Unseen interview: more acting, less music

On April 23, 2023, to mark the launch of Dear Mama, Entertainment Tonight released a find: previously unseen interview footage of Tupac, recorded a few months before he was killed. The conversation was about the film Gridlock’d, which reached theaters only after his death. In it Tupac says he wants to move further away from music in order to act more.

Pushing the envelope

He wants to “push the envelope and work, work, work,” Tupac says in the clip. Talking about All Eyez On Me, his first album for Death Row Records, he explains that it consists of his emotions but is not thought-provoking. He wants his music to become more substantial.

Growing on camera

The best way to get there, he says, is working in film, because there he grows, learns new things and has more to talk about. The clip fits what people around him have long said: Tupac saw film as a second career. For his screen work see Gridlock’d and the album All Eyez On Me.