A previously unheard, nearly two decade-old phone conversation between the late Tupac Shakur and his friend and former gang member Sanyika “Monster” Shakur was released this week.
During the nearly 25 minute-long phone call, Tupac discussed his plans for the community, the shooting at Quad Studios, and approaching Maya Angelou to obtain her assistance in writing his autobiography.
While speaking on helping the community, Tupac shared his plans to launch a youth sports organization that would include teams coached by rappers. In addition to the youth sports organization, he also spoke on recruiting his fellow artists to perform at free block parties in the hood.
“I want to get this organization started with you,” Tupac said, while speaking with Sanyika. “Only we can do it. Let me tell you the idea. It’s where we start this youth league, right? Football league, basketball…softball, for girls and boys. I’mma get all the rappers to adopt a team. Each rapper have his own team. Coolio will have his team. Treach have his team. I’ll have my team. And we play. And the rappers the ones that put the money up. We get the field to play. We have the churches come out and sell food. We have the fathers and the uncles and all of the men in the community, they do security…Get that community spirit going again. And then on the weekends we have block parties. Every rapper gotta give it up. Every rapper, nigga, you gotta wreck it out. You gotta get up for us. You gotta come do a free show for the hood.”
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Later in the phone call, Tupac spoke on registering people to vote during his block parties and using those newly-registered voters to approach politicians about requests for the community. On top of his youth league and block parties, Pac said he also wanted to approach drug dealers directly about keeping neighborhoods safe for children during certain hours.
“And then when we do that we register the voters,” he said. “And if we can register them for Democrats, Republicans, or Independent. Once we register the voters we have power. Then we start going up to the mayors of these cities and telling them ‘Look, we got this many voters in this city. We want you to do this.’
“I’mma have all these tough-ass supposed-to-be-gangster-rappers,” Pac added. “We gonna all get in the van. We gonna travel…We gon’ drive to all these drug areas, right? Imagine me Redman, Treach, Ice Cube, them type of niggas. Getting out, going to whoever the main drug dealer on that block—‘Who run shit?’ If we get out of a van and be like ‘What’s up, nigga? How y’all doing? What’s up? Yo, who the nigga that run shit?’ They gon’ take us to that nigga. We invite those niggas to dinner. Invite them niggas to some Dom Perignon, steak, and lobster. And be like ‘Look playa, we asking you, not telling you. We asking you as a playa to a playa, can you please give us a pass to have these streets clean from 6 AM to 11 PM. Let that be for the kids. Let them niggas be safe during that time. No gunshots. No drug dealings.”
In regards to the shooting at Quad Studios, which resulted in Tupac being shot five times, he said the incident and his sexual assault trial were “all connected.”
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“The girl that did this rape shit, she hooked up with the niggas that shot me,” Tupac said. “It’s all connected. It was a big plan. I just caught it like at the end. And that’s why they shot me.”
The full phone conversation can be found below (via XXL).
