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Episode 496: Jeff Pearlman Finds the Little Guys
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“So much misery. It is so much misery. It is so hard. It's not natural, locking yourself in your room for three years to focus on one person is not mentally healthy. Leigh Montville, great, great writer, said to me years ago, he's like, ‘It's an unnatural thing. You spend two years in a hole to come out for two weeks, you know?’” — Jeff Pearlman, author of Only God Can Judge Me.
Today we have Jeff Pearlman returning to the show to talk about his 11th book, his latest book, Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur (Mariner Books). Jeff has made a career out of being a sports writer, so when I heard he had turned his biographical eye toward a hiphop icon from the 1990s, I was especially intrigued by how he would approach it. It’s the kind of book he could pursue after having proved himself ten times before, with a few of his books becoming coveted NYT bestsellers. He interviewed close to 700 people for the book … that’s how you do this. THAT is how it’s done.
The first time he was on, I think I annoyed him a bit with my questions on “craft.” He kind of bristled at the idea that it was a “craft,” which maybe he thought was too cute a word to put on it. To him, it’s fucking work. You make all the calls. Then you make more. You go to the locations. You knock on doors. You report, report, report. It has more to do with tenacity and rigor than art … so I made sure I steered clear of things that felt too crafty this time around.
Jeff is all over the place. By that I mean he’s got a YouTube presence with The Press Box Chronicles, a TikTok presence with more than 300,000 followers. He has a podcast, Two Writers Slinging Yang (still waiting for my invite), a political Substack called The Truth OC, and his writing/journalism Substack The Yang Yang. He’s a writer in his 50s and he’s tremendously nimble. He understands, even with his platform and profile, that nobody is going to champion your book like you can. Honestly, we can all take a page out of his book and how he has embraced the ever-changing playbook for book promotion.
In this conversation Jeff and I talk about:
- Book promotion
- Finding the little guys
- How he handled another Tupac biography publishing during his research for this book
- The misery of it all
- Conversations he had with Jonathan Eig, the PP winning author of King: A Life
- Jeff’s favorite “version” of Tupac
- And hitting the “fuck-it” stage.
All great stuff, as you might come to expect from speaking to Jeff Pearlman. His audio was a bit muddy. It’s not as great as I would have liked but I think the message carries the day.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Exploring Vegan Creamers
00:00:01
Speaker
I tell you, I my i put silk, sugar-free, milk, creamer, vanilla, cinnamon in my coffee. It's not good.
00:00:14
Speaker
It's not good. Go for the Oatly sweet cream. I think it is in a little purple thing. Oh, you didn't think you asked for a review of vegan non-dairy
Live Podcast Event Announcement
00:00:28
Speaker
creamers. Hey, CNFers, it's Creative Nonfiction Podcast. If you're in Eugene on Sunday, October 26th, the fourth and final live podcast recording of 2025 will take place at Gratitude Brewing at 1 p.m.
00:00:42
Speaker
We started something special with these live pods, and they're going to keep on going. I'll be interviewing Jason Brown, author of Character Witness, memoir.
Call for Submissions: 'Codes'
00:00:51
Speaker
And Jay Michaels will be handling book sales.
00:00:54
Speaker
And I'll be making it rain. Also, call for submissions for the next issue of the audio magazine is up. The theme is codes. For more information and submission guidelines, visit brendanamero.com. Hey, hey.
00:01:06
Speaker
You got one week. You got one week to get me your essays, man. And I'm coming down hard on that deadline.
00:01:16
Speaker
Maybe not, but assume it. You just have to be your own pimp, your own whore, your own publicist.
00:01:28
Speaker
Oh, hey, see you next time. This the Creative Podcast, the show where I talk to tellers of true tales about like the true tales they tell. I'm Brendan
Jeff Perlman: From Sports to Hip-Hop
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Speaker
O'Meara. Nothing to see here.
00:01:38
Speaker
Today we have Jeff Perlman returning to the show to talk about his 11th book, his latest book, Only God Can Judge Me, The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur, Mariner Books.
00:01:50
Speaker
Jeff has made a career out of being a sports writer, so when I heard he had turned his biographical eye toward a hip-hop icon from the 1990s, I was especially intrigued by how he would approach it.
00:02:02
Speaker
It's the kind of book he could pursue after having proved himself ten times before. And with a few of his books becoming coveted New York Times bestsellers, it gives you a certain cachet.
00:02:14
Speaker
It gives you some house money. He interviewed close to 700 people for this book. That's the rigor. That's how you do this. That is how it's done. Show notes to this episode and more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey, there you can peruse for hot blogs and sign up for my two very important newsletters, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm and Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com.
00:02:37
Speaker
New Pitch Club on November 1st will feature Tracy Slater's pitch letter to a literary agent that landed representation for her book Together in Manzanar. Oh, you thought Pitch Club was only for long-form features?
00:02:51
Speaker
Mm-hmm. You got another thing coming. Also, if you care to support the podcast with a few dollar bills, visit patreon.com slash cnfpod. There are some rad perks, but most are just happy to throw a few bucks in the guitar case.
00:03:04
Speaker
I hosted the first CNF and half happy hour for paying members, and it went not good. i hung out by myself for 30 minutes, then closed the window. Did you ever invite people to your birthday parties growing up and nobody showed?
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, me too. Well, more beer for me. and Now, not then. Maybe. So Jeff is back.
00:03:26
Speaker
First time he was on, I think I annoyed him a bit with my questions on k craft. He kind of bristled at the idea that it was a craft, which maybe he thought was too cute a word for it. To him, it's fucking work.
00:03:38
Speaker
You make all the calls, then you make more. You go to the locations, you knock on doors. It's journalism, it's reporting. You report, report, report. ah It has more to do with tenacity and rigor than art.
