Five Days After His Death: MTV Airs the Video for "I Ain't Mad at Cha"

On the evening of September 18, 1996, MTV aired the video for I Ain’t Mad at Cha for the first time, one of the calm tracks on All Eyez on Me. Death Row had delivered it to the station on the Monday after Tupac’s death. What viewers saw, many took as a premonition: Tupac leaves a building with a friend, shots are fired, he collapses. The next scene shows him in an ambulance, paramedics battling for his life until one says he is gone.

A Heaven of His Own Design

Afterwards, Tupac, dressed completely in white, enters a heaven where an actor playing Redd Foxx welcomes the guests. Standing around a piano are actors portraying Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, and others. In the end, Tupac returns to Earth as an angel to stand by an old friend.

Director J. Kevin Swain told the Los Angeles Times that the concept came from Tupac “from top to bottom”; filming took place over two nights in June in Hancock Park and Downtown Los Angeles. Death Row spokesman George Pryce said it was almost as if Tupac had sensed something.