Tupac: Live at the House of Blues (concert film, 2005)

On July 4, 1996, Tupac Shakur took the stage at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, sharing the bill with Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound and Nate Dogg. A little over two months later he was dead. The night is regarded as his last fully recorded performance, and nine years later it came out as both a film and an album. Strictly speaking this is a concert film rather than a documentary; it is filed here with the documentaries all the same.

Release details

The show

The concert was a joint Death Row night. In the first half Tupac performs with his crew The Outlawz, backed by the R&B duo K-Ci & JoJo. He opens with Ambitionz Az a Ridah and runs through songs such as So Many Tears, Hit ‘Em Up and All About U. Three of them were still unreleased at the time: Troublesome, Tattoo Tears and Never Call U Bitch Again. They only appeared on record years after his death.

In the second half Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound with Kurupt and Daz, and Nate Dogg take over with tracks such as Murder Was the Case, Ain’t No Fun and Gin and Juice. Tha Dogg Pound also previewed Me in Your World, which later turned up on Death Row Greatest Hits. For the finale Tupac returns to perform 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted with Snoop.

The footage catches Tupac at the peak of his Death Row period: a few months after the album All Eyez on Me, in the middle of the feud with the East Coast. His stage talk is uncompromising, and the show as a whole is not for the faint-hearted.

Verdict

For fans, the recording matters because there are few professional recordings of complete Tupac concerts. It shows him as a live performer with huge presence and preserves three songs in their early form. Sound and picture are what you would expect from a 1996 club recording, not a lavish concert production.

There is no narration, no interviews and no background. For how that summer of 1996 ended, see the 1996 shooting. The album of the show is covered on the page Live at the House of Blues, CD.