00:03:50
Speaker
So um I made sure I steered clear of things that felt too crafty this time around. Jeff is all over the place. And by that I mean he's got a YouTube presence with the Pressbox Chronicles. He's something of a TikTok wonderkind with more than 300,000
Perlman's Social Media Strategy
00:04:05
Speaker
followers. He has a podcast, a long-running podcast since 2017, I believe.
00:04:11
Speaker
ah The two writers slinging Yang. Still waiting for my invite. A political substack called The Truth OC and his writing journalism substack, The Yang Slinger, which is resurrected, i believe.
00:04:25
Speaker
ah He's a writer in his 50s, and he's tremendously nimble with a lot of this technology. He understands even with his profile and his track record that nobody is going to champion your book like you can.
00:04:36
Speaker
Honestly, we can all take a page out of his book and how he has embraced the ever-changing playbook of book promotion. I wonder if I should join TikTok and just do random reviews of things like my printer paper, this deodorant, books, that apple tree over there.
00:04:54
Speaker
Fuck around and find out. In this conversation, Jeff and I talk about book promotion, finding the little guys, how he handled another Tupac biography, publishing during the research ah for his own book, the misery of it all, conversations he had with Jonathan Igg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of King of Life,
00:05:13
Speaker
Jeff's favorite version of Tupac, and when he hit the, quote, fuck it stage. All great stuff, as you might come to expect from speaking to Jeff Perlman. His audio was a bit muddy.
00:05:25
Speaker
It's not as great as I would have liked, but I think the message carries the day. Parting shot on whether book events are even worth it, but for now, let's cue up the montage.
00:05:42
Speaker
Horseshit that has nothing to what I'm talking about. Pleasing, I guess, to a biographer than that they would be able to look in the coffin of their subject. You are the Dan Patrick of creative nonfiction. How about that? This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:06:06
Speaker
Maybe a good place to get that meat off would like, you know, you're really ginning up the book promotion machine, and you've done this as your 11th book, and just how are you thinking about book promotion these days?
00:06:18
Speaker
It's so different than it's ever been. I've been talking about this nonstop to people. It's I had my, my Bo Jackson book came out two years ago and in book PR world, that's a lifetime ago.
00:06:28
Speaker
And even like my first book came out 20 years ago about the 86 Mets. And I remember like that book comes out and what are you hoping for? Okay. Newspaper reviews. You're sending it to the columnist of the St. Louis post dispatch and the l LA times and the Baltimore sun.
00:06:43
Speaker
And you're hoping they write about it in print and through the years, Walter Payton book came out maybe 12 years ago. Front cover of Sports Illustrated. The excerpt was literally the cover. right, well, that's gold.
00:06:56
Speaker
None of those things would mean anything today. yeah Like, i would rather have name a rapper, current I'd rather have Ski-Lo put out on Instagram how much he loves this book than the cover of Double XL. You know, like it's weird.
00:07:12
Speaker
I'm thinking it now as a very, very, number one, you have 20 seconds to catch someone's attention at most. Number two, I'm not even sure who's buying books anymore.
00:07:22
Speaker
They are selling, but I'm not sure where. Number three, it's so social media generated, like so social media generated. It's crazy. It's so much harder than it used to be. For sure. Like a a few weeks ago, i mean, nothing came of it, but um I guess Lance Armstrong was in Eugene and he went up to Preeze Rock and like took his picture there. And like a friend of mine got, he's like, hey, you got to reach out to Lance and see if he'll like,
00:07:45
Speaker
get a book in his hands. And then I reached out to my, you know, Mariner team. I'm like, Hey, Lance was in Eugene, like reach out to his people and see if he can get a book in his hand and maybe he'll shout it out. And like, that's, that would carry more weight. Like you said, then, you know, a review in the New York times as much as that strokes our own ego. And that's pretty cool.
00:08:03
Speaker
Like, yeah, the influencer market for book promotion is kind of where it's at. It's just very weird. And the other thing is like, it's so warped that like Lance Armstrong probably wouldn't post it because he's not getting paid to post it.
00:08:17
Speaker
That's the other, like all these influencers, they're not just being like, that's the thing. Most these influencers are not like, Oh, I just have this great peanut butter. I'm going to tell you guys about it. It's this great peanut butter is paying me to post it.
00:08:29
Speaker
So what I have found, honest to God, this is truth. So I, for the past year and a half have been a Tik TOK machine. And it started as a lark and I now have, I'm approaching 300,000 followers on TikTok.
00:08:40
Speaker
And I really do believe you have to generate and generate and generate. I have a YouTube show called the Press Box Chronicles. It stemmed off of TikTok and I'm doing Tupac episodes mixed in with sports episodes. Like you just have to be your own pimp, your own whore, your own publicist.
00:08:56
Speaker
That's it. That's all you can do because everyone else is taking money to do it. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Given that you came from like such a different you know book promotion ecosystem to this, you know how have you come to really embrace it when a lot of other authors bristle against it?
Authors as Self-Publicists
00:09:13
Speaker
I don't have a choice. Like i the moment I decided to write books for a living is a moment inadvertently. i became my own publicist. That's just the reality. There's a moment I became my own publicist and the methods change over time, but the reality doesn't change. And that is your publishing company is going to assign you a publicist.
00:09:31
Speaker
That publicist will be working on five or six other books at the same time. You are the one who dug into the subject. You're the one who interviewed media people. You are the one, like, you have to. So when I hear people who are like, I'm not getting on TikTok, I'm not getting on Blue Sky, I'm not getting, I'm like, that's fine.
00:09:47
Speaker
Your book isn't gonna sell unless you get struck by some magic lightning bolt. So I just, I don't see an option. I don't see another option. but Given the choice, I could be doing this or I could not be doing this.
