated in LA with a cardboard fed
X two day delivery box with Tupox ashes in it.
That is how Suge Knight handled the delivery of Tupox ashes.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Dang, that does sound like a good dude at all.
That's not the.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
Best He did played three games to play three games
with the Los Angeles for playing Rams in nineteen eighty seven,
which makes me smile.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
I always think when I hear of people that were
just like real, like awful people, I always go back
to what their origin stories are and what made them
like what affected their lives in such a tragic way
that made them so tragic. And I know you didn't
write a book on sug Knight, but how did Sugar
Knight become such an awful person?
Speaker 4 (50:54):
I dug a lot in the sug Knight. Sugar Knight
is from Compton, grew up in a very stable household.
You know. His name is Marion Knight. His nickname is
Shug because they said he looked like the sugar Bear
from the Cereal box. So went from sugar Bear to
shoog very good household. Played in the marching band, played
drums in the marching band. High school football games, he
played in the games halftime, He'd go and played drums
(51:16):
in his football uniform in the marching band. Go back
and play football. Went to El Camino College for years,
was a Junior College All American as a defensive lineman.
Goes to UNLV. While he's at UNLV, he starts doing
work on the strip as a bodyguard and kind of
likes it. Winds up going into the music business working
for Dick Griffi for a while, and he works with
(51:39):
Bobby Brown as a bodyguard for Bobby Brown, and he
just I think the thing with him, Like I interviewed
a lot of guys from Compton who grew up with Sugar,
and universally it wasn't that they liked or dislike Shugar,
but they were like that guy wasn't a gangbanger. This
one guy mob James James MacDonald, who grew up in
Compton with Shug, is like he had a quote I
(51:59):
remember exactly. He was like Sugar wasn't wearing a bandana.
Sugar wasn't Sugar wasn't carrying Sugarn. He was, like he said,
he was soft as raw, blank of you know, val
like a you know, he was just but he want
he was of Compton, but he wasn't of Compton. Like
he wasn't He wasn't a crip. He wasn't carrying. He
(52:19):
wasn't a blood. He wasn't carrying. But he built this
image based on size, based on wanting to be a
sort of mafioso figure in music. Having this image, you know,
death Row his his his line was you either either
make it hit or you get hit. And one guy
he hired told me he's get hired by Sugar. Sugar
walks him to the window inside Death Row and he says,
(52:43):
look out that window, and he goes, all right, he
goes just so you know, we don't fire guys who
don't perform. We throw them out windows. And there's just
a million stories of sug Night making people neel naked,
drink urine, making people neel naked, apologize, hitting people, punching people.
They kept baseball bats in the closet, wasn't for a
company picnic. He was to beat the crap out of people.
(53:03):
He just went from seeing what it was to be
tough to deciding I want to be tough.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
I just I just wonder where that inferiority conflict comes from,
because again I look at every villain, even in movies
or even like the worst people in real life, and go,
there's something that triggered that. And I because I, for me,
I don't believe unless there's some sort of chemical, hormonal
thing that people are just born bad.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
I think there's trauma. I think.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
And with Suge Knight, I've always, you know, wondered like
what about Shoe because I'd heard the story.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
I think I've seen a picture of him.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Playing in the high school band in his uniform that
I'm like, what made him? Because even the vanilla eye
story that he tells about Suge Night hanging him off
the ledge, you know, lookause it's crazy. I know this
is not a Suge Knight interview. I have two questions
the how did Tupac not have money?
Speaker 4 (53:51):
Well, first of all, Harry all right, Well, a really
telling part of this is he's in prison and the
main woman who took care of him, who's one of
the best people I've ever met is this woman, yasmine Fula,
who was both his business manager, a former panther, kind
of an aunt godmother like figure. And she would visit
him every week in prison, and she would always come
(54:11):
with family requests. Right, your mom wants a new house,
your cousin needs this, your other cousin needs this. And
it's a classic tale of guy always coming from nothing
and all of a sudden, always giving to everyone. Second
of all, he never made that much money Poetic Justice.
Janet Jackson made two million. I think two BAC may
have made a hundred thousand. I remember the exact amount.
(54:34):
He was never, you know, juicy, he made seventeen thousand dollars.
He was never in a huge movie All Eyes on Me.
Death Row kept a ton of money and then was
paying his legal bees, legal bills. You know, he had
legal fees out the butt NonStop. So like, he just
never had a great stream of income coming to him
his period. And again, all the stuff he quote unquote owned,
(54:56):
he actually only owned one car. Every other car he
ever had.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
Was Does his a state have a lot of money now?
Speaker 4 (55:04):
I think they're doing pretty well. I mean the estate
wasn't that they're not bad or anything, but they weren't
super friendly with this book. But I'm sure they did.
You know, they own a lot of rights. When every
time you buy a Tupac shirt in Walmart or Target,
you're giving money to the estate. That's not a criticism,
that's his reality. So I think they're doing pretty well.
That's kind of and it's not a lot.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Yeah, that's kind of bizarre that after the death most
of the money's made.
Speaker 4 (55:27):
I don't like the thing. I don't like. Again, it's
a judgment. I'm not saying I'm right. I don't love
you go into Target and there's like a nine dollars
made in some sweatshop, in some you know, poor country
shirt with Tupac on it. I just think Tupac. It's
a guess. I really think you would have hated that.
I don't think you would have liked that.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
My final question is mostly about you. I remember what
you doing the TikTok because of you talking, but also
being in like a coffee shop. I don't know which
way of a Starbucks or whatever it was, I don't know,
but you would have stacked and stacks of papers and
you have your laptop, and and I just picture.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Like at home, it's like a beautiful mind.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
You've got strings going from articles and because again that's
so much information.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
How accurate is it that you were just it was
papers everywhere.
Speaker 4 (56:12):
I do not have a beautiful mind, but it is
papers everywhere. It is. I call it my crack down
of paper. It's just like NonStop and folders to like
print everything out. Because I'm old enough they still do that.
And I like outlining and underlining and this and that.
So it's like, where's that, where's that thing? Where's that?
It's more nutty, professor, I think than beautiful mind? Where
shovel it? And lost? But yeah, it's kind of now
(56:33):
all that stuff is in my garage. My wife is like,
can we get rid of it? And I'm like, not yet,
but soon.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
Last last question, and this is this. It could be
really stupid, but did you ever want to try crack?
Since you wrote so much about it?
Speaker 4 (56:46):
No? I did not.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
Okay, listen, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
Maybe you did.
Speaker 4 (56:49):
I Oh, I'll tell you what I wanted to try.
There are two things I haven't tried yet. I've only
smoked weed a handful of times in my life and
just not that guy. And I'm not a big drinker.
I still haven't tried Hennessy. I'd like to try hennessy.
And I've never smoked a blunt and I'd like to
smoke a blump. But I will tell you, Bobby, And
this is quote my daughter, Casey, who's in college, for
Father's Day last year, gave me because there's a line
(57:12):
in a Tupac song, i can picture you in heaven
with a blunt in a brute from God buless to dead.
She got me a beer and she couldn't find a blunt,
but she got me a joint and gave it for
Father's Day last year because I used to say I
can picture in heaven with a blunt in a brewe.
So that was kind of a funny.
Speaker 2 (57:26):
Gift, but no crack. All right, Well, hey, I thought.
Speaker 4 (57:28):
You kind of got it. If you want to do
it together, I'm in Jeff.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
I really appreciate the time.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
And here's the thing the book only God can judge me,
The Many Lives of Tupac Shaker. If you're hearing this
before it's out, because it comes out in the twenty first,
you can order it. It'll be at your door in
the twenty first if you're hearing this after the book
is out. Now, okay, final, final, final question. Did you
become more or less of a fan of the person
after writing the book?
Speaker 4 (57:54):
More? Because it's the same thing with everyone I write about.
