Tupac vs. (Ken Peters)

The title says it all: Tupac vs., Tupac against the world, against the media, against himself. Filmmaker Ken Peters set out to show the contradictions that shaped Tupac’s short life. His starting point is a 1995 interview that had never been released.

Facts and figures

The DVD offered Dolby 5.1 sound, a director’s commentary, a photo gallery, the original trailer and scene selection.

What it covers

At the core of the film is a conversation recorded in 1995 at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Tupac was serving time there after his December 1994 conviction for sexual abuse. So the interview predates both his release on bail in October 1995 and his move to Death Row Records.

Around this interview Peters builds a portrait from rare photos and footage from Tupac’s career. Commentary comes from author Michael Eric Dyson, who published the biography Holler If You Hear Me in 2001, from Tupac’s former manager Leila Steinberg and from his teacher Arvand Elihu. The artist Rah Pacasso is also said to appear.

The theme: contradictions

According to the distributor’s description, Peters presents Tupac as someone who was many things at once, icon, scapegoat, martyr and a complicated human being: a man who wanted to change the world while doubting it would ever change. The film asks what experiences lay behind his music and brings in people who knew Tupac from different angles: as a student, as a young artist and as a subject of scholarship.

Verdict

From everything known about it, Tupac vs. is a portrait rather than an exposé. Speculation about the murder is not its focus. Its value rests on the prison interview: if you want to hear Tupac during that period of his life, this is a rare source. At just over an hour, it is too short to serve as a full overview of his life.

The differing years are explained as follows: the film carries a 2002 copyright, and the Xenon DVD came out on September 24, 2004 according to a University of Tennessee library catalog entry. For more on the case that sent Tupac to prison, see legal cases.