Over the last 30 years, there have been countless books about Tupac Shakur, of various quality.
And while some have captured specific moments (Behind the Walls with Tupac Shakur), come from a specific angle (Got Your Back: Protecting Tupac in the World of Gangsta Rap), leaned into the mythology (Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur), or taken creative and wide-ranging approaches (The Tupac Encyclopedia), none have truly succeeded as a definitive, comprehensive biographical account of his life.
Veteran sportswriter-turned-author Jeff Pearlman set out to change that.
In October, Pearlman published Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur, a book he spent years reporting and writing. He interviewed over 600 people, both on and off the record, in an effort to capture a full portrait of Shakur’s life. Pearlman, who has written 11 books—including Showtime, which would be the source material used for the HBO series Winning Time—wanted to get at the reality of probably the most mythologized rapper of all time.
Much of the book focuses on penetrating the myths surrounding Pac. A significant portion discusses how, while he grew up poor, he didn’t have the same criminal-driven background as many of his gangsta rap contemporaries. It also complicates the image of Afeni Shakur, a Black Panther and civil rights activist, iconically memorialized in “Dear Mama.”
And while the book only scratches the surface of Tupac as a recording artist, Pearlman does an excellent job exploring his upbringing, which was constantly on the move, from New York City to Baltimore and eventually the Bay Area.
It’s a book worth digging a little deeper into. Here are a few things we’ve learned from Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur.
1.“Brenda’s Got a Baby” was based on real people who reconnected, thanks to the book.
The book begins with a revelation: Pearlman, through some impressive on-the-ground reporting, was able to track down Davonn Hodge, the real person who inspired the tragic 1991 song.
The song came out while Pac was filming his first movie Juice and he was still relatively unknown. While reading the New York Daily News, he came across an article titled “Cries in the Dark,” about a 12-year-old girl who was raped by a cousin, gave birth, and then threw the baby down a garbage chute. Thankfully, the baby was rescued.
Pearlman connected with both the baby, who is now Davonn, and his mother, and even helped to reunite them in person.
Before the book was published, Pearlman and Hodge appeared on the All the Smoke podcast to discuss the incident and the song. Hodge said he discovered the connection just before Pearlman reached out for the book, after taking an ancestry test. “I lived 32 years without knowing,” Hodge said. “Listening to this song my whole life, you know what I’m saying?”—Dimas Sanfiorenzo
2.Tupac was a prolific writer of love letters.
Pearlman’s Tupac is a man of letters, sometimes literally. In addition to filling journal pages with poems and song lyrics, he practiced the art of seduction by writing love notes to crushes and lovers.
One of the discoveries in the biography is a massive collection of letters he wrote to Mary Baldrige, a white classmate from the Baltimore School of Arts who lost her virginity to Tupac. “I look at your picture and get lost in your face,” he wrote her in a note dated December 9, 1987—one of the more sweetly chaste entries in the hundred-plus archive. “I want to feel the warm moisture of your mouth around my erection,” he writes in another.
Seventeen years old and horny, he kicked game from every angle, and Baldrige, now married and living in Nebraska, remembers him fondly. —Ross Scarano
3.Tupac was a member of the Young Communists League.
Pearlman’s biography spends a good amount of time on Tupac’s education at the Baltimore School of Arts, a time in his life when he felt free to explore every facet of his personality with less fear of judgment.
During his romance with Mary Baldrige, he joined the Young Communists Leage—Baldrige’s parents were active members of the Party—and “attended multiple meetings.”
Despite this participation in organized leftist politics, Pac and his mother clashed over how he spent his time, with Afeni pushing him to stop participating and “focus more on his grades,” as he described the row in a Feb. 1988 letter to Baldrige. “I intend to give her the coldest shoulder she’s ever seen and make her life as miserable as she’s made mine,” Tupac wrote. —Ross Scarano
4.On a dare at a party, he kissed a male classmate in high school.
Tupac, who spent most of his childhood in extreme poverty and often was mocked because of it, finally found his tribe and voice at BSA.
Suddenly, the fact that he wore crummy, thrifted and repeated outfits wasn’t a hindrance; he was in a community that prioritized individual expression over fancy fits. So for the first time, he began getting attention from his peers—girls and guys alike..