I love the complexities of people, and I love the
journeys of people. And actually it is interesting the books
that are just glowing portraits of people, I don't think
they actually make you more of a fan. They just
reinforce your fandom. But when you learn about what someone
went through, the hardships, the troubles, the highs, the lows,
the horrible moments, the great moments, I almost think it
(58:15):
has to make you more of a fan because you
can appreciate the struggle. So that's where I sit.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
Jeff, appreciate the time, man, Good luck. I hope you
sell tons and tons of books.
Speaker 4 (58:23):
Thank you so much. I appreciate it all.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Right, Thanks Jeff, see letter man, oh Man, thank you
so much.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
Hey who are you doing next? Not for not you know,
I'm not gonna say anything. Are you working on one already?
Speaker 4 (58:32):
H I'm doing a book no one's going to buy.
That's a memoir about my early Nashville journalism career. Yeah,
it's a project. And then I'm either I'm lined up
to do the third Laker trilogy book about Kobe post
Shack and that whole team. But I don't know if
anyone's gonna care. So I'm a little torn.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
Well, both books, both books you just mentioned you went, well,
nobody's gonna care.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
Nobody's gonna care.
Speaker 4 (58:54):
I don't know. I'm self loathing to you from New York.
Speaker 2 (58:56):
It's what we do, you know, all right, Jeff, good
to talk to you, man, Bobby.
Speaker 4 (59:00):
I'll say your future.
Speaker 3 (59:02):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production
Speaker 2 (59:11):
M
Everybody just driving in back to my house. And there's
like this white BMW that was right next to me
driving on the road. But we've going only forty five
miles an hour. Wasn't like a highway or anything. And
these four kids started to wave. And if I'm in
a car and someone starts to wave to me, there
are a few things that can be. Number One, it
can be that I have a flat tire that's happened before.
(00:28):
Number Two, it can be that my gas cap is
hanging out because it is on like a little plastic
thread that you know, keeps it attached to the car.
That's happened before. It could be that they're fans of
the show. Now, being that they're seventeen to nineteen years old,
I probably don't think they're fans of the show. If
that happens, probably a little too young at this point.
(00:50):
But they're waving. They're waving. I'm waving back, and also
have a pretty cool car, and so sometimes it's that,
and so wind down and slowed down a little bit
because I don't want to hit the kids. I don't
want them to hit me either. And the kid in
the back seat he goes, hey, big fan, I was like,
oh cool, it is one of those times. And he
(01:11):
was like, you're Johnny Knoxville, right, No. I was like,
I'm not Johnny Knoxville, but thank you. So I wonder
if one time in his life, because Johnny Knoxville is
actually famous, but I wonder if one time in his
life Johnny Knoxville has been approched and someone has said like,
hey you Bobby Bones. Just once. But yeah, that happened
on the way here to do this, I've been the
(01:34):
last couple of days I don't want to say dealing
with because it's not really anything significant, but and this
has happened a lot through the last ten to eleven
years of my career where I will get dms or
texts from artists and it will always be kind of
like a warm up, a warm up before they ask.
(01:55):
And the thing is I really can't do much for them,
meaning I don't really program music, which is why when
people are like, you're what's wrong with country music? I
don't really have anything to do with country music as
far as putting it out there. There was a time
in my career five or six years ago where I
was playing a bit more music, but I don't program music.
I literally program two things. One the national Countdown on
(02:19):
the weekend, but not the actual countdown that's determined by
spens and radio stations all across the country. I play
one song. I pick the spotlight artist of the week
like I do that, and that's a significant spin, I guess,
because pretty much every city in the country plays that,
but it's only one time, one time on the weekend.
(02:40):
The other thing that I do, because I put it
in my contract, is the Women of iHeart Country Show.
So the quick story of that is six seven years ago,
in my contract, when I had a bit of leverage,
I said, hey, I want one hour every weekend to
just play female songs on every one of ours, which
is like two hundred plus stations. And at the time,
(03:04):
I think everybody thought that was a little weird because
they're like, you're not even a woman, and you know,
candidly speaking, they were, that's true, I'm not a woman.
But it was very much the beginning of hey, why
aren't there as many women being played on the radio?
And so I wanted to be out in the front
of that. I already was, but because I'm a dude,
(03:25):
you kind of don't get the credit. It wasn't wal
I look for the credit. But like when I would tour,
I had all for the most part, female openers. I
was constantly having female guests on the show that weren't
so I was already doing my part, but I really
wasn't doing anything national programming wise that was consistent. And
(03:47):
so I said, hey, give me this hour because I
wanted to get female artists a bit of a I
don't know if I should share this, like a bit
of a spike on the chart, because it was a
pretty heavy play on that show. Like i'd play a
couple songs from new artists, they'd get a big spike.
Program directors would see they got a whole bunch of
spins and they go, oh, maybe this song is good.
Give it a listen. And it really didn't change like
(04:10):
the total outcome of a record, but maybe it gave
some of those artists a chance earlier. So that was
a whole idea behind it. So I have an hour
and I programmed that, and you're gonna see my point here.
And if I want to, like they call it spike
a song in I can do that, which is just
on my show. If I decided I want to play
(04:30):
a song. I'll play a song, but I really don't
want to be the song guy, because with that comes
everybody wanting me to play their songs, and that's just
not me. And again, there was a time when I
was breaking songs like crazy, if it was buy Me
a Boat or Girl Crush or I Love This Life
Low Cash. There's six or seven of those songs that
(04:51):
I played a whole lot when nobody else was playing,
which really moved him up to the chart and then gave
them really strong I mean to go other places and
go like, look, it's getting a lot of play. I
stopped doing that because one, I don't want to base
my career on music I don't make. So it's been
something that I occasionally do, but I don't really put
(05:14):
any significant time, thought effort into it. But that doesn't
mean that people don't hit me up thinking either either
A I have more power than I actually do, which
is not a whole lot. I guess I have a
little sway with the president of iHeart Country. I mean,
I've worked with them for thirteen years. I know them
very well, but you know not anyway, I get the
(05:38):
warm up from these artists and it'll just be a
reach out out of nowhere to be like, what's up,
how's it going, how you been? And I can tell
immediately when the warm up is happening, because I know
the warm up is going to be possibly a day
a day and a half of hey, cool, we should
hang out sometime whatever else, and then bam, they'll be
(06:03):
you know, a file in my text message and hey,
if you don't mind, would you check this song out
and tell me what you think of it? And when
an artist asks you what do you think of a song,
they really don't want your opinion unless it's good. They
really just want you to go, oh, it's excellent. I'd
love to play it. And if you don't say that,
then they're going to ask, hey, is there any way
you can play it? So I mean getting the warm
(06:24):
up from a couple of artists, one through text, one
through DM around the same time ironically, and I know them,
but I'm not friends with them now. At the same time,
there's another artist that hit me up a couple of
weeks ago, who I don't know either. I don't know
(06:45):
how they got my cephone number, don't I mean, I
don't really care, but they just were like Hey, this
is so and so I got this new song out.
Would you listen to it? And if you like it,
maybe you'll consider it. I respect that so much more,
and I don't think I ever played it, but I
don't like bad taste in my mouth, just because it
was right to the point, like it was honest, where
the other people are like, let me give you a
(07:06):
little massage, let me tickle you around the waist. Okay,
that'd be five hundred dollars. It's kind of I guess
it's not really the same, but that's what I've been
dealing with, and I just know when it's coming, and
so I guess I can be a little cold when
I see it coming because I don't respond. And one
of them, they were dming me, and I knew what
it was because it had already been like three messages
(07:28):
and this has probably happened to me before at some
point with the same artist, and so I didn't want
them to see that I had read their DM, so
I just would delete the message, and then like clockwork,
the next day, Boom got a new song. Would love
for you to check it out. It also sucks because
it makes me not trust anybody, and the thing is
I don't really have the power. I don't have power
to like shape our career, like I can put you
(07:48):
on the show or the podcast, and that's more of
a macro versus a micro thing, because if you come
on the show or you come on the Bobby Cast,
usually that translates into like social media. You know, the
podcast does really well now it's probably the second biggest
(08:09):
country music podcast. The Bobby Cast is behind our show,
which is number one, so there is some significance to that.
