'Gridlock'd': Praise for Tupac as an Actor

Original: ""Gridlock’d,” Tupac’s Performance Win Praise” · MTV News · no byline · January 31, 1997

Two heroin addicts want to get clean and run up against bureaucracy: in Gridlock’d, Tupac starred alongside Tim Roth. MTV News used the late January 1997 theatrical release as an occasion for a retrospective-and asked whether Tupac’s greatest talent might have been in acting.

Warmth and Humanity Instead of a Rapper Image

The segment featured colleagues and critics alike. Ernest Dickerson, director of Juice, reported that Tupac had always put something of himself into his roles. Tim Roth spoke about the humanity of the characters. Film critic Owen Gleiberman discovered in Tupac “a kind of warmth and humanity and modesty” that did not fit his rapper image at all.

Tupac Never Saw the Finished Film

The most moving memories were those of director Vondie Curtis-Hall. Tupac was a huge fan of Tim Roth and was desperate to film with him. However, he never got to see the finished film: in the week after the Tyson fight, he was scheduled to come into the studio for pick-ups. That never came to pass.

The segment also mentioned the soundtrack to the film featuring Out The Moon, Tupac’s final collaboration with Snoop Doggy Dogg, and pointed to his next film, Gang Related.

Number 1 on the Charts and Prison for Suge Knight

Gridlock’d opened in US theaters in late January 1997 and is still often considered Tupac’s strongest performance as an actor. A few days later, the soundtrack entered the Billboard album chart at No. 1.

At the end of the report, it noted that Suge Knight was awaiting sentencing on February 28. On that day, he received nine years in prison: Knight had violated probation conditions, not parole conditions as MTV had written.

The report shows how early that narrative began that shapes Tupac’s reputation today: alongside the music, many saw in him an actor whom they believed capable of a major film career.