Hi, I'm Kurt Loder, and this is "The Week In
Rock."
Although he's now entering his second year in the past
tense, the late rapper and actor Tupac Shakur continues to
move product, and he's still talking, too. Tupac's final
movie, a crime drama called "Gang Related," will be
released on October 8th. To promote it, the studio, MGM, has
sent out a press kit containing one of Shakur's last filmed
interviews, conducted in August of 1996, just a few weeks
before he was murdered in Las Vegas. Tupac's rap talent was
sometimes disputed, but not his natural charisma as a screen
actor, and here are his thoughts on that very subject.
TUPAC SHAKUR, 8.30.96: I can't explain why I shine and no
one else shines. I think everybody shines in different
things. And a lot of things I can't do. I can't play
basketball like every other black person in America. I can
act, I know how to go to that true spot in myself, 'cause I'm
there everyday. I can be me, I can be whoever because I'm
true to me, I can go to neutral easily. A lot of people,
black, white, Mexican, young, old, fat or skinny, have a
problem being true to their self, they have a problem looking
into the mirror and looking directly into their own soul...
[With] any character, I'm going to bring that intensity, that
truth, that honesty to it, because I have to repay for that
blessing.
MTV: As was the case with Tupac's other posthumous film
"Gridlock'd", there will be a Death Row soundtrack
attached to "Gang Related" -- score for which
Shakur wrote several songs.
SHAKUR: I did a song for it already called "Fortune
and Fame," and the hook goes like this: (singing)
"Something we all adore, the one thing worth dying for,
nothing for pain, stuck in this game, searching for fortune
and fame... something we all adore, the one thing we dying
for, nothing but pain, stuck in this game, searching for
fortune and fame..." That's what I hear. It's so basic
that we all want to be famous and noticed and watched, and
money and riches, and we all want the most out of life from
the most heartless gang-banger to the most virtuous police
officer.
The late Tupac Shakur on his last movie, "Gang
Related," opening October 8th.
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