KMEL with Sway: Tupac Speaks to the Bay Area (April 19, 1996)

Original: Radio interview · KMEL, San Francisco, Westside Radio · Sway Calloway · April 19, 1996 · transcribed by Davey D

When and where

On Friday, April 19, 1996, Tupac was a guest on KMEL in San Francisco. The interviewer was Sway Calloway, who hosted The Wake Up Show with DJ King Tech, hence the title. According to Davey D, who transcribed the conversation for his website, it aired on the station’s Westside Radio program. For Bay Area listeners it was an event: Tupac had not spoken at length to anyone since joining Death Row, and, as Davey D put it, he hadn’t been through the Bay in what felt like years.

Spring 1996

Tupac had been out on bail since October 1995, and All Eyez on Me was dominating the charts. The Death Row-Bad Boy feud was at its peak. On March 22, 1996, Dr. Dre had left the label, and nobody from the Death Row camp had commented yet. Snoop Doggy Dogg had been acquitted of murder in February.

The Bay and prison

Sway opened by asking when Tupac was coming back. The answer was a love letter to the places that shaped him, the East Coast, the Bay, Los Angeles, Baltimore:

“I felt like whatever I am the Bay Area had something to do with making me.” Tupac Shakur on KMEL, April 19, 1996

His fans had made him No. 1 while he was locked up, and he would not forget it. The 1994 shooting, he said, had slowed him down and made him more careful. His life played out in public “like a soap opera.” He found an image for it that later became the title of a book of his poems: when a rose grows out of concrete, nobody counts the scratches on its petals, they marvel that it grew at all.

Death Row, Bad Boy and Dr. Dre

He came to Death Row through Suge Knight: during his worst legal troubles, he said, Suge paid him around $200,000 for a song for the Murder Was the Case soundtrack, and he never forgot it. In prison he had thought about quitting; it was what Biggie and Puffy said in Vibe that drove him back to work.

He described the feud as a broken “peace treaty” and stressed that it was aimed at Bad Boy, not the East Coast. Death Row East was in the works with Eric B. and other New York veterans, and he wanted Wu-Tang on board too:

“I’m calling for dialogue.” Tupac Shakur on KMEL, April 19, 1996

He would not sit down with Puffy and Biggie themselves, though. He was harsher still on Dr. Dre: in his telling, Dre had failed to testify for Snoop even though his testimony could have helped. What is on record is that Snoop was acquitted regardless.

Plans and fans

The last part covered music and the future: videos for “How Do U Want It” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” a battle record aimed at Bad Boy, his new group The Outlawz, Bay artists like E-40 and Rappin’ 4-Tay, a quieter follow-up to Me Against the World, and his job as music supervisor for the film Gridlock’d. He told fans why he sometimes seemed cold: after prison and the shooting he was nervous and paranoid. Five years out, he saw himself as an A&R man at Death Row, with his own production company and a youth sports league funded by rappers.

Why it matters

This is one of the longest conversations from Tupac’s final year; Davey D revisited it in 2009 under the headline “the Infamous Westside Radio Interview.” It shows his full range: tender toward home, unforgiving toward Bad Boy, and full of plans he would mostly never get to carry out.

Read more: Hot 97, 1996 · MTV with Snoop Dogg