Seth Bloom, who is gay and was a classmate of Tupac’s, recounts a time at a party where the two shared a kiss on the lips as part of a dare. Bloom told Pearlman, “He kissed me. We kissed.” Leila Steinberg, a mentor to Tupac who helped guide his early career, added, “I do believe that nowadays he would have defined himself as fluid.” —Dimas Sanfiorenzo
5.To gather raw material to write about street life, Tupac studied a Marin City hustler.
If you've ever heard "Panther Power," you know that, before he was a superstar, ’Pac was more "politically charged street poet" than "Thug Life."
But his transition from Black Panther in training to street chronicler began way before Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z ... It actually started before he was even famous. One day while spitting in a Marin City cypher, ’Pac got out-rapped by a 13-year-old who rapped about the realities of the ghetto. Frustrated with the outcome, ’Pac began studying a big-time, 21-year-old Marin City hustler by the name of Bobby Burton. You could almost say it was an internship. Some time after watching how Bobby moved from day to day, ’Pac returned to his apartment and spit a new rap called "Dayz of a Criminal" for his friend, who couldn't believe how good he'd become at writing street raps in such a short time. If Thug Life wasn't born that day, it was definitely in utero.—Peter A. Berry
6.He got his '50 N****z' tattoo while filming 'Poetic Justice,' disrupting production.
Tupac was not always easy to work with and could be a frustrating collaborator in unpredictable ways. Much has been written about the friction between Pac and Janet Jackson on set—she infamously wanted him to get an AIDS test before their kissing scenes.
But the book also details another moment that highlights the tension. Just before he was set to shoot a love scene with Janet, he arrived late with gauze on his chest.
Little did anyone know, the night before he had impulsively gotten the famous “50 Niggaz” tattoo, atop a rifle, on his chest. Director John Singleton was furious and asked Pac what they should do, to which the rapper replied, “Fuck if I know,” before heading back to his trailer. —Dimas Sanfiorenzo
7.Tupac was into peeing on sexual partners.
From dalliances with French twins to affairs with stars like Madonna and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, a significant portion of Pearlman’s book is devoted to Pac’s voracious sexual appetite. There are numerous anecdotes describing his sexual bravado, and at times the details get explicit.
When discussing Pac’s early years working on tour under Digital Underground—before he became a solo artist—Pearlman writes that Pac was one of the figures who constantly was chasing after groupies. One anecdote, from Dwight, who worked with Pac on tour, details how he would pee on women bluntly, remarking that “that shit…was wild.” —Dimas Sanfiorenzo
8.Linda Davidson, the widow of the murdered Texas patrolman, still blames Tupac for her husband's death.
“Tupac was killed on my birthday. So I celebrate the day twice.” That’s Linda Davidson, the widow of Bill Davidson, still relishing the death of the artist decades later. Bill worked as a Texas highway patrolman and was shot and killed while on duty on April 11, 1992 by Ronald Ray Howard. 2Pacalypse Now was discovered in the tape deck of Howard’s Chevrolet Blazer, launching a fallacious attempt to hold Tupac and Interscope Records responsible for the officer’s death, with the prosecution arguing that Howard was made into a murderer by the content of the art. According to Pearlman, Linda Davidson still believes this to be true. —Ross Scarano
9.The scrapped Troublesome 21 was a better album than Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z...
2Pac’s second album Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.. was actually a backup plan. Pac had originally decided to call his sophomore album Troublesome 21, a title the book was said to represent his mindset and his age at the time.
The LP was recorded during and after the post-Rodney King verdict Los Angeles riots, so naturally, Tupac's anti-cop sentiments only intensified. It featured tracks like “Still Don’t give a Phuck.” Apparently, those feelings were a little ... too intense for his label, which rejected the then-finished product ostensibly because of anti-police lyrics.
DJ Darrly, who worked on the album with Pac, spoke about the project, saying, “I’m not saying this because I worked on it, but it’s a really good album. When we worked together, everything had to be perfect—the lyrics, the production, everything. He had this incredibly high standard, and the album, I believe, achieved it.”
