“There was talk of visiting him in jail and sensationalizing all that’s happened to him but that’s not what I wanted to do at all,” Whalley said. Actors play out scenes from Shakur’s life, including his shooting last fall. The video for “Dear Mama,” directed by Lionel Martin, features the rapper’s mother, Afeni Shakur, a former member of the Black Panther Party who was in prison during part of her pregnancy with Tupac. “Me Against the World” also includes some incendiary tracks, but they blend together with “Dear Mama” and other surprisingly sensitive songs to provide a portrait of a man’s troubled environment. Several black women’s groups, angered over Shakur’s nomination for a 1994 NAACP Image Award, threatened to boycott the event in Pasadena, but no protest was evident at the ceremony.Īt last month’s Soul Train Awards in Los Angeles, however, rapper Queen Latifah publicly backed Shakur: “I support the brother-we can’t cast our black men aside.” “Keep Ya Head Up” was a departure from many of his songs at the time, which were more along the lines of the themes commonly found in gangsta rap-drug use, violence and misogyny. Shakur was acquitted on the sodomy charge last December, but the jury found him guilty of sexual abuse, finding that he had groped and touched the victim without her consent. Ironically, the single was in the Top 20 at the time of his arrest for forcible sodomy of a 20-year-old woman in the fall of 1993. His 1993 hit, “Keep Ya Head Up,” was touted for its pro-women stance. It’s not the first time Shakur has exhibited a sensitive side. “I just thought it was a great song, an emotional song.” “It wasn’t like, ‘Well, Tupac’s in jail, let’s find the most sympathetic song on the record and put it out so that the audience will be sympathetic to him,’ ” Whalley said. “Dear Mama,” a paean to Shakur’s mother, is “a rare expression of love in the rap world,” according to one reviewer, “displaying a sensitivity that outsiders would deny.”īut Tom Whalley, the Interscope executive who signed Shakur to the label in 1990, said the choice of “Dear Mama” as the album’s first single was not made with the intention of presenting the imprisoned rapper in a more positive light. The magazine hit newsstands early last month, as the “Dear Mama” single and video were starting to get airplay. “I think the Vibe article really says everything he’s feeling and covers all the bases,” she said. He has received other interview requests, she said, but declined them all. Lori Earl, head of publicity at Interscope, said the decision to give only one interview was Shakur’s, but she supported it. Alan Light, editor in chief at Vibe, said reader reaction to the cover story has been stronger than for any other story since the magazine was launched by Quincy Jones and Time Life 18 months ago.
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