Author Kevin Powell has exclusive footage of his time interviewing Tupac during his incarceration at Riker’s Island. Complex has the full interview below.
To promote his book, The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy’s Journey into Manhood, the author himself sat down with Complex to detail his relationship he built with the hip-hop icon during his time as Senior Writer for Vibe Magazine in the 1990s.
Powell releases three minutes of audio from Tupac describing the night he was shot at Quad Studios, as a possible set-up.’Pac was getting paged at the time anxiously by the manager who wanted a verse from him for his artist’s song, when he says he started to sense something.
“I wasn’t thinking. ‘Why they want me here so bad?'” Tupac says. “We got lost looking for the studio in Manhattan. We lost like, ‘Where the hell the studio at?’ He’s like, ‘Where you at?’…I knew he was from the streets. I knew he was trying to get legitimate, so I thought I was doing him a favor. He was like, ‘I don’t have the money, though.’ I said, ‘You don’t have the money, I ain’t coming.’ He kinda let the phone, called me back, he said, ‘I’ma give you the money outta my pocket.’…We got there, parked the car in the garage. We walkin’ up to the building. Somebody screamed from up the top in the studio, it’s Lil Cease. He’s like Biggie’s sideman. That’s my homeboy. I’ve been knowing them since before they came out. So I was like, ‘What’s up, yo?’ He’s like, ‘I’m coming downstairs. I’m coming downstairs. ‘Pac, what’s up we going to kick it.’ He had been calling me at the hotel, wanted to kick it and everything, so this was like the champ. So as soon as I saw him, all my inhibitions about, this could be a set-up, was relaxed.”
Powell states he released this interview now to coincide with a chapter in his book detailing his time spent with the rapper. He also says his next book is going to be a biography of the late great rapper, which got the OK from Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, and estate. Check the interview below!