But I just don't have the power for the music.
But then it has me not not like the artists
who do that, which it isn't fair because I know
it's their job to hustle in a way, but I
don't like the grossness of it, like I did like
the guy who I didn't really know that hit me
(08:30):
up and was like, hey, I got the song. I
listen to it and if there's any chance you considered
to play, that'd be awesome. And there was no like question,
there was no like what do you think about it?
Because if you ever tell an artist what you think
about something a song and you're like, yeah, I don't
really think it was that good, it wasn't for me.
I wouldn't say that because I know that's not what
they're looking for. They're not looking for general feedback. That's
happened a couple of times with friends, and they're not
(08:51):
even asking like, hey, is it a good song? They're going, hey,
do you think if we took this to the vice
president of programming that they would like it? Do you think?
And those answers I can give, but I don't really
want to, like not like artists, because it affects other decisions,
Like there are times where it's like it's an interview
coming up with this person do you want it? And
(09:11):
it's been kind of gross like that, and I've just
been like, I don't think so, Like I don't want
to be around something that makes me feel weird, or
if I feel like somebody has I go to your
motives with something. So that's been the last couple of
days that in my tooth a tooth here is still broken.
I get a lot of messages from you guys that
(09:32):
are like, hey, why's your tooth gone? And my wife,
especially who calls it tiny, she's not a fan of it.
My dentist actually just text me because I think he
saw it online as well, and he's like, hey, come in,
let's fix your tooth. And I kind of decided that
I wasn't going to fix my tooth until I had
a reason to fix it, meaning if I was going
to go and do some television work of some sort.
(09:55):
So the thing was, I'll fix it when it needs
to be fixed, because I don't only like going to
the dentist. Although my dentist is good, but you see
here it's still gone, it's still jagged. But at this
point I did pay for it already, so I should
go and get it fixed. I'm hoping that this recording
here which you're watching either on YouTube or the audio,
(10:17):
sounds good. I'm trying in a different way, so hopefully
it doesn't look or sound too weird. And if it does,
don't worry done. I'll stop doing it this way, I
get a lot of I got a lot of response
to that YouTube video that I did on artists that
don't like each other. And if you go over onder
the YouTube page, which the YouTube page is different than
(10:38):
the Bobby Bone Show YouTube page, this is at Bobby
Bone's channel. I probably shouldn't change you back to the
Bobby cast, but over on the channel. I did all
these artists that had feuds, and then people that I
have fought with, I'm not even gonna say feuds because
who cares about me over the years, and I keep
(10:59):
getting messages in d like are you feuding with anybody now?
I'm really not, because like it's mostly energy and time waste,
Like it's all a suck of time and energy. And
also I just kind at this stage of my life
cut people out if that relationship isn't a net positive
(11:19):
for both of us. And I think relationships should be
romantic relationships, friendships, any relationship should be a net positive.
That doesn't mean it's always going to go good. As
a matter of fact, the longer that you're in them,
if they are substantial, it is not going to go good.
But at the end, when you tally it all out,
you should actually be a little better because of the relationship.
(11:42):
I can give you a story and I'm not beefing
or feuding with this person just because I've chosen not to.
But and I'll keep the timeline out. It was I
would have considered this person a friend. And so I
was doing a charity event and the chair already said
to me because we weren't getting paid because it's for charity. Hey,
(12:05):
do you have anybody that would want to hop on
and do this charity event with you, like a co headliner.
And so I called this person friend of mine and
I was like, Hey, here's the charity. I think it's
something you might want to be involved in. And they
were like, yeah, sounds great. And so we had signed
up to do this charity event like eight months ahead
of time, well a few weeks to a month leading
(12:29):
into it. And again I would have said I was
actual friends with this person, not just buddies that you
see or people could come on the show and you're like,
what's up, buddy, I'm seeing you in a while, but
you're really not friends, like not acquaintance, it's friends, Like
we're all friends. I would have considered us to be
(12:51):
right there at that level. And about a month before
I get a call from this person's manager, which is weird.
And my manager gets a call from this person's manager,
which is weird because I know the person, like I've
spent significant personal time with the person, and they go, hey,
(13:13):
they got to back out of the event. They have
to have like to vocal Cord surgery, and I'm like, dang,
that sucks. My initial reaction is, thing, that sucks because
anytime you gotta have any surgery, that's not fortunate. Secondly,
if you're a singer and you have to have vocal
cord surgery, that has got to be scary as crap.
But I remember thinking, why didn't this person who's my
friend called me to tell me, because I know they're
(13:37):
still talking. I just I had seen them on social
media that day, and again I really felt like this
was a friend, So I thought it was weird that
the manager called me. By the way, if you have
to like get out of something for any reason, if
it's like a personal reason, a health reason, I don't
can just just say it. If your grandma sick, no problem. Also, well,
(14:00):
it's not my charity event, so just like, be for
real about it. I guess my whole point to this
is I hate when people aren't for real about stuff,
and so I'm like, okay, man, that sucks for them,
first of all, and second of all for this charity
event that I am co headlining, because I was doing
stand up there doing music, and so there's just a
few weeks left and I have to call the charity.
I had to call the charity and be like, hey,
(14:22):
this person is not doing this anymore, and so like,
so we had to find somebody new, and they ended
up having to pay a pretty significant amount of money
to get another person. And that's money that we're gone
to the charity. But because it was so last minute,
they had to pay a bunch and that sucked for them.
It didn't suck for me because whatever. And then I
find out the story changes from vocal cord surgery to
(14:44):
they needed to be on vocal rest. Same thing. Had
you just called and said that from the beginning, I
think that I'd been like, oh, I totally get it,
Like you can't play in a charity celebrity softball game
if your elbow if you elbow rest, because you've heard it,
do it. They're just common sense things, So you could
(15:06):
have said that. But it started with surgery. And then
they didn't call me. So I was pissed that the
person didn't call me. I was like why, And so
after I shared my frustration of especially when I found
out they didn't even need vocal rest, they were then
on a television show after that and they had no surgery,
(15:29):
I don't really quite know why they wanted out of
the event, but they were so dishonest about everything that
I thought, I don't really the kind of person that
I want to have in my life and I haven't
really spoken to him in like two years, and as
I say.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
That out loud, I don't love it.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
And I did get a call way after the fact,
but it was only after the fact that I was
like so irritated that they were so dishonest. Wan it
was surgery, then it was vocal rest, and then they
need vocal rest, but they're still going to go and
do a television It wasn't even my charity. It wasn't
my money. I had to pay for the extra person.
It was just weird. They didn't call me, So the
(16:06):
shadiness of it all felt weird and so negative that
I thought, if they can do this at this point,
they can also do this at a different point. So
I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to relax them
from my friendship group. And by the way, I don't
have a big friendship group. I really don't do anything.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I work.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I got like four people I hang out with and
all good, so they're not missing me in their life.
I'm not missing them in their life. But when it
comes to like shadiness, I don't have any room for it.
When it comes to drama, I don't have any room
for it, oh especially drama. I'm not a dramatic person.
This town is the most dramatic town too. It is.
(16:49):
It's easy to say it's so fake, but it's just
like high school. If I cared about having friends in
the artist community, I think I'd probably stay irritated and
upset about it. But it is so clicky, and it's
groups that want it to be known that other people
can't be in their group, and it's like artists and wives.
(17:11):
And it's kind of funny to watch from the outside,
especially when you see like pictures being posted on social
media because you know these people and you know why
they're doing it. But I think back in high school
it bothered me because I wasn't cool. Now I kind
am glad I'm not cool because I don't really have
an interest to be parts of some of these things.