00:09:58
Speaker
I probably wouldn't, but I don't see another choice. yeah And if I'm not going to fight for my own book, who is? Absolutely. And this latest book is your your 11th. And the way you know, you deeply report, you find hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people and you know, beat the phones to death.
00:10:15
Speaker
in it That's a ah big machinery to go into reporting out a book, ah definitive text that that you go into. What is easier and what is still very challenging about starting a book?
00:10:29
Speaker
Oh, I mean, all of it is challenging. I don't know what's easy about it. Yeah. It's... To me, the grind has never changed.
00:10:40
Speaker
Like for me personally, the grind has never changed. The one thing I'm going to do, look, there are people who, there are many people walking this earth who know more about Tupac than I do. There are people who knew Tupac personally. There are people who relationships with him. They're hip hop experts, right? I'm a hip hop fan. I'm not a hip hop expert.
00:10:56
Speaker
So what's the one thing I can do? I can try to talk to everybody. I'm going to go where he grew up and I'm going to track down all his classmates I can find. I was sitting in. He spent um whatever, year and a half in Marin City, did a senior of high school living in Marin City, California.
00:11:11
Speaker
And I drove there and I knocked on his door where he grew up. I sat with the main crack dealer in Marin City during the time I spoke with the other crack dealer who taught him about the game in Marin City, went to diet went to a diner with that guy, the crack dealer and his grandson. Like the one thing I can do is I can bust my ass and just try to interview everybody.
00:11:32
Speaker
That's it. yeah That's the one thing in my control. So that has not changed. And even like whatever AI bot you find, And AI bot now can construct a book. AI bots are constructing books.
00:11:43
Speaker
But they can't go out there, at least not in 2025, track down the crack dealer and interview Yeah. so Yeah. What is step one for you when you embark on, you know, on a big biography with like a so a strong central figure like Tupac?
00:11:58
Speaker
Well, step one is go to eBay and buy everything ever written about the person. That's the step number one. So every book that's ever been written, magazines, you know, that you can go on eBay and find old magazines, hip hop magazines that are longer a print, Tupac articles.
00:12:13
Speaker
So that's a big step one. Step two is have a subscription to the website newspapers.com, which is this enormous, enormous database. And I will go through the database from the day he was born in 1971 the he died in 1996.
00:12:26
Speaker
in ninety ninety six day by day and build this enormous archive of everything because you don't just want to know. don't just want to know about the times Tupac recorded all eyes on me.
00:12:38
Speaker
I want to know about the time he went into a pizza place and was spotted by a bunch of fans and signed autographs. So the time he was looking for an apartment in LA and this realtor work with him. So the only way to do that again is roll up your sleeves and go day by day through his life and his mom's life and his sister's life.
00:12:52
Speaker
So that's, those are the things I do very early on. Yeah, and as you're trolling eBay and whatever sources to get everything
Challenges of Tupac's Biography
00:12:59
Speaker
ever written, and then you see the the glut of that. And how do you then figure out the framing to make your book different?
00:13:11
Speaker
You know, I never outline anything. So I'm like a bad example of organizational skills. I don't have anything. The thing I always think, honest to God, it goes back. I have a i kind of think of it as my Brett Favre philosophy, which is I wrote a book about Brett Favre.
00:13:25
Speaker
And somewhere in Paco's camp in like 1993, there was some running back from Bucknell. I say this all the time. Some running back from Bucknell who was there for a week and a half. And he's never going to forget his week and a half in Packers camp. And he's going to remember the time Brett Favre threw him a screen pass and patted him on the butt and said, great job, Buck. Now, you know, that kind of thing.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah. Brett Favre never going to remember that guy. 99 out of 100 times. We'll never remember that guy even walked the earth. So for me, one of the keys is finding all the people who had these slivers of moments with Chupac. Like I try, this is random, but I tracked down the woman who worked at the front desk of the hotel where he stayed in Southern California when they were filming Poetic Justice.
00:14:03
Speaker
And she remembered having to go to his room because was super noisy and there was weed smoke everywhere. And she had to knock on the door and say, Mr. Shakur, could you, those people are really, really important to me.
00:14:15
Speaker
And like, no one's going to, everyone, okay, Tupac was in Juice. Everyone's going to call Omar Epps, who was one of his co-stars in Juice. That's a natural thing. It's understandable. I did it too. He didn't talk to me.
00:14:27
Speaker
How many people are going to call the production assistant? How many people are going to call the guy who held the thing and said, action? You know, those are my people because they were there too. The way you write a different book and a different narrative is finding the little people who have never been talked to before, but have the same memory. Omar Epps has been on multiple channels talking about Tupac.
00:14:45
Speaker
The guy who says action, he only talked to me. Absolutely. Yeah. When I spoke with, you know, Connor about that too, and doing a big biography on but some very big central figure, say Belichick, you know, number, you're not going to get Brady, but numbers 50 through 53 on the roster, they were all in those meetings too.
00:15:04
Speaker
And those are the guys that's, that's your point. That's a hundred, hundred million percent people. I don't understand how any biographer misses that one. To me, it's the most obvious thing in the world. It really is. And like, I preach that shit all the time. Like, you don't need... i wrote Showtime. Showtime became an HBO show that put my kids through college.
00:15:21
Speaker
Magic, Kareem, and Pat Riley did not talk to me for that book. But you know who did? Every backup. Wes Matthews and Billy Thompson and Mike Smreck. And those guys were in the same meetings at the same time as those guys. So...
00:15:32
Speaker
Find your little guys. They're more important. Magic is taught a million people. Mike Smreck is not. Interviewing close to 700 people for this book, it's just one of those one of those numbers that blows blows ah you blows your hair back if you're so lucky to have it.