Angry at the label that curtailed his vision—and even more so at the politicians who pressured them to do it—Pac retitled the project Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z..., a middle finger of a name that properly evoked revolution.—Peter A. Berry
10.Months before Ayanna Jackson, another woman filed a police report in Los Angeles alleging that Tupac and his entourage sexually assaulted her.
The biggest revelation in the book is a police report filed on July 23, 1993 that Pearlman uncovered, describing two instances of rape allegedly perpetrated by Tupac and a member of his entourage. Drawing on the report and a present-day interview with the alleged victim, who is given a pseudonym, Pearlman describes the evening of July 19, 1993, in which a 21-year-old model met Shakur at a club in West Hollywood. Intoxicated and ditched by her friends, she accepted a ride from Shakur and his entourage, who drove her to a home he was renting in Sherman Oaks, instead of taking her home. Inside, the woman alleged thaht Shakur had intercourse with her, while a revolver lay in plain view on the nightstand. “She did not protest citing her fears that he would become violent,” is how it is described in the police report.
According to the report, Shakur then attempted anal intercourse with her, and the woman protested and screamed; Shakur then pushed her to perform oral sex, which she also refused. After that "according to the vict [Shakur] invited the remaining individuals in to have sex with her.” The woman continued to yell and Shakur told his entourage to get her out. One member of the entourage drove her to a nearby 7-11 where she called a tax. But when the car arrived, she said the driver scared her and she asked the man who drove her to drive her the rest of the way. He said he would, on the condition that he have sex with her. “She begged him to reconsider, but after he declined to waiver from his demand she gave in,” the report says.
The report went unacted on, because the then head of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Sex crimes unit “reviewed the details and rejected the case.” The reasoning: “The vict’s decision to have sex with susp-2 as opposed to notifying the police via 911 at the first available pay phone or notifying 7-11 clerk of her dilemma etc were the fatal details that derailed any hopes of a successful filing against either Shakur or susp-2.”
The pseudonymous victim tells Pearlman that, because of her experience, she believed Ayanna Jackson, who accused Tupac of rape in New York four months later. “I know a lot of people that that woman in New York was lying,” she tells Pearlman. “Well, I’ve been through it. I learned who Tupac Shakur was. I have no doubt she was telling the truth.” —Ross Scarano
11.He was a beast on the grill.
There were apparently upsides and downsides to living with Pac. For one, he was a "slob" who had a tendency to get messy. But the upside? He could cook his ass off. He particularly specialized in barbecue chicken and well-seasoned steaks. His friend Kendrick Wells also said Pac could cook up a mean gumbo. Wells was so impressed, in fact, he said Pac was, at the time, actually a better cook than a rapper. Interestingly, in future tales of how he first hung out with The Notorious B.I.G. years later, Pac cooked some steak and fries for Big and all the homies after smoking a hefty back of ganja. By then, he'd closed the gap between his rap and kitchen skills.—Peter A. Berry
12.He had a close relationship with an adult movie star named Spantaneeus Xtasty.
Volatile as he was, Tupac could be quite the giver. Sometime after he began dating her, Tupac put Sharon Johnson—otherwise known as porn star Spantaneeus Xtasty—up in a Thousand Oaks apartment. Later, after hearing she was being beaten and raped by her boyfriend in Texas, Tupac transported another former love interest, Dahlia “Poochie” McCutchen, to the same spot, where she lived with Spantaneeus and some other folks who set out to live their dreams. You might describe it as a micro version of a Thugz Mansion.—Peter A. Berry
13.Tupac's grave is located in North Carolina.
There have, of course, been many rumors and conspiracy theories about Tupac. Over the last 30 years, we’ve heard everything from “Tupac is hiding out in Cuba” to “the Outlaws smoked his ashes.” The truth, however, is more mundane. Tupac is buried under an unassuming headstone in Lumberton, North Carolina. His burial site is at 2630 Seventh Street Road, in the yard of an abandoned house. Lumberton is where Afeni was born, and she had his ashes buried there and placed beneath the headstone.
The Lumberton house has remained empty for years. According to Pearlman, Dante Powers, a cousin, maintains the upkeep. “It’s crazy… Most famous rapper in history. Just here in little ol’ Lumberton,” Powers said. —Dimas Sanfiorenzo