(17:32):
And I hope wherever you live, I know this is
happening too. It's not just a Nashville thing. I think
this is every in Nashville is not a small town,
but the music, the performer community is a pretty small
community here and it happens here too, So just know
that it happens here too. So yeah, that's what's up.
(17:53):
That's the check in here. I think. Now we're going
to get over to the interview that I did with
Jeff Pearl and we talk about Tupac. He wrote a
Tupac book. It's very interesting, even if you're not really
a Tupac fan. I think it's interesting to hear the
stories about it he has written. I think it had
ten number one best sellers. So we're gonna get to that.
I'm hoping you're not hearing all the text messages come
(18:14):
through my computer as I've been recording this. This has
been a trial run. And thank you everybody, and I
will talk to you on the other side of this.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
All we have Jeff Peerlman on with us, who wrote
a book about Tupac. Only God can judge me the
many lies of Tupac Shakur. I think, as a performer myself,
it's all rooted in absolute, deep insecurity. I do not
look at Tupac from back when I would.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Listen to Tupac.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I mean, I guess I do occasionally now, But for
the most part I didn't look at him as a
super insecure guy, Like, what did you learn about him
in that element as a performer? Was its rooted in
insecurity at all?
Speaker 4 (19:04):
I think it was based more on insecurity brought forth
by abject poverty, by his mother's addiction to crack, by
spending hit much of his days, living in his youth
in Baltimore, with rats skirring up and down the base boards,
showing up at school in thrift store clothing, having bad teeth,
not smelling good, girls not being interested in him. Like
(19:26):
this background of rejection, poverty, sort of embarrassment, shame, I
think fueled a lot of what he was for good
and probably for bad too.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I found that with people that come from not a
lot I would even include myself a bit there is
that there are two ways to go. One like you
want to prove everybody wrong, and so you're gonna stop
at nothing until you do, or what's you know? Actually
a lot easier to do is just fall into it
and fall into that same system.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
What was Tupac's relationship with those choices.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Oh, you know. So he grew up in New York,
moved to Baltimore. He spent his freshman year Dunbar High School.
Then found out about the school, the Baltimore School for
Performing Arts, and he had to audition, and Tupac had nothing.
He wore two pairs of pants. He would rotate his pants.
He wear the same crappy thrift store shoes. Everything about
(20:19):
him was poor and sad and small. He was small
and kind of spinely. And he shows up for this
audition and he just knows he's going to nail it,
Like he knows. He doesn't think he's going to nail it.
He knows he's going to nail it. And he walks
into the grand ballroom of the Baltimore School for the
Arts and the four teachers are all sitting. There are
four white teachers, very stern, and he does a monologue
(20:41):
from Raising in the Sun, and the teachers when he's done,
stand up and applaud for him. And he gets a
spot in the School for the Arts. And he knew
he was going to like he was so driven, he
knew he was bigger than what surrounded him. He knew
he was more powerful, He knew he had this thing
in him like he always and I think everything going
on around him drove him to be bigger. It was
(21:03):
almost like this thing maybe you've gone through yourself. You
people don't understand what you have in me, Like you
don't see it, but I see it, you know. Like
he showed up and he's on the stage and he
knew it. He just knew it. And I think that
was all driven from what he came from.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Was there anything around him that led him to believe
that there is a reality and performance. He was on
the East Coast, so hey, you know, you're kind of
close to New York. Hey, like, how did he know
if it wasn't a tangible thing?
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Well, it kind of was. So he was in a
theater company in New York before he moved to Baltimore
as a young team and he actually performed at the
Apollo Theater at a Jesse Jackson presidential fundraiser in nineteen
eighty four in a Raisin in the Sun, and he
had this moment. He was the first person on stage
for the performance. He's in the Apollo Theater. It's filled
(21:53):
with people, Jesse Jackson is there, and it's this moment
where everything is quiet and you look out and they're
all looking at you. And I do think there's something really,
really profoundly true about people who always feel ignored and
underappreciated having everyone look at you and have the focus
on you and you feel seen. So I would say
(22:16):
that moment in particular was a real jolt to him
becoming what he became.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
And again just getting into like the fundamental parts of
him as a performer. I've found that a lot of
performers are in essence searching for love because they didn't
get it at one point in their life, and that,
you know, performing on a stage, performing behind a microphone,
like you're searching for adulation, for love to compensate for
what you did not have growing up. And I think
that's what you're saying. Would that be kind of the
(22:43):
reason he did any performance at all?
Speaker 4 (22:45):
I think so. I mean, it's really interesting his mom
of Fanny Shakur was a very famous black panther represented
herself in the famous Panther twenty one Child when she
was pregnant with Tupac. Was his civil rights icon. She
was his hero, his absolute hero, and then she became
an addict, and he's watching this woman he loves also
(23:07):
fall off into a state of disrepair. And all he
wants is something in his life that feels real and positive.
And the thing he gets is attention. His whole life.
The one thing everyone who knew Tupac from the beginning
to end fed Tupac more than love, more than money,
more than cars, was attention, being looked at, being seen,
(23:31):
being heard. I think that's a really powerful driver for
a lot of athletes I've written about. I'm sure for
a lot of musicians and people you've interviewed as well.
This need to be seen and heard. And I think
he was a guy who has ignored much as a child,
and all of a sudden people are lavishing attention on him.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Then when did it turn to hip hop? When did
it turn to I can be a rapper?
Speaker 4 (23:49):
I mean he started he started rapping when he was
in New York on the stoop in the Bronx, like
his mom, his aunt Glee. All these people would go
be upstairs in the apartment smoking weed and talking, and
all the kids would be on the stoop and they're
all listening. This is in the Bronx in New York
City in the nineteen eighties. They're all listening to Curtis
blow Houdini, you know, Sugar Hill Gang Run DMC, and
(24:10):
he's just rapping on the steps. And he moves to
Baltimore and he teams up with a guy named Mouse
and they start wrapping and they form a little rap
group and he has his moment, this great, great moment.
He's a student in Baltimore and there's a concert coming
to the Baltimore Arena including Salt and Pepper, and Salt
and Pepper's manager is Herbie Lovebug, and they go to
(24:31):
the show. It's Salt and Pepper and it's heavy Dan,
it's different performers, and they know the performers are all
staying at a comfort inn the other days in near
the Baltimore Arena. Before the show ends, they decide they're
going to go to the days in and show Herbie
love On what they could Bug, what they could do.
(24:52):
So they rush and they see him walking in and
Tupac walks up to him. It's a teenager, hasn't done
anything bad, haircut, shitty, crappy clothesxcuse me, and he's like, yo, Herbie, Herbie,
this is my crew. Can you do you want to
hear us sing? Do you want to hear us rap?
Blah blah blah. He's like, yeah, okay, and he's like
He's like, but I got to go up and he
never came back down right, And Tubac is waiting and
(25:13):
waiting and waiting, his game, more mad and more mad,
and finally he's like, we're going upstairs. And they spend
the night hanging out with the rappers outside their room.
Like he just had that audacity about him. You're gonna
hear me. Someone's gonna hear me. So throughout Baltimore he's rapping,
and then he moves to Marin City and that's where
it takes off in California.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
When you do a book like this, obviously you want
to talk to the people that knew Tupac and the
people that knew the people that knew Tupac. But when
you start, how many people do you think you're going
to have to interview? And does that list expand as
you're going I.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Usually consider you got to go at least four hundred
on a biography. To me, in my mind, if you
don't clear four hundred people, I interviewed six hundred and
fifty two for this book. So it was, it was
deep and I got. I had extensive time with his sister,
with the people who formed him along the way as
different managers, performers. I had a moment, like the greatest
(26:04):
reporting moment in my career came out of this book.
It's a story. If you want to tell it.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Not yeah, no, tell please do okay?