00:15:47
Speaker
Have hair. Neither us do. Yeah, right. Yep. yeah And how do you keep all of that straight, your transcripts, cleaning those up and keeping them in ah in some degree of order so you can access it?
00:16:02
Speaker
I'm really bad at it. I mean, i be well this I'm okay. Number one, I do something super grandpa-y and it goes against all my environmental tendencies, which is I print out my transcripts. So I do folders, literal folders, not online folders.
00:16:14
Speaker
And I'll have like, like Tupac went to Baltimore school for the arts, for example. I'll go, i got the yearbooks when he was there. And I will literally make a word file, old me, of every classmate in the yearbook.
00:16:26
Speaker
Every classmate, not just classmate, student, teachers, principals, ah janitors, et cetera. And then I'll go one by one, call them. If I get an interview, if I don't get an interview, I just put like an X next to it. If I get an interview, I put a star next to it, print it out.
00:16:41
Speaker
Put in the folder. Then when it's time to write the Baltimore chapters, I get the folders. I underline stuff, highlight stuff, star stuff, move it around, move this one here, with that one there. But for me, it's all paper, moving paper. it's I once talked to Howard Bryant, a great, great, great, great biographer about this. yeah And I thought I was insane because in 2025, it just isn't logical, but it's the only way my brain works.
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah.
Personal Loss During Writing
00:17:04
Speaker
Yeah. the i like I like printing out things too, but I always have the digital reference because because the control F just being i like, ah where was this conversation? ah I'll do that too. I'll do it.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah. Like if I'm looking, okay. If I'm writing about Tupac went to a Heavy D show, we'll just say went to a Heavy D concert. Then obviously I'll search all my files, Heavy D, then pull out the files after finding which files it's in.
00:17:29
Speaker
So it's kind of a mix of digital and print. Yeah. Yeah, and you um and looking at the acknowledgments too, you know your father passed away while you were reporting this book and writing it, and you see you know it impacted the project in multiple ways. like You wrote Hurt. Take us to that. and just yeah He was so integral ah just to your your obviously your upbringing, but even your professional life. So in writing Hurt, what was the loss you were dealing with ah through this project?
00:17:58
Speaker
Well, um I mean, my dad was my closest friend by far. I dedicated the book to him. like I wrote to Stanley Perlman, the original G. He would have no idea what that means.
00:18:09
Speaker
I used a Tupac line. i said, ah I can picture you in heaven with a blunt and a brew. And my dad did not really drink beer and he never smoked a blunt. But he would liked that. I mean, my dad, in 1986, my dad was a CPA turned executive search guy.
00:18:24
Speaker
And he wrote his own book called Conquering the Corporate Career. And he self-published it. And it had as great an influence on my life as anything ever of any sort. he um We would go to the local bookstore and we would move the books to the bestseller section where nobody was looking.
00:18:41
Speaker
i was so proud of him as a little kid. I was 14 when nothing came out for writing that book. And my dad ah dad, two subjects my dad did not give two shits about are sports and hip hop, like zero.
00:18:53
Speaker
He read all of my books. He would have read this book. He talked to me about the books. He talked about the process. He would send out the email, the grandfatherly email to all his friends, talk to people at the rotary about it.
00:19:05
Speaker
And, um, you know, him, him dying uh, probably the hardest thing i've ever dealt. I mean, I'm not just, it's probably the hardest thing i've ever dealt with except for nine 11 and, um, him not being here for it is, uh,
00:19:20
Speaker
It's horrible. it's hard It's really horrible for me. It sucks. Even now, it's just like, um he just had a greater greater, nobody's had a greater influence on my life than my dad. No Yeah, one of your newsletters you you wrote about you wrote about him ah in this self-publishing thing and ah yeah just in pulling out his letters to the editors of which he used a different pen name too. And you you were really – he had a really good snappy voice and it's definitely something that I think influenced your work too.
00:19:48
Speaker
and my dad was a better writer than I am. I'm not just saying that. He really wasn't. He – The thing i I mean, my favorite thing of all time, which you just referenced, is one time he was funny in a sly way. He was funny. My dad taught me a really important lesson, which is you don't have to be present for joke to be funny.
00:20:02
Speaker
You don't have to hear the punchline. You could just know it exists. Like when I was a kid, my dad and I once were in Washington, D.C., and we took a political sign off of a telephone pole and hung it up in our hometown of MailPack, New York.
00:20:14
Speaker
And nobody knew the joke existed except for us. We just thought it was funny that this political sign was hanging up mail pack that belonged in Washington. And my dad one time wrote a letter to the New York Times complaining about something in relation to aviation.
00:20:28
Speaker
And he signed it. ah I don't remember. I think he signed it Stanley Perelman. And then he wrote a letter disagreeing with his letter, used his business name, and that got published too. And that was like the greatest thing ever. that was And a good lesson. Honestly, a good lesson. You don't have to be there for the punchline.
00:20:42
Speaker
Something can be funny without you seeing the end result of it. Yeah. And ah you also wrote that is, ah as we've alluded to, is your 11th work of nonfiction and by far the most daunting. And you were actually warned by a multitude of people that delving into the hip hop universe would be all layers of challenging and weird. And you go like like skateboarding atop a puddle of diluted applesauce while trying to grasp the the horns of a 600 pound bull hopped up on Skittles and meth.
00:21:07
Speaker
So, yes, take us take us to this experience. First, I want to say thank you for asking me about my dad. i actually really appreciate that. Of course. Yeah, he was a good man. um Someone said to me, someone who knew Tupac well, I won't out this person, said to me, nobody escapes Tupac unscathed.
