Tupac recently got his own exhibit at the Grammy Museum. Consider it a consolation prize for the iconic hip hop figure that received 7 nominations (4 after his death in 1996) but never took home the gold. Where was the California Love, Grammys?
Kendrick Lamar fans go to hear the rapper’s highly anticipated album To Pimp a Butterfly earlier than expected when it accidentally dropped on Sunday, a week before its scheduled release date.
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Within the album’s closing song, “Mortal Man,” Lamar engages in a conversation with the late Tupac Shakur using audio excerpts from a rare 1994 interview between Shakur and the host of Swedish radio show P3 Soul, Mats Nileskar. The interview took place just two weeks before the infamous shooting at Quad Recording Studios in New York City, where the rapper was robbed and shot five times in the building lobby.
Shakur discusses his humble rise to fame in a segment of the interview that can be heard on the track. “I see myself as a natural-born hustler — a true hustler in every sense of the word. I took nothing, I took the opportunities, I worked at the most menial and degrading job and built myself up so I could get it to where I owned it,” he says. “I went from having somebody manage me to me hiring the person that works my management company. I changed everything. I realized my destiny in a matter of five years, you know what I’m saying? I made myself a millionaire.”
An excerpt of the interview can be found below.
The other parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
Listen to Lamar’s “Mortal Man” below.
