Davey D Meets the "Rebel of the Underground" (1991)

Original: “1991 2Pac Interview” · Davey D · recorded around 1991 at Tupac’s apartment · published on Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner (daveyd.com)

When and where

In the 1990s Davey D was one of the key hip-hop voices in the Bay Area, on the radio (including KMEL in San Francisco, hence the station name in the title) and in print with his own newsletter. He had known Tupac for a couple of years, he says, when he visited him at his apartment around 1991. He ran excerpts in his newsletter back then, and then the tape went missing. Years later, while writing liner notes for a Digital Underground greatest-hits set, he found it again on the B-side of a cassette holding a Shock G interview. He posted the full transcript on daveyd.com and aired the conversation on his KPFA show Hard Knock Radio.

Davey D gives no exact date, but the content narrows it down. Tupac describes his October 17, 1991 run-in with Oakland police as something that just happened, 2Pacalypse Now (released November 12, 1991) is done, and Juice is about to open in January 1992. The talk most likely took place in late 1991.

Who Tupac was at the time

Tupac was 20, a dancer and rapper with Digital Underground about to step out on his own. He traced his route, born in New York, teenage years in Baltimore, then Marin City and Oakland. Marin City, he said, taught him to be direct: nobody there dressed poverty up in metaphors. He got into Digital Underground through Shock G, and he described the group’s “shuttle” as his ticket out of the ghetto.

2Pacalypse Now and the police

He summed up his debut in one line: it was about the young Black male, at a moment when the industry was already moving on from the subject. Asked what problems he meant, he listed police brutality, poverty, unemployment, poor schools, violence within the community, teenage pregnancy and crack. His songs showed both how things really play out and how he wished they would.

He went into detail about Oakland. Two officers had stopped him for jaywalking; after an argument over his name he ended up in a chokehold, cuffed and charged with resisting arrest. He announced a $10 million lawsuit and said he would use the money for, among other things, a “Stop Police Brutality Center.” The case was eventually settled for about $43,000.

Juice and the Underground Railroad

He landed Juice almost by accident, tagging along with Money B to an audition. He described his character, Roland Bishop, as insecure, violent and desperate for respect. The film’s message, in his words:

“You never know what’s going on in somebody’s mind.” Tupac Shakur to Davey D, around 1991

He closed with the Underground Railroad, a project named after Harriet Tubman’s escape network that was meant to pull young men out of the drug trade and into music, “twenty strong,” from Baltimore, Marin City, Oakland and New York. It included Nothing Gold, a group of kids he was producing.

Why it matters

The interview catches Tupac before fame: political, alert, full of plans and already speaking for a whole generation. Davey D later remembered it above all for its intensity. Many of its themes, police violence, responsibility, music as a way out, run through every interview that followed.

Read more: 2Pacalypse Now · Right On! 1992