1996-02449 words · 2 min
"All Eyes on Him": Tupac's Phone Interview for Vibe, Late 1995
Five minutes turned into over an hour: In late 1995, Tupac speaks by phone with Kevin Powell about Suge Knight, Biggie, and the two men inside him.
Original: “All Eyes on Him” · Vibe · Kevin Powell · February 1996
Five minutes had been planned; in the end, they spoke for over an hour. For his Death Row cover story, Kevin Powell had missed Tupac in Los Angeles; it was only after the murder of Stretch on November 30, 1995, that he reached him by phone. Vibe printed the conversation as a sidebar alongside the main article.
Suge Knight Was the Only One Who Came
Tupac denies having sought protection at Death Row. Suge Knight, he said, was the only one who regularly visited him in prison, looked after his cases, and got his mother a house. He wanted to make Death Row the biggest label in the world.
His marriage was annulled; he had moved too fast. He sharply rejects the rumor that something was done to him in prison.
Competition Instead of Violence: The Offer to Bad Boy
Regarding Biggie and Puffy, he says he has no beef, but lets the music speak. At the same time, he accuses the East Coast of looking down on the West Coast, and Biggie of having copied his style-and still calls him his “brother.”
Instead of violence, he proposes a contest: Bad Boy and Death Row each release an album on the same day; whoever sells more wins. He describes his new album in one word: “Relentless.” Children should not listen to it without a conversation with their parents.
Conflict of Two People: Black Panther and Daredevil
At the end, Tupac speaks about himself: he wants to go into politics and will be “much calmer” in the year 2000. Inside him, two people were in conflict: the son of a Black Panther and the daredevil. His mother had shown him a better world; he had taught her to live in the real one. “She put heaven in my heart.”
From Proposed Peace to “Hit ‘Em Up”
The interview shows Tupac a few weeks after his release, full of plans and full of contradictions. The claim that there was no beef did not hold: in June 1996, Hit ‘Em Up appeared, one of the sharpest diss tracks in rap history, aimed at Biggie, Bad Boy, and other New Yorkers. The proposal of a sales competition remained an idea.
Tupac did not live to see the year 2000. He died in September 1996, Biggie in March 1997. The sentence about the two people inside him captures the contradiction that so many saw in Tupac in his own words.