Speaker 4 (26:13):
So do you know the song Brenda's Got a Baby?
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I do okay.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Tubac is filming Juice in New York City. It's nineteen
ninety and every day when he was growing up, he
would read the New York Times. His mom would read
him the newspaper. It was very important to her that
he knew what was going on. So every day, while
filming Juice in New York, they would bring a pa
would bring him a copy of the New York Daily News.
And one day there's an article and it's Cries in
the Night and it's about a twelve year old girl
(26:39):
who was raped by a cousin, delivered the baby without
anyone knowing she was pregnant on the bathroom floor, wrap
the baby up in an odd job bag plastic bag,
threw the baby down the trash chute, and that was
the inspiration. Tubac reads this article, says to omar Aps,
I gotta go in my trailer. I gotta go in
my trailer, sits in his trailer, writes the words to
(27:00):
Brenda's got a baby, Brenda's got a baby, Brenda's barely
got a brain. The damn Shane, the girl cam Harley
spo her name. So this song is his first big song.
And I decided I really wanted to find the baby
who's thrown down the trash heap all those years ago,
who inspired this song. And I work with a genealogist
named Michelle Sooley who's just incredible, and I told her
about this and one day she's like, I think I
(27:21):
have a number for this guy. His name's Devon. I
text because no one answers their phones. I text this
guy Devon and I'm like, hey, by any chance is
this you? And I tatched the article. My name's Jeff pearlme.
He writes me back. He's like, he's like, call me tomorrow.
Long story. I go to Las Vegas. He lives in
(27:42):
Las Vegas. He's thirty three years old.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Now.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
He was the baby at the time. He was the
baby who's thrown down the trash sheep by Tupac. I'm
talking with him about it. Amazing story. Basically, he was
adopted after he's thrown down the trash sheep. His uh,
his parents moved to Las Vegas. They died. An ancestry
dot com search is not that long ago. All these
tentacles point back to the Noble Dura Lei housing projects
(28:07):
in Brooklyn. He reaches out to different relatives. They're like,
we've been looking for you for years. We didn't know
what happened to you. Also, are you a fan of Tupac?
He's like, I love Tupac. They're like, do you know
the song Brenda's Got a Baby? Of course I know
the song Brendon's Got a Baby. We think you're the
baby and Brenda's got a baby. He flies back to
the housing projects where he was born. They show him
(28:28):
the shoot where his mom threw him down. He poses
with it. He meets all these relatives. It's this beautiful moment.
He hasn't seen his mom in the gazillion years, Like
shortly after he was born. We decide we have to
find the mom. My genealogist Michelle Solely thinks she has
a number. She calls this woman. She goes, is this Janine,
I'm using a fake name. She goes, is this Janine?
(28:49):
She says, yeah, did you have a baby when you
were twelve years old? The woman starts screaming, do you
know where my baby is? Do you know where my
baby is? She goes, well, my name is Michelle, I'm
a genealogist. Jepher. Oh my god, do you know where
my baby is? She's screaming and crying. Michelle says, I mean.
The woman says, I need to I need to take
care of that. She goes, I live in Newark, New Jersey.
(29:11):
But I'm I'm I'm away because I'm going to see
the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And Michelle says, where are
the Chili Pepper's playing? And she said in Las Vegas.
She goes, your son lives in Vegas. They met that night.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
Wow, the Bobby cast will be right back. This is
the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
So how does that make you feel this as a person, like,
aside from the book, aside from what we're talking about here,
Like that's like like fundamentally shifting. That's one of those
events for them and probably for you as well.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
It gives me chills even telling that story right now,
having told it several times already, you know, to my
relatives and friends. It's an amazing feeling. It's fantastic. It's
one of the best. It's the best fine I've ever
been a part of in my career by far Man.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
I don't questions about that, like, how did the meeting go?
Speaker 4 (30:11):
It was great, It was beautiful at first. In fact,
she showed up and she hadn't seen the baby. She
hadn't seen her son in years and years. She had
visitation for a brief period of time after he was
born where she was able to see him, and that
was it. And she shows up and when they were
in the house after she gave birth, they found her,
brought her to the hospital, brought the baby to the hospital.
(30:31):
They let her hold the baby and named the baby,
and she actually named the baby Devan. She gave him
his first name, and the adoptive parents kept the name.
She shows up. They met in a casino in Vegas
in a lobby, and she has his name tattooed on
his arm, on her arm because she had just always
been thinking about him from years and years ago, from
decades ago. She tattooed his name on her arm and
(30:53):
they're just hugging and crying and they talked through the night.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I mean, if that is what comes of the book, like,
that's a lot onegree Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So as far as Tupac goes, you know, everybody thinks
about him as being a West Coast guy, which isn't
I've known that that's not where he grew up, but
that's where he became the Tupac that we know.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Did Tupac consider himself a West Coast guy?
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah, he definitely did. Over time. He did. He basically
when before his senior year of high school, he went
two years at school for the Arts in Baltimore and
he moves to Marin City and he's very upset about it.
And Marin City he lives in a it's called the
jungle and he basically lives in public housing in Marin City.
His mom dives heavy duty in the crack and while there,
Tupac moves in with the kid his aige named Demetri Striplan,
(31:41):
who's a DJ and just a nice guy who takes
him in. And during that time period, Tupac is writing
raps non stop, and he's listening to Too Short and
Ant Banks and all these Bay Area rappers and he's
absorbing it. But he has a moment. Near where he lives,
they would have these rap battles, and he gets his
ass kicked in a wrap battle one day by this
guy named Tack who's like thirteen year old rapper, and
(32:02):
he's just demolishes Tupac. Tubac goes back to the apartment
and he's devastated and he vanishes for a week. For
one week, nobody sees Tupac, And basically he spent the
week hanging out with the biggest crack dealer in Marin City,
and he asks a guy if he could follow him around.
His name was Bobby Burton, if you could follow him
(32:22):
around and just take notes about what it is to
deal crack and to be a gangbanger and to be
a badass in the inner city. And he comes back
and he has a song written called All in the
Days of a Criminal and he wraps it for his
roommates immediately and they're like, WHOA. And it really did
show the guy was a student. And I actually it's
one of the joys of this book, was I spent
a lot of time with the old crack dealers of
(32:44):
Marin City, and like, I went to a diner with
Bobby Burton and his grandson, and this guy was the
most terrified, terrifying crack dealer in Marin City. We're sitting
there eating eggs with his grandson and there's a very
full circle kind of moment for me as a reporter.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
I'm assuming the grandson doesn't know his granddad as that
criik dealer.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
Now, there was a lot of like this. It's a
lot of like, all right, don't listen over that. You
go over there for a minute. Great guy though, the
guy was awesome, he was delightful.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, when you interview six hundred and fifty plus people
and they give you stories that well are exactly the opposite,
how do you deal with that.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
It's a lot of cross checking. It's a lot of
triple checking. It's also a lot of who has a
history of being a reliable subject, who might exaggerate one
thing that I have found with Tupac. I'm sure you've
seen it also with celebrity young deaths. As the years pass,
people who weren't that close that person suddenly are amazing
to close that person. People who had five minutes with
that person spent hours with that person. So it is
(33:41):
a lot of like checking and rechecking and double checking
and just making sure someone says, no, this is a
person you can trust, A trustworthy person. Telling you someone
is trustworthy goes a long way.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
What about the development of truth into like hyperbole and
not for any other reason than time.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
That has to happen too, right, of.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Course, And the truth of the matter is biography is
a flawed medium to a small degree. Right, my book
before this was about bo Jackson. Most of what bo
Jackson did athletically wasn't recorded. You know, he was timed
running a four to one three forty. I can see
the notation for the four one three forty in the
Auburn log. Do I know for a one million trillion
(34:19):
percent fact that it wasn't for two three forty. I
don't like. Part of this is believing what is written
and believing stories that are reputable. It's a flawed there's
no doubt. The other flaw of biography is you can't
be in the person's head. So Tubac is walking down
the street, Tubac is in the MGM grand and he
sees Orlando Anderson and he goes punch him. I'm thinking
(34:40):
he's probably thinking, oh, crap, I gotta punch this guy.
