Sister 2 Sister: Jamie Foster Brown Visits Tupac in Prison (1995)

Original: prison interview with Tupac · Sister 2 Sister · Jamie Foster Brown · 1995 (reprinted in 2001 as “The 1995 Tupac Interview from Jail”)

When and where

Sister 2 Sister was a celebrity and entertainment magazine for a Black readership. Jamie Foster Brown founded it in 1988 and published it until 2014; Newsweek once called it the African American version of People. Brown conducted the interview herself, although the archived text only labels her questions “Sister 2 Sister.”

The archived text gives no date. The magazine reprinted the interview in 2001 under the title “The 1995 Tupac Interview from Jail, A Jamie Foster Brown Interview.” That confirms the year 1995; the issue in which it first appeared could not be identified. In 1995 Tupac was held on Rikers Island until March and then at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, in upstate New York. In the interview he mentions being kept out of the general population and a lawsuit he filed to get transferred. That points to Dannemora, but the excerpt never names the place.

Where Tupac stood in 1995

Tupac was serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse. Me Against the World hit No. 1 in spring 1995 while he sat in a cell. In October 1995 he was released on bail posted by Death Row.

What they talked about

The archived excerpt is short and starts mid-conversation. Asked about his house in Atlanta, Tupac says he gave it to the family of a murdered friend named Kato. His own family, he says, did not appreciate the house, and he has many relatives to support.

Does he want to be bigger than life once he is out? Quite the opposite:

“I wanna be smaller than life when I’m out.” Tupac Shakur, Sister 2 Sister, 1995

He talks about fans who drove in from Chicago and a bag of mail every week; he mostly reads letters from kids or ones with a photo. He describes prison life matter-of-factly: showers three times a week, unreliable water, violence among inmates. He himself is not in general population. To be paroled, he says, he is required to complete programs that his classification does not allow him to attend, and his applications supposedly get lost.

Trouble with guards and an old dispute

Tupac describes a conflict over his mail at length. Guards brought him dozens of letters a day, he says, then wrote him up for having too much mail. During a confrontation, a sergeant put his hands around his neck. That is his account; the excerpt contains no response from the prison.

At the end, Brown brings up an earlier encounter in which he threatened her. According to the text, he does not remember at first, then accuses her of never asking for his side. He tells the story of a limousine driver who pulled a gun on him and his entourage and is now suing him in civil court. The details of that incident cannot be reliably reconstructed from the excerpt.

Why it matters

This is not a big statement interview like Ready to Live in Vibe. It shows Tupac’s prison routine up close: fan mail, the shower schedule and fights over paperwork. According to Google Books excerpts, the 2001 reprint includes further questions, for example about Biggie and the Black Panthers, that are missing from the archived text.