00:21:24
Speaker
Like, nobody escapes the Tupac universe unscathed. And she was right. Like, it is a land of craziness it is a First of all, I was told early on, you're gonna have a lot of people ask you for money to be interviewed, which is understandable. I don't blame people for asking for money.
00:21:41
Speaker
That was not incorrect. Like a lot of people asked for money, I didn't pay a single person. I was actually told by one person, you'll never get anyone to talk unless you pay them. And that proved not to be true. The thing about hip hop and probably music in general is it is a land of boastfulness and great exaggeration.
00:21:57
Speaker
And you really have to narrow down. There's a lot of people who are like, man, me and Pac were blah, blah, blah, blah. Me and Pac were blah, blah, blah, blah. blah And a lot of times, if you look into the story, it's not quite that.
00:22:10
Speaker
You know, time exaggerates, legend exaggerates, proximity legend exaggerates. So I found that really kind of daunting. And um he was just, I mean, you probably saw it with Prefontaine.
00:22:22
Speaker
When someone dies young, they become mythical. Yeah, they do. They just become mythical. And their legend, in a way their death is a character in and of itself, and their legend is a character in and of itself.
00:22:33
Speaker
And people jump onto that legend.
Key Figures in Tupac's Life
00:22:36
Speaker
And it's very, very hard after a while to separate what is legend and what is fact, what is boastfulness and what is truthfulness. I just found with Tupac, that was extremely, extremely difficult.
00:22:47
Speaker
And the key is to find three or four people who can be your guides, people who are just like solid rocks. And for me, with Tupac, there's a woman, Yasmin Fula, who's kind of his godmother, but really, she's former Black Panther, close with his mama Feni.
00:23:01
Speaker
She was amazing for me. Another was Leila Steinberg, who was his early sort of mentor, discoverer, just a salt of the earth woman. And also his sister, Set, Setsua, who was a very tough interview, but a very real human being.
00:23:17
Speaker
So if you can get a couple of people like that, it helps a lot. Yeah, you bringing up those three, you know, there there's something, you said, there's something jarring in being approached by a stranger to discuss a lost loved one, but Yasmin, Seth, and Leila introduced me to worlds largely uncharted.
00:23:33
Speaker
i've had that You just bring them up. bring them up like those Those people are so so integral. like So like how were you able to lobby them to get you into that uncharted territory? All right, so it's interesting.
00:23:45
Speaker
Leila, I didn't think would talk to me just because she's been besieged a lot. And she turned out being just awesome as helpful as could be really nice person. Doesn't even live that far away from me.
00:23:56
Speaker
Really liked the idea of someone trying to write an authentic book about Tupac. Wasn't afraid of there being wards, et cetera. Yasmin is a former black Panther. She's one of my favorite human beings on the planet.
00:24:09
Speaker
I met her. There's a writer who wrote a great Tupac Shakur family book named Santee Elijah Holly and Santee had a book event and he's like, I think Yasmin's coming, but she's really tough to to she's just guarded. Right. She's great, but she's guarded.
00:24:23
Speaker
And I approached her and we talked to the parking lot and she agreed to talk with me. And she's been awesome. In fact, some of the best photos in the book were supplied by by Yasmin and Yasmin has trauma because her son was a member of the outlaws and he died young and she has to carry that with her, which is very tough.
00:24:40
Speaker
And set. Is tough, like set Tupac's sister. has taken so much shit through the years from people affiliated with Tupac, from the estate, from people talking garbage about her, and she has to live with the trauma of her own upbringing, which is very traumatic, yeah the loss of a brother and never being able to escape the loss of your brother because you're reminded of her every single day.
00:25:04
Speaker
I didn't think she would talk to me I had a phone conversation with her. She lives and in the South and I drove down to New Orleans. I did one of those things you would appreciate, actually. I was in Lumberton, North Carolina, and I told her I was kind of nearby.
00:25:19
Speaker
And technically, North Lumberton and new Orleans are nearby because you can drive there. But it was a long ass drive. And she's like, all right, well, I'm free tomorrow or something. And I was like, all right, I'll be there. So I drove like 13 hours straight from Lumberton to New Orleans to sit down with Seth.
00:25:34
Speaker
And she was amazing. She was amazing. So that's how I did it. Yeah, that's... um Well, and you know you you bring up a Fennie a little while ago, and you know ah the the first part of the book is very very integral of her, this the way you sketch her her out.
00:25:51
Speaker
And just in order to understand Tupac, like how important was it that we really get to know Fennie and her worldview and where she comes from? um man. Fennie Shakur should be taught in history books.
00:26:04
Speaker
I'm not just saying that. I think it's funny. A good friend of mine is Jonathan Igg. I don't know if you've had him on. He wrote the MLK biography. I haven't, but I have a quote of his ah below my monitor that's kind of a North Star for me from, yeah. Oh, wait, what is it? It's um we talking about King.
00:26:18
Speaker
ah We turned him into a monument in national holiday and lost sight of his humanity, so I wanted to write a more intimate book. So that was kind of my North Star for pre. Yeah, that's fantastic, actually. Yeah. that's That's great and true and kind of how it is with this one, too.
00:26:32
Speaker
And we've talked about this, like basically in American public schools, it's not going to get better under this administration. It's basically like MLK had a dream and we should continue that dream. All right, next.
00:26:44
Speaker
You know, like yeah and we'll talk for 20 minutes about slavery and maybe we'll mention Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X for a second. And that's it. And a finish a core. I mean, Just Google the Panther 21 trial, which she represented herself. She didn't have a high school diploma.
00:26:58
Speaker
um Basically, law enforcement infiltrates the Black Panthers. They do it in all levels of bullshit. They arrest these 21 Panthers. They put them on trial in New York.
