Right On! 1993: Between Bishop and Lucky

Original: Interview · Right On! · writer not recorded · 1993 according to the archive, issue not identified

When and where

A year after their first conversation, the New York teen magazine Right On! came back to Tupac. The issue and the writer were not recorded. The introduction pins down the timing: Tupac is getting ready to release Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z…, which came out on February 16, 1993, and John Singleton’s Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson is “soon to be released” (it opened July 23, 1993). The interview was therefore done around the turn of 1992/93; according to the archive it ran in 1993.

The situation

The magazine described Tupac as being at a “weird place” in his career: praised for playing Bishop in Juice, attacked over 2Pacalypse Now, which Vice President Dan Quayle had publicly condemned in 1992. His answer to “what’s up with you?” summed it up: “Just struggling and surviving.”

Censorship and Thug Life

The new album was “strictly” for his people, Tupac said, and he made it partly because fan mail urged him not to give up. It was supposed to be called Troublesome 21, but Time Warner had objected to the content. What he couldn’t say there, he planned to put on a street album with his friends: Thug Life. It meant standing up for the people “on the lower level of life” instead of moving away and pretending things had gotten better, like others did. The project came out in September 1994 as Thug Life: Volume 1.

He said he wrote all the lyrics himself and co-produced everything, working with Stretch, DJ Bobcat and Digital Underground, among others. The group was still together, and he had contributed a song to their new album.

Lucky, Bishop and Janet Jackson

In Poetic Justice Tupac plays Lucky, a mail carrier and single father. He explained the difference from Bishop in Juice: Bishop broke at the edge, Lucky was doing his best. And Tupac himself?

“Mess with me and I turn into Bishop real fast. Leave me alone and I will be Lucky.” Tupac Shakur, Right On!, 1993

He had only good things to say about Janet Jackson: he was often invited to her house for dinner, and she was “cool and sweet.” He took acting seriously, but in a world where police harassed young Black men for nothing, he said, he couldn’t take it as seriously as breathing.

Plans and outlook

He had started a production company, was managing other groups, wanted to write a screenplay and was working on “Thug International” to unite “thugs all over the country.” What bothered him about current rap was that everyone just wanted to rap faster, louder and crazier. Asked where he wanted to be in ten years, he kept it short:

“Alive ten years from now!” Tupac Shakur, Right On!, 1993

Why it matters

The interview catches the shift from newcomer to star, and the moment “Thug Life” went from a tattoo to a program. The tension between “Bishop” and “Lucky” that he names here followed him to the end. His answer to the last question reads bitterly today: he lived to be 25.

Read more: Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. · Poetic Justice · Thug Life · Right On! 1992