![]() ![]() “Tupac is a guy who went to prison after being convicted of sexual abuse, who raised the stakes of the beef by boasting that he slept with Biggie’s wife Faith Evans. “We’re exploring the over-policing of minority communities, the discourse over what is or isn’t acceptable for the ‘public square’, and issues of sexism and misogyny,” he says. The podcast also investigates the issues that gave rise to gangsta rap and the shockwaves it sent. But it’s incredible to listen to the audio of those hearings they really thought Tupac was gonna encourage a whole generation of cop killers.” “But gangsta rap was much more explicit about what was going on in the artists’ communities, talking about real violence, real sexism, real police brutality – things that people did not talk about in that way before. “It’s crazy to think there were Capitol Hill hearings about the music of the Geto Boys and Tupac,” Anderson says, of the era’s febrile mood. We meet lawyers who tried to keep defendants accused of killing police officers away from death row by citing the influence of rap, and hear the actor and National Rifle Association (NRA) spokesperson Charlton Heston reciting the lyrics to Ice-T’s Cop Killer in his campaign to get the rapper’s band Body Count kicked off their record label. At the podcast’s centre is a US still reeling from the 1992 LA riots, and in the grip of moral hysteria over gangsta rap. Just as Slow Burn’s first two series brought to life the fevered eras of Watergate and the Lewinsky scandal, Anderson says the third aims to “examine and unearth strange subplots and the hidden characters of the story”, focusing on unexplored details and bringing the background to the foreground. Instead of re-raking the over-familiar “Tupac v Biggie” narrative, Anderson approaches his subject from new angles. And we’re gonna talk about how some don’t even believe Tupac is dead in the first place,” he adds, referencing conspiracy theories that the rapper had faked his death (a scenario that inspired one of comic Dave Chappelle’s best sketches). But we won’t run away from discussing what happened there – and why it wasn’t solved. We have a rough idea of what happened, but it’s doubtful these murders will ever be solved. A lot of documentaries and books have focused on that aspect, and have all ended up at the same place. “I didn’t want the show to be some kind of autopsy. “If people think we’re gonna solve it, they’ll be disappointed,” he says. Slow Burn does not play the story as some whodunnit. I didn’t even have a cellphone.”Ī scene from Biggie and Tupac, Nick Broomfield’s 2002 documentary. That’s the way things happened back then. And I remember this paucity of information, not being able to get the information on it that I wanted. “It was just this huge outpouring of grief. “All the people on the radio were crying,” he says. Anderson heard the news of Tupac’s death while driving home from college. Where the first two series of Slow Burn, presented by Leon Neyfakh, explored the respective impeachment trials of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, season three exits the White House to examine what Anderson describes on the show as “a friendship gone bad that turned into a nationwide turf war”. ![]() ![]() And we still don’t have any resolution about what both their careers and their deaths meant.”Īnderson is a reporter in search of that closure. “They were two of the biggest celebrities of the 90s,” says Joel Anderson, culture journalist and host of the latest season of Slate’s acclaimed podcast Slow Burn, which investigates the lives and deaths of Tupac and Biggie, AKA Notorious BIG. This ignited a conflict between hip-hop’s east and west coast factions that would outlive its key protagonists Tupac was shot dead in September 1996 and Biggie was killed in a drive-by the following March. He survived, and accused New York gangsta rap figurehead Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace of setting up the hit. The jury was almost ready to deliver its verdict, and the planned recording session – with Brooklyn MC Little Shawn – promised a brief respite from these legal woes, and to net the rapper a much-needed $7,000.īut as Tupac entered the lobby at Quad Studios, three waiting gunmen opened fire. Having risen to stardom via his debut album 2Pacalypse Now and 1993 commercial breakthrough Strictly 4 My NIGGAZ, the Californian rapper was now on trial for possession of illegal weapons and sexual assault after a woman accused him and his entourage of raping her in a New York hotel room 12 months earlier. O n the night of 29 November 1994, Tupac Shakur arrived at a recording studio in New York. ![]()
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