00:27:10
Speaker
A Fennie Shakur turns down legal representation because the woman has this like soft voice and just does she doesn't think she's going to her justice, white attorney. And she represents herself while pregnant with Tupac.
00:27:22
Speaker
And every day she's brought back to jail and brought to trial and brought to jail and brought to trial. And they're not feeding her properly. And she's pregnant with this baby and she represents herself.
00:27:33
Speaker
She fucking wins. And she is amazing and a badass. And like all the problems she endured in the years after addiction, poverty, et cetera, mental health.
00:27:44
Speaker
Don't take away from the fact that she was just a courageous, badass motherfucker. And from the time Tupac and his sister set were young, she was reading them the New York Times, urging them out about education, taking them on field trips, speaking to them about black empowerment, about self-empowerment, about watching out for this, watching out for that.
00:28:03
Speaker
And everything you see from Tupac when it comes to sort of black empowerment, resiliency is straight out of her mouth. Yeah. Yeah. And kind of like with that i quote about just writing a more intimate sort of human portrait.
00:28:19
Speaker
i love the the way you sketch early Tupac because we have this image of him at the end of his life. ah But early on, he was just kind of a, you know, a gawky, scrawny, really sensitive kid. And I just, I loved how you were able to sketch that out because it cuts against the grain of what we know. And as a result, we feel kind of we feel a lot closer to him, probably to his truer self.
00:28:46
Speaker
I love young Tupac. Like, I love i love young Tupac. I love Baltimore School for the Arts, Tupac. It's probably my favorite Tupac. Yeah. Because he's just like, firefly floating around. And he's dancing to Don McClane. And he loves Kate Bush.
00:29:00
Speaker
And, you know, Cool in the Gang. And Stevie Wonder. And he's like this, like, at home, he's living in abject poverty. He's living in ah place that gets 120 degrees in the summer, row house, and frigid in the winter.
00:29:13
Speaker
And he's embarrassed of where he lives. And he has rats. I mean, seth his sister talked to me about the sound of just rats along the floorboards. And like, that's his reality. And every day he's going to the school for the arts.
00:29:26
Speaker
All of a sudden it's these kids with purple hair and these kids walking around shirtless and Tupac would show up. He had a baby bottle he used to chew on and he would his his fingernails would be painted.
00:29:37
Speaker
he had this really bad, but endearing high top fade with a peroxide strip. And, you know, he just like, I mean, ah young Tuvok is the best.
00:29:49
Speaker
He's just the best. Yeah. Well, you get a sense that as gray ah as great a musician as he would become, like, maybe his true calling seemed to maybe be acting.
00:30:00
Speaker
Oh, I mean, yes. First of all, if you've ever seen Juice, you know how good he is. And if you've ever seen, like I might get some hate mail for this.
00:30:11
Speaker
Hate letters. Part of justice is not a good movie. We watched it again somewhat recently. i remember liking it as as a younger person. Part of justice is a bad movie. It's not a good John Singleton movie. It's corny. It's confusing. It doesn't make any sense.
00:30:23
Speaker
Janet Jackson, very wooden. Tupac is awesome in that movie. Tupac owns that movie, carries that movie. Another movie is Gridlocked with Timothy Roth. Timothy Roth is one of the great actors of our time. Tupac is right there with him, you know.
00:30:35
Speaker
And I interviewed Jim Belushi because he was in Gang Relator Tupac. And Jim Belushi, who loved Tupac, said, I basically, I thought he was one or two movies away from Academy Award. Like, I thought he was that good of an actor.
00:30:46
Speaker
And that all starts. He loved acting. He loved being in front of people. His audition to get into Baltimore School for the Arts, it's a really nerve-wracking situation. It's a grand ballroom. You have four teachers sitting there in chairs.
00:30:58
Speaker
It's basically like the audition scene from Back to the Future when Huey Lewis. And like, he rocked it. And he walked off the stage and they stood up and clapped for him, which they did not do for people. He just had a thing about him. Someone, one of his classmates said to me something I love. She said, he was a kind of kid who would gently remove a ladybug and place it on a leaf or something like that. Like that was him. He was this tender, young, loving, theatrical kid.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And there's, i love, or you know, early on too, how he really locked into ah Vincent Van Gogh and Don McLean's Vincent, you know, and one of one of his, you know, early colleagues said like, if you listen to that song being Vincent, you hear the lyrics. He completely identified with being Vincent Van Gogh, a tortured artist artist with a lot to say and no one listening.
00:31:45
Speaker
And it's just that gets in that further burrows into who he was. Oh, man. it's It's just start I'm happy. I love talking about this is actually my my first Tupac interview. And I've lived this for three years. Right.
00:31:57
Speaker
And I honestly feel people who are like Tupac, thug life, Tupac and blah, blah. That certainly was a part of him. But that developmental Tupac. have to understand, like, and also as a white guy writing this book, it really was an education. Standing in front of the row house he lived in Baltimore, you're like, shit, this is bad. Like, this is really fucking bad, right? The places he lived, really bad.
00:32:17
Speaker
And every day, he's living this hellscape in Baltimore, in this row house, hearing gunshots outside his door, drug dealers outside his door, his mom addicted to crack. And he goes to this school, this beautiful school, and his classmates are mix of wealthier white kids and lot of poor to middle class black kids.
00:32:36
Speaker
And it's a comfort zone for him. And you can walk around and you can be whoever you want. There are no jocks at this school. It is all kids just like Tupac, singing in the hallway, doing performances in the hallway, talking about Kate Bush, talking about the Indigo Girls, talking about Public Enemy.
00:32:51
Speaker
It was him his probably freest. And then every day he goes home and he's hit with the reality that my life is terrible. Yeah. You sound like being a white person and writing writing this book about the hip hop hip-hopp culture and Tupac.
