In the newest piece to Mally Mall’s conversation with Live With Steve Lobel, the Las Vegas-artist shares a chilling conversation he had with Tupac Shakur’s mother, Afeni Shakur. Following Tupac’s tragic death in 1996, as Mall tells it, “gangsters” were sent to several studios to grab Makaveli’s unreleased recordings and put them in storage. Mall was able to get his hands on 50 unreleased tracks and broker a deal with the Shakur family. Here’s how says he did it:
“A lot of people know that in 1996 when Suge Knight went to jail and Pac died, back then it wasn’t digital,” Mall says. “It was an analog world. Cats that were gangster were told to go to studios, grab his stuff and put it in storage. A cat named Cas from the 60s who had cancer, he wasn’t doing good at the time, he was in the streets. As you know, being as street dude, you can’t go to the labels like that because they’re scared of the federal laws and the FCC and all that stuff with the records. Me, I was smart, I knew what I wanted to do with it.”
Mall says that out of the 100 or so recordings in Cas’ possession, 50 or so were unreleased tracks. He took those to Big Yu who called Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur.
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“I got on the phone with Afeni [Shakur],” he concludes. “She said, ‘Before I say anything, I wanted to tell you that Tupac is here right now. He’s listening to everything we’re saying. He’s here with us right now. My son wanted you to bring this footage to us and the fact that you died in Vegas and you’re from the Bay where he grew up and died in Vegas…’ It was just real spiritual. I’ll never forget that day. I got the chills all over my body. I said, ‘I don’t want anything for the footage. I just want you guys to give me the opportunity to produce on these records.’ We worked out a deal with them. I ended up losing in the end but I didn’t do it for the money. I did it for Pac. I feel like it’s something that changed the music and changed history. The last two albums that were created—’Thug Mansion,’ etc, were because of those vocals, those songs.”