Before I know he's thinking about the Jets quarterback situation.
You know, you can't know. You can't be in someone's head.
It's the hardest part of biography by far as you
can't be in someone's head.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I would think too, when you are writing a story
on a dead legend, which is what Tubac is, you
want to make sure you get the good, the bad,
the middle, the background all. But when it's something uncomfortable,
like a rape accusation, like how did you deal with that?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
I had something I haven't even talked about this yet,
but you know it's in the book. I found all right,
So the rape accusation was obviously tough, and I reported
it and reported it and reported it, and I found
people who were around there and different people. But the
interesting thing is, four months before that happened, another woman
(35:32):
accused Chupac of rape. It's never been reported before. And
I found the police reports that were filed, and it
happened at a club in LA who was a woman
who was celebrating her twenty first birthday. I found a
adacted police report and then an unadapted police report. So
I had all the names and I found this woman
and she basically she needed a ride hunt. She was
(35:53):
twenty one. She was out a club in LA. She
was out with her friends. Her friends kind of ditched her.
She had been talking with Tupac and his crew. They
offered her a ride home. She was staying with her boyfriend,
who was a football player at USC. They instead of
going home, according to her, tupocs like, we got to
(36:14):
stop at the house real quick. He at a house
not far far away, she said. According to her, she said,
just come in for a minute, Just come in. He
goes in. She said he had a gun on his
on his bookshelf, and said he raped her. And then
he said one of his friends drove her home and
also forced her to have sex. So she I got
(36:37):
this police report, and I know I have to try
to talk to this woman, right, And this was four
months before the incident at Nell's in New York City
involving Aana Jackson, four months before I have this police report.
I'm writing a biography. I know for a fact Tupac
fans do not want to read this, right If you're
a Tupac fan, you understandably want to believe that Tupac
(37:00):
wudn't have done such a thing, was innocent there. But
I feel responsibility to biography more than I respond feel
responsibility to pleasing fans and selling books, if that makes sense.
I have this police sport, I have the name. I
find the woman. I reach out to her. At first,
she tells me it's all true, but she's like, I
(37:20):
don't want to talk about it. And when I found
the I found a few months later, I reached out
to her again and I said, I'm just curious. Do
you have any interest in seeing the police report? Like
do you want to see it? And she said, yeah,
actually I do, And I sent it to her and
she called me back and she's like, Okay, I want
to talk to you because this is making me really mad.
And basically what happened is everything she said she swore
(37:42):
happened all these years later, Anonymous she had no reason
to lie or not, like, there was no incentive for
her to lie. She's a fifty year old woman now
living not at in California. But she said after she
filed the report, the officer who is going to decide
whether to go The detective was going to decide whether
to follow through with the with the charges, said why
didn't you run away when you had a chance to
(38:03):
run away? And she's like, I was drunk and scared,
and they're basically like, no, you had a chance to
run away, and you didn't run away, and they didn't
pursue it. And she was so mad relivering that that
she talked to me at length about it. Now she
talked to me anonymously, which is fair because it's a
rape case. So that's knowing that he had a very
(38:24):
similar intent. There are a lot of parallels between what
happened to this woman in la what happened to Tayana
Jackson in New York. So that's a big part of
the reporting of it.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I would think that the human nature part of writing
a biography would be and I'm glad you spoke on that,
feeling like you have an allegiance to the biography more
than the fans of Tupac, that if you're writing about Tupac,
you want his fans to buy the book. So I'm
sure that there's a part of you that's like, man,
if I just don't write about this I think more
people want to buy the book because it's just a
glowing part of Tupac. I mean, is that an internal
(38:54):
struggle that a writer like yourself have to deal with?
Speaker 4 (38:56):
And it is not, but I understand why it would be.
I just long ago starting at the University of Delaware
and as a news writer at the Nashville Tennessee and like,
that's not how I think, you know, like probably maybe
to my own financial detriment. I just don't think, Oh man,
I have to this is going to be Tupac fans
are going to love this. I mean, like, I want
a historic record of Tupac. The goal is always and
(39:19):
I'm not saying it's always achieved. The goal is someone
reads your Tupac book and they say, well, there's no
other reason to write a Tupac book, Like what, There's
nothing more, there's no other reason to write a Tupac work.
And I'm not saying that's real, but that's kind of
your goal, and I can't. It's not. I'm not a
fan writer. I'm not writing for Team Beat or Boppa
or whatever it would be in twenty twenty five, and
just not that guy. So it is what it is.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
You're a white guy writing about hip hop artist. I
don't know that's that's weird.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Hell yeah yeah. My agent, it's my first non sportsbook.
It's obviously my first hip hop book. Yeah, no doubt
about him. My agent was like, are you do you
really think? Do you think you're the guy to write
this book? And the truth of the matter is this
is weird with true. The writer Kevin Powell had on
his website four years next book at Tupac book right
(40:07):
for years, and I kind of just assumed Kevin Powell
was going to write this Tupac book and I was
just not going to write it. But he never did it.
And I wanted the book where six hundred and fifty
people were interviewed about Tupac. I didn't want the book
why Topac is the greatest rapper of all time? Or
Tupac and Me my wild Adventures, you know, Like, I
wanted the book about Tupac, so I just I know
(40:30):
him white. I come from an outsider's view. I tried
to be honest about it and open about it and.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Do my best whenever I think about hip hop in
the nineties, even late eighties, two thousands, right, because I
was like my time, and I think about the rappers
that were I'd call the best culturally and also but
then the best like that sounded the best. Like for me,
it was always like Biggie always sounded the best, but
Tupac meant more to the culture.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
And I grew up in not a white neighborhood, so.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Never like Tupac sounds better than Biggie, but he says
more than Biggie, although Biggie did say a lot because
Biggie had stories too, right, Like he's he's doing his
he's doing his thing East Coast. Uh, what are your
thoughts on my possibly incorrect narrative?
Speaker 4 (41:13):
All right, I think Shakgi from Digital Underground said it perfectly.
He has passed away, but when he was live, he said,
a lot of rappers rap. I'm gonna paraphrase. It's a
lot of rappers wrap from the news. Some rappers wrap
from the lips, some rappers wrap from the throat, he said.
Tupac rap from the stomach where it was guttural, you know.
And the other only other rapper, really great rapper who
(41:35):
could compare to that is DMX where it's like you
feel it and you feel every word and There's a
song Tupac Haa has. It's probably my favorite Tupac song.
It's called Shorty Want to Be a Thug. It's just
about a sixteen year old kid who's trying to, you know, gangbanger,
and you just feel every word of it, like you
feel every word of it. And I think about rappers
(41:55):
from who came up alongside Tupac. Biggie was a great rapper.
He was a brilliant, brilliant lyricist. His delivery was flawless,
it was beautiful, it was almost symphonic, and how beautiful
his rapping was, but it wasn't guttural, you know. And
I feel like with Tupac he was able to relate
to people and make people feel what he was saying,
(42:17):
not just by the words which were powerful, but by
the way he said it. I think he was very
unique in that regard.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
And the reason that I compared the two obviously is
because the whole East West Coast and how that tragically ended,
how much of that started as wrestling and ended real
or was it all real?
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Well, it started at Quad Studios and Tupac is going
to Quad Studios and to put Tubac is on try
on New York and at the same time, an artist
named Little Sean is releasing, is putting together an album,
and Tubac needs money. You know, Tubac died very he
had less than two hundred thousand dollars in his bank
account when he died, like he did not have a
(42:54):
lot of money. And he has the legal fees and
everything's mounting, and he's going to go to Quad Studios
and record a track for Little Sean and he's getting paid.