00:33:06
Speaker
I imagine like you and Jonathan had some conversations too, him writing about King and Ali as well. What were those dialogues like to and taking taking on these topics as someone who you know didn't have that that lived experience?
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, so Ike is a really good friend of mine and colleague. And we we did talk a lot about it. And his thing was, you're going to get, you know, you'll get some backlash, but you have to stand by your reporting.
00:33:31
Speaker
And I will say, this is, I mean, his book is one of the great biographies of all time. So this is not a dogging in any way, shape or form at all. I think there's a difference between Tupac as a as a black cultural icon and Martin Luther King as a civil rights figure.
00:33:48
Speaker
I think Tupac, I think a lot of people in America, Black Americans, especially who grew up during that time period, feel a sense of ownership in regards to Tupac in the best possible way. Like, this is our music. He's speaking for us.
00:34:02
Speaker
He endured our struggle. He is representing us in our struggle. And I think it is important for me as a white author who loves the music but didn't live the struggle to remind people as much as possible that These are the words and the thoughts of people I interviewed. This is not me, white sports writer Jeff Perlman, telling you how you should feel about Tupac.
00:34:25
Speaker
These are the people who lived his life with him and who seemed to understand him. And I'm trying to give them a place to express themselves. Yeah, and in a way, it's it's new but not new for you because you've taken on prominent black sports figures. But maybe that just feels a bit more yeah comfortable for you since you've been a sports writer for your old career.
00:34:44
Speaker
I think the thing is, like Bo Jackson, nobody would say Bo Jackson was a ah ah figure of black self-empowerment. They'd say he was a great baseball player. He's a black great baseball player. We should celebrate him, blah, blah, blah.
00:34:55
Speaker
I think he's more, in a way, he's more of a symbol of Alabama and And athleticism, blah, blah, blah. Barry Bonds, don't think anyone would say Barry Bonds was like a civil rights figure or a hero.
00:35:06
Speaker
um so But Tupac does represent something different than any of the athletes I've Yeah, there's there's a moment later in the book, too, and this it just gets to like so many contradictions within him, which I which i found the most compelling part.
00:35:21
Speaker
ah There was a moment you know after he had gotten into trouble, see saw between like sometimes where he's being an ass, and then he comes around to being like profoundly enlightened.
00:35:33
Speaker
he yeah he comes to somebody he's just like, we got to, I'm blanking on the name he's talking to. Oh, it's a freak out. yeah Yeah. He's just like, we got to sell like tons of records because we got to get the voters.
00:35:45
Speaker
And it's just like, holy shit, that is profound to animate, you know, their people in these locales, you know based on leveraging their celebrity and getting them active in their communities. And it's just it's um carried in the head of someone who's 23 or 24, maybe at the time.
00:36:05
Speaker
Oh, wait. One of my favorite stories, actually, is basically. He's touring his group Thug Life, is touring with Lords of the Underground, are based out of New Jersey. And one of their members, their lead member is Dupre Kelly.
00:36:17
Speaker
Great, great, great guy. Great interview. Awesome. Kelly was a couple years younger than Tupac. Not much so. And they have a, um one day they get into an argument. This is in, I think, Orlando, Florida. They get into an argument.
00:36:30
Speaker
And Dupre Kelly stands up to Tupac. not really supposed to stand up to Tupac. Tupac is the king of this tour. He's put it all together tis to his tour. Stands up to him. And he goes back to his hotel room after, after this argument.
00:36:41
Speaker
And he hears a knock on the door and he looks out and it's Tupac, looks out the people, it's Tupac. He literally calls another member of Lords of the Underground. He says, yo, Pac's at my door. And the guy's like, what does he want? I'm like, I don't know, but I'm just letting you know.
00:36:53
Speaker
Basically, in case something happens, just so you know, Tupac's here, he doesn't know. Opens the door. Tupac has two forties with him. And he's like, you're going let a brother in or not? And he's like, yeah, come on.
00:37:04
Speaker
Tupac sits down on the bed and he's like, you know, you were wrong. Right. And Kelly doesn't say anything. And he's like, but I admire you for standing up to me. Like, I love that you stood up for me and spoke your piece. That's sure you're supposed to do.
00:37:15
Speaker
And then he goes into this long monologue about how we need to stand up for each other. And black people in America need to stand up for each other. We need to do this. We need to do that. We even need to think about being legislators, legislators,
00:37:27
Speaker
And Kelly's like, what do you mean? He's like, we need to run for office. We need to hold office. We need blah, blah, blah. And Kelly told me that speech more than anything he experienced in his life is why he decided to run for city council in Newark, New Jersey. And as we speak, he is councilman to pray Kelly.
00:37:43
Speaker
That's amazing. I got chills telling that story. I love that story. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then ah in the first third of the book, there's this great passage, and it's one of the one of best passages in the book. And you're like, everything about Tupac felt surprising and different.
00:37:58
Speaker
He was a black kid who loved theater. He was an artistic kid who couldn't sing. He was a shit talker who couldn't fight. He was a rapper who listened to Don McLean and Kate Bush. He was a mama's boy sleeping on a friend's couch.
00:38:09
Speaker
He took the bus from the jungle only to roll with the hippies and gays. He was rough and effeminate, upbeat and depressed. And to me, that's one of the best patches passages in the entire book and and sums up so many of the contradictions. And I imagine that was really illuminating for you just in the totality of your research to come across such such distinctions within one person.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think he was fake. Like, it's interesting because misspoke in an interview I did a while ago where I was like, oh, he wasn't a real blah And he wasn't a real blah blah. And that's actually. I don't think he was ever fake. I think he had to fill a shitload of different roles.
