TUPAC TRIBUTE

John Singleton (Director of Poetic Justice)

It is very difficult to express what I'm feeling at this moment. Here in Los Angeles on 92.3 The Beat, I hear many people expressing their shock, surprise, and hurt, all at the loss of Tupac. I'm sitting here feeling all that and more. Am I shocked? Yes. Am I hurt? Yes. Am I surprised? No. For years I've felt that something like this could happen to Pac. But now that he's gone, I'm feeling very numb. When I saw Juice , Tupac's performance jumped out at me like a tiger. My favorite scene is the one where he threatens Omar Epps at the locker: "You righ, I am crazy. I don't care about you, I don't even care about myself." The scene felt so real. Here was an actor who could embody the freedom that an "I don't give a fuck" mentality gives a black man. I thought this was some serious acting. Maybe I was wrong. For many, it is easy to write Pac off as a crazy nigga who didn't know reality from stage or screen. It is true that he was an actor in every sense of the word. Tupac's acting career began at the age of 12 in A Raisin In The Sun at the Baltimore School for the Arts. He possesses a natural gift for acting. Pac had aspirations to be as good or better than De Niro or Pacino. And I wanted to help him get there, to be his scorsese. When I decided to cast him opposite Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice, Pac both rebelled and accepted my attitude toward him as a director/advisor. This was our dance in life and work. We'd argue, then make up. Get pissed off and then reconcile. This was the Tupac I knew: constantly traveling in his mind around what was right or wrong. Looking for a father figure. Searching to define himself as a black man who came from nothing and suddenly had it all - money, woman, cars, jewelry, and fame. Now that he's gone, I can only wonder what he'd feel to know that so many people are affected by his passing. Everyone has a different story about what he meant to them - good and bad. But Tupac spoke from a position that cannot be totally appreciated unless you understand the pathos of being a nigga - that is, a displaced African soul, full of power, pain, and passion, with no focus or direction for all that energy except his art.





BACK TO TUPAC'S HOMEPAGE




BACK 2 HOMEPAGE