This is crazy. Seven thousand dollars, that's how much Tupac
was going to Quad Studios to do a track for
some guy, Little Sean. So he he's going there and
(43:14):
he pulls up and he gets out, and you know,
he's he's he's in the lobby and he gets shot
and he gets he gets robbed, and he gets shot,
and he goes upstairs and there's Biggie and there's a
little CS. He was down in the elevator and these
guys are there, and Tupac at that moment, forever more
(43:35):
believes that either Biggie was directly responsible for it or
if nothing else, I'm in New York City, this is
your city. How could you in this building? How could
you not know. And I interviewed a lot of guys
who are in prison with Tupac at Clinton, and he
did not let that go. He held that tight Biggie
did this. I know Biggie did this, That m Effort
(43:57):
did this. He wrote lyrics about it. He was so
angry about it, irrationally so that when he got out
and then he writes hit him up obviously, and it
just inflames everything. So I don't think Biggie tried visiting
Teubac in the hospital. He tried visiting him again at Clinton.
Literally called his manager Watani and said, can I want
(44:18):
to go visit Pac? And Tubac said, no, I'm not
seeing that guy. I think Biggie was dumb founded the
whole time. Why am I getting blamed for all this?
But Tupac saw it as a certainty.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Then okay, let's just say it wasn't Biggie. Who do
we think it was? Puffy?
Speaker 4 (44:36):
I mean, most of the eyes point to Haitian Jack,
who took Tupac kind of under his wing. He was
actually Tupac's amuse for above the rim when he played Birdie.
And then they started having this growing divide and Tubac
started calling him out as a hanger on. There's a lot,
but there's no certainty. There is no certainty. I will
(44:56):
say one thing that was interesting when I did find
for the book, Tupac was shot. It was always noted incorrectly.
He saw three times in the head, in the hand,
in the tesco as it went into his leg. And
for years there are always these rumors that that Tupac,
(45:16):
that Tupac shot himself in the balls. And I found
a the first EMT to ever get to Tupac, and
he'd never been he'd never been interviewed before, and he's like, Wow,
how'd you find me? And I'm like, I don't know.
I found him one. He was listening one little article
of this guy, and I tracked him down. The first
EMT to get to Tupac. He's sitting there in Quad studios.
(45:38):
The EMT comes up, he gets out, Tupac is there.
He's a bullet LODs in his head between the skin
and the skull. It was this closed from penetrating his
brain instead skin it was embedded in. The guy said
he never saw it like that before. It shot in
the hand, and Tupac pulls down his trousers. He's wearing jeans, trousers,
jeans and his boxer briefs, and he's there's a there's
(46:02):
a hole in his testicle. But there's no entrance area, right,
there's no there's no gunpower residue, and there's no entrance
shot through the jeans or the underwear. And the guy
said to me he had to have shot himself in
the balls because he did have the gun here. He
used to carry his gun in the waistband. And there
(46:23):
was no entrance wound from outside, no entrance mark from outside.
So he's like, I've known for years that he shot
himself in the in the boss. And it was a
debate for years and years, and hip hop out of
two bak shoot himself, who shot Tupac blah blah blah,
and the one was in the balls?
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Okay, So if he got shot in the hit because
I hear a hand and then I heard balls, obviously
in the head.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
But if you get shot in the head, they're trying
to kill you.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
If you get shot in the hand, in the balls
only they're trying to scare or hurt you. When Tupac
was shot, were they trying to kill him?
Speaker 4 (46:50):
I honestly don't know, I just don't know. You have
to admit some times you don't know. I don't know
the intent because I don't know who shot him, Like
I don't know who shot him, so I don't know.
I think they were trying, probably trying to rob him
and scare him, you know. And Tupac didn't just you know,
he didn't just cower, which you're supposed to do. He
never did, so I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Though.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
All the people that you've interviewed, I'm sure there's a
takeaway with each person, probably gives you perspective you've never had, because,
right you're basically getting as close inside of someone's life
as you can get without actually being in their life.
What about studying Tupac like made you look at life
a bit different?
Speaker 4 (47:39):
I mean, you were asked earlier about being a white writer,
and I think you you go into a subject and
you think you understand a perspective and then you realize
you don't understand a perspective at all. And to me, truly,
obviously i've seen poverty. I've never been I've never lived
in poverty, but I've seen poverty in the different athletes
I've written about. I feel like Tupac's sister describing, literally
(48:05):
describing the sound of the rats scurring up and down
the base board in their Baltimore rowhouse pad, digging into
food and eating their food, and her saying how haunted
she was by that all these years later, I feel
like that her describing the level of poverty that they
emerged from was deeper and more profound and more painful
(48:30):
than my experience writing about people who rise from impover's situations.
And I think it was important for me.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
What is your feelings on Suge Knight after you finished
the book on Tupac?
Speaker 4 (48:41):
Terrible? Absolutely sug Knight to me, I put sug Knight
in a trio. If he were starting a do walk group,
it would be him, it'd be Don King, and it'd
be Donald Trump. Guys who just take advantage of people taking.
You know, he goes to Clinton to bail Tupac out.
I'm going to bail you out. I think it was
one point six million bail. Tupac thinks this is money
(49:04):
that Shug is giving him. It's not. It's advanced earnings,
and I'll tell you a great, truly great Sugar Night story,
the emblematic two real quick emblematic Sugar Night Stories. Number one,
Tubac is filming Gang Related the movie with Jim Belushi.
One day, sug Knight shows up on set with a
car as a gift for Tupac, which he was prone
to do. He lavish him with gifts and material possessions
and he shows up and the whole crew is what.
(49:25):
They stop filming and yo, Pac, this is I just
want to thank you for all you're doing for the
death Row family. This is amazing. Blah blah blah blah.
I want to give you this car, bro, this is
for you. They hug, Sugar leaves. Tubac turns to the
assistant producer and says, this is mine, Like, what do
you mean? I don't own this. I don't own anything.
(49:47):
Like all the cars I have, they're all least the
place I live least. I don't own anything. My entire
life is controlled. Number two. Tubac dies in Las Vegas
after the Mike Tyson Bruce seven to fight. Week later,
the family Sugar is there in Vegas. He was obviously
driving the car. He's there kind of hanging around the family.
He promises the family he'll take care of Tupac's ashes.
(50:08):
Tupac is cremated. A couple of days later, a fed
Ex delivery guy shows up where Tubac was living and
all the family congregated in LA with a cardboard fed
X two day delivery box with Tupox ashes in it.
That is how Suge Knight handled the delivery of Tupox ashes.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Dang, that does sound like a good dude at all.
That's not the.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
Best He did played three games to play three games
with the Los Angeles for playing Rams in nineteen eighty seven,
which makes me smile.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
I always think when I hear of people that were
just like real, like awful people, I always go back
to what their origin stories are and what made them
like what affected their lives in such a tragic way
that made them so tragic. And I know you didn't
write a book on sug Knight, but how did Sugar
Knight become such an awful person?
Speaker 4 (50:54):
I dug a lot in the sug Knight. Sugar Knight
is from Compton, grew up in a very stable household.
You know. His name is Marion Knight. His nickname is
Shug because they said he looked like the sugar Bear
from the Cereal box. So went from sugar Bear to
shoog very good household. Played in the marching band, played
drums in the marching band. High school football games, he
played in the games halftime, He'd go and played drums
(51:16):
in his football uniform in the marching band. Go back
and play football. Went to El Camino College for years,
was a Junior College All American as a defensive lineman.
Goes to UNLV. While he's at UNLV, he starts doing
work on the strip as a bodyguard and kind of
likes it. Winds up going into the music business working
for Dick Griffi for a while, and he works with
(51:39):
Bobby Brown as a bodyguard for Bobby Brown, and he
just I think the thing with him, Like I interviewed
a lot of guys from Compton who grew up with Sugar,
and universally it wasn't that they liked or dislike Shugar,
but they were like that guy wasn't a gangbanger. This
one guy mob James James MacDonald, who grew up in
Compton with Shug, is like he had a quote I
(51:59):
remember exactly. He was like Sugar wasn't wearing a bandana.
