Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Scores Tupac's Last Film

Original: “Dead drummer still very active” · Associated Press, reprinted in the Las Vegas Sun · no byline · October 1997

For his crime thriller, director Jim Kouf needed a driving, powerful soundscape. He immediately thought of Mickey Hart, the drummer of the Grateful Dead, whose all-percussion album Planet Drum had been released in the early 1990s. Hart was to compose the score for Gang Related—Tupac’s final film.

A Prophet and His Groove

A short culture dispatch from the AP news agency out of San Rafael, California, reported on the project. Hart explained there that he first let the film sink in for a while. “Everything had a groove in this movie,” he said. Then he took a swing at it.

The project shows how broad the scope of Tupac’s final work was: a crime thriller with Jim Belushi, in which Tupac plays corrupt police officer Jake Rodriguez, scored by a musician from the 1960s rock counterculture. Filming wrapped in 1996; Tupac himself never met Hart.

Even so, the drummer had a remarkable line about him: Tupac was “not only a product, but also a prophet, of his generation and his environment.” He had only just begun to stretch out.

Release Date Correction

The AP article is often dated August 4, 1997. However, the dispatch states that the film would open “on Wednesday.” Since Gang Related opened on Wednesday, October 8, 1997, the text almost certainly dates from the days just before, in early October 1997.

The film opened on October 8, 1997, in 1,260 North American theaters, ranked tenth on its opening weekend, and grossed roughly $5.9 million overall. Better known than the film score was the rap soundtrack of the same name from Death Row, featuring several Tupac songs.