Review of the Adult Video for 'How Do U Want It'

Original: “Ballin’ With Tupac” · outlet not recorded · Carol Cooper · dated November 6, 1996

Tupac himself stays dressed while clothes drop all around him: the uncensored cut of How Do U Want It is staged as a kind of “Player’s Ball.” Right in the center stand singers K-Ci and JoJo from the group Jodeci, surrounded by plenty of bare skin. According to critic Carol Cooper, Tupac co-directed this “adult version” alongside Ron Hightower, even though usually only Hightower is credited as director. The spectacle did little to convince Cooper herself: on her personal scale, she gave the clip a sober 5 out of 10.

A Tradition Older Than Tupac’s Career

What she finds more interesting than the nudity is the tradition behind it: pimp tales and “toasts” from prison folklore, Iceberg Slim, Too $hort, Slick Rick, and Prince’s Gett Off. She also places Tupac’s own roots with Digital Underground here, as their songs likewise toyed with pimp roles. Tupac, she concludes, stands in a lineage far older than his career.

The Party Without the Morning After

Cooper does not argue from prudishness. She notes that no one in the video is forced into anything, and asks what actually bothers the viewer: the naked bodies, the smiling women, or the group-sex staging? Her objection is different: the clip shows only the party and never the morning after. In the real lives of pimps and prostitutes, such moments are brief and dearly paid for; romanticizing this world solidifies a self-image built on self-contempt and “us against everyone.”

In the end, she asks where this video was supposed to air at all, as MTV and BET would never show it. And she predicts that Tupac and Jodeci would regret it at 40, “should they live so long,” as she writes: if they lived to be that old.

Three Video Versions for the Final Lifetime Single

How Do U Want It was the last single released during Tupac’s lifetime (May 28, 1996, from All Eyez on Me). There are three video versions: an explicit and a sanitized studio version (both directed by Ron Hightower, produced by Tracy D. Robinson), as well as a concert version.

The explicit version, which according to Wikipedia also features several adult film actresses, was not intended for music television; Cooper expects that MTV and BET would never show it. The same song also contains the line aimed at rap critic C. DeLores Tucker, who later sued Tupac’s estate.

A Bitter Line After September 13

The text is dated a few weeks after Tupac’s death on September 13, 1996. The archive text contained a duplicated part of a paragraph; the outlet of initial publication is not documented.

Whether it was written before or after September 7 can no longer be resolved. Cooper’s aside about reaching the age of 40 thus reads bitterly.