Sugar wasn't Sugar wasn't carrying Sugarn. He was, like he said,
he was soft as raw, blank of you know, val
like a you know, he was just but he want
he was of Compton, but he wasn't of Compton. Like
he wasn't He wasn't a crip. He wasn't carrying. He
(52:19):
wasn't a blood. He wasn't carrying. But he built this
image based on size, based on wanting to be a
sort of mafioso figure in music. Having this image, you know,
death Row his his his line was you either either
make it hit or you get hit. And one guy
he hired told me he's get hired by Sugar. Sugar
walks him to the window inside Death Row and he says,
(52:43):
look out that window, and he goes, all right, he
goes just so you know, we don't fire guys who
don't perform. We throw them out windows. And there's just
a million stories of sug Night making people neel naked,
drink urine, making people neel naked, apologize, hitting people, punching people.
They kept baseball bats in the closet, wasn't for a
company picnic. He was to beat the crap out of people.
(53:03):
He just went from seeing what it was to be
tough to deciding I want to be tough.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
I just I just wonder where that inferiority conflict comes from,
because again I look at every villain, even in movies
or even like the worst people in real life, and go,
there's something that triggered that. And I because I, for me,
I don't believe unless there's some sort of chemical, hormonal
thing that people are just born bad.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
I think there's trauma. I think.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
And with Suge Knight, I've always, you know, wondered like
what about Shoe because I'd heard the story.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
I think I've seen a picture of him.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Playing in the high school band in his uniform that
I'm like, what made him? Because even the vanilla eye
story that he tells about Suge Night hanging him off
the ledge, you know, lookause it's crazy. I know this
is not a Suge Knight interview. I have two questions
the how did Tupac not have money?
Speaker 4 (53:51):
Well, first of all, Harry all right, Well, a really
telling part of this is he's in prison and the
main woman who took care of him, who's one of
the best people I've ever met is this woman, yasmine Fula,
who was both his business manager, a former panther, kind
of an aunt godmother like figure. And she would visit
him every week in prison, and she would always come
(54:11):
with family requests. Right, your mom wants a new house,
your cousin needs this, your other cousin needs this. And
it's a classic tale of guy always coming from nothing
and all of a sudden, always giving to everyone. Second
of all, he never made that much money Poetic Justice.
Janet Jackson made two million. I think two BAC may
have made a hundred thousand. I remember the exact amount.
(54:34):
He was never, you know, juicy, he made seventeen thousand dollars.
He was never in a huge movie All Eyes on Me.
Death Row kept a ton of money and then was
paying his legal bees, legal bills. You know, he had
legal fees out the butt NonStop. So like, he just
never had a great stream of income coming to him
his period. And again, all the stuff he quote unquote owned,
(54:56):
he actually only owned one car. Every other car he
ever had.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
Was Does his a state have a lot of money now?
Speaker 4 (55:04):
I think they're doing pretty well. I mean the estate
wasn't that they're not bad or anything, but they weren't
super friendly with this book. But I'm sure they did.
You know, they own a lot of rights. When every
time you buy a Tupac shirt in Walmart or Target,
you're giving money to the estate. That's not a criticism,
that's his reality. So I think they're doing pretty well.
That's kind of and it's not a lot.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
Yeah, that's kind of bizarre that after the death most
of the money's made.
Speaker 4 (55:27):
I don't like the thing. I don't like. Again, it's
a judgment. I'm not saying I'm right. I don't love
you go into Target and there's like a nine dollars
made in some sweatshop, in some you know, poor country
shirt with Tupac on it. I just think Tupac. It's
a guess. I really think you would have hated that.
I don't think you would have liked that.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
My final question is mostly about you. I remember what
you doing the TikTok because of you talking, but also
being in like a coffee shop. I don't know which
way of a Starbucks or whatever it was, I don't know,
but you would have stacked and stacks of papers and
you have your laptop, and and I just picture.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Like at home, it's like a beautiful mind.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
You've got strings going from articles and because again that's
so much information.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
How accurate is it that you were just it was
papers everywhere.
Speaker 4 (56:12):
I do not have a beautiful mind, but it is
papers everywhere. It is. I call it my crack down
of paper. It's just like NonStop and folders to like
print everything out. Because I'm old enough they still do that.
And I like outlining and underlining and this and that.
So it's like, where's that, where's that thing? Where's that?
It's more nutty, professor, I think than beautiful mind? Where
shovel it? And lost? But yeah, it's kind of now
(56:33):
all that stuff is in my garage. My wife is like,
can we get rid of it? And I'm like, not yet,
but soon.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
Last last question, and this is this. It could be
really stupid, but did you ever want to try crack?
Since you wrote so much about it?
Speaker 4 (56:46):
No? I did not.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
Okay, listen, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
Maybe you did.
Speaker 4 (56:49):
I Oh, I'll tell you what I wanted to try.
There are two things I haven't tried yet. I've only
smoked weed a handful of times in my life and
just not that guy. And I'm not a big drinker.
I still haven't tried Hennessy. I'd like to try hennessy.
And I've never smoked a blunt and I'd like to
smoke a blump. But I will tell you, Bobby, And
this is quote my daughter, Casey, who's in college, for
Father's Day last year, gave me because there's a line
(57:12):
in a Tupac song, i can picture you in heaven
with a blunt in a brute from God buless to dead.
She got me a beer and she couldn't find a blunt,
but she got me a joint and gave it for
Father's Day last year because I used to say I
can picture in heaven with a blunt in a brewe.
So that was kind of a funny.
Speaker 2 (57:26):
Gift, but no crack. All right, Well, hey, I thought.
Speaker 4 (57:28):
You kind of got it. If you want to do
it together, I'm in Jeff.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
I really appreciate the time.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
And here's the thing the book only God can judge me,
The Many Lives of Tupac Shaker. If you're hearing this
before it's out, because it comes out in the twenty first,
you can order it. It'll be at your door in
the twenty first if you're hearing this after the book
is out. Now, okay, final, final, final question. Did you
become more or less of a fan of the person
after writing the book?
Speaker 4 (57:54):
More? Because it's the same thing with everyone I write about.
I love the complexities of people, and I love the
journeys of people. And actually it is interesting the books
that are just glowing portraits of people, I don't think
they actually make you more of a fan. They just
reinforce your fandom. But when you learn about what someone
went through, the hardships, the troubles, the highs, the lows,
the horrible moments, the great moments, I almost think it
(58:15):
has to make you more of a fan because you
can appreciate the struggle. So that's where I sit.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
Jeff, appreciate the time, man, Good luck. I hope you
sell tons and tons of books.
Speaker 4 (58:23):
Thank you so much. I appreciate it all.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Right, Thanks Jeff, see letter man, oh Man, thank you
so much.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
Hey who are you doing next? Not for not you know,
I'm not gonna say anything. Are you working on one already?
Speaker 4 (58:32):
H I'm doing a book no one's going to buy.
That's a memoir about my early Nashville journalism career. Yeah,
it's a project. And then I'm either I'm lined up
to do the third Laker trilogy book about Kobe post
Shack and that whole team. But I don't know if
anyone's gonna care. So I'm a little torn.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
Well, both books, both books you just mentioned you went, well,
nobody's gonna care.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
Nobody's gonna care.
Speaker 4 (58:54):
I don't know. I'm self loathing to you from New York.
Speaker 2 (58:56):
It's what we do, you know, all right, Jeff, good
to talk to you, man, Bobby.
Speaker 4 (59:00):
I'll say your future.
Speaker 3 (59:02):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production
Speaker 2 (59:11):
M
Host
Bobby Bones
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