00:38:42
Speaker
I mean, think about it. Most of us in our lives, let's say you're like, you're me, all right? And i you have these different roles. Okay, here I'm a sports writer and here I'm a dad and here I'm going to the gym and I'm talking to a trainer, let's just say.
00:38:54
Speaker
They're not that different. You know what i mean? Like, that it's not that big of a gap. Dad, writer, gym. Just an example. But Tupac was poverty with the rats,
00:39:07
Speaker
School with the wealthy kids. Trying to be a rapper, trying to be this, trying to be that, trying to appeal to the 60-year-old white math teacher, trying to appeal to the 18-year-old hip-hop art. Like, he just had a lot of lanes to walk through.
00:39:23
Speaker
And I think it was really, I don't know how he did it, actually. But I mean, especially Baltimore and then Marin City, the different roads he traveled that were so wide from each other and somehow being able to do it.
00:39:36
Speaker
I think it led to people thinking he was quote unquote fake and he wasn't fake. He just was trying to fill a lot of roles at the same time. Yeah. I think it speaks to his ambition and his survivorship because he just just was truly kind of on on his own to the ah often to the dead. You would think that he would have been more of say his sister's advocate, but he was really, he had that tunnel vision of like, I just need to get my myself out of this situation. Even if he was leaving behind like his sister, as much as he cared about her.
00:40:06
Speaker
Well, I thought i'm talking to Seth, it's one of the most memorable interviews I've had in my life. And it's really interesting because basically his younger sister and Tupac and a Fanny are living in Marin City.
00:40:18
Speaker
They live in this complex in the jungle. Marin City is referred to as a jungle. It's public housing. And Tupac almost never around. He's living in different friends. He's couch hopping. Fanny is heavily addicted to crack and oftentimes with her boyfriends.
00:40:34
Speaker
And Seth, who's like 13 at this time, is basically living alone, raising herself. And when I talked to her, she talked about that sense of abandonment and how my brother, she wasn't mad. She wasn't mad at all. But she was like, my brother is doing his thing, trying to make it.
00:40:51
Speaker
My mom is here and I'm all alone. And it's really interesting because Layla Steinberg, who i referenced earlier, she was a key person in Tupac's life at this point. And she's doing everything to help him make it in music. Help you make it, help you make it, help you make it.
00:41:05
Speaker
And when she read the book, she was really torn over, in hindsight, how did I miss set? Like, how did I miss, how could I be this adult helping Tupac and not see this this young girl who's being raped, who's being abandoned, who's afraid to walk to school, who has no support whatsoever? How did I miss her?
00:41:25
Speaker
And I think Tupac, in hindsight, would probably say the same thing. That's just a guess, but... And ah also, yeah during the reporting of your book, too, you know Stacey Robinson comes out with a 2023 sort of estate-authorized biography. And what what does that do due to you and your work? you're like did you Did you know that was coming out? And just how do you... You're like, ah, shit. like Here's this other thing that's yeah they that's coming along.
00:41:51
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, there have been other Prefontaine projects, obviously. like you I think the first thing you do... Didn't two pre-movies come out at like the exact same time? Yeah, 97 and 98. Yeah.
00:42:02
Speaker
yeah So i had a but my Barry Bonds book came out three weeks after another after Game of Shadows, and that sucked. There was a little more of a gap here. i think the main thing is, first, of course, you're like, fuck.
00:42:13
Speaker
I knew it ahead of time, but I was like, fuck. Then I read it. And I was like, fuck, this is pretty good. Like, this was this is not a bad book. Like, she did a good job. And I think she was a third or fourth writer they hired to work on it. So they had multiple writers who came and went. I don't know the reason. And she put together a very good book.
00:42:28
Speaker
And then you remind yourself, which I think is important, is like, this book is being issued by the estate. So it is going to be a somewhat sanitized version of his life and a version of what they want to put out there, which is totally fine. It's totally reasonable.
00:42:43
Speaker
It's a good book. I found it eye opening. I cited it often in the book. I invited her on my podcast. She never responded. That's OK. But I also knew there were a lot of people they didn't get like that. The state is not in good terms with Seth. So Seth didn't cooperate in the book.
00:42:56
Speaker
Yasmin Fula did not cooperate with the book. So for me, i go through despair, anger, read the book, highlight everything, write down names. Who do I need to talk to?
00:43:08
Speaker
And then I get in my fuck it stage. My fuck it stage is fuck it. I'm just going to bust my ass and do even better. That's what tried to do. I'm not saying it is better. I tried. Yeah. And in the book, too, I would say real inflection point for Tupac is when he takes on the role of Bishop and Juice and the Thug Life tattoo on his belly. Like, that seems to be a moment in his life where things... It's a fork in the road, if you will, or a real inflection point.
00:43:33
Speaker
yeah How would you describe that that that moment in his life? Well... I think Bishop is really interesting because a lot of people, like the narrative, the common Chewbac narrative is he was going along in life, he plays Bishop in Juice, and then he changes and he becomes Bishop.
00:43:52
Speaker
And I interviewed ah Ernest Dickerson, who was the director of Juice. And I talked to a bunch of people I know in Hollywood just from my experience with Winning Time. And I was like, is it possible that you can like play a role and then become the role? like Does that happen? In real life, does that happen?
00:44:06
Speaker
And people are like, You don't become it, but it can change you and change your outlook a little bit. And I do think Tupac really liked the response to Bishop. You know, like there is a visceral response to that character, more so than any other character in that movie. I mean, Bishop is the best part of Juice.
00:44:22
Speaker
I would argue Juice is not a great movie. It's a good movie. But Bishop, Tupac's role is A+. He's ridiculously good at it. So I think that definitely impacted him. The Thug Life Tattoo is a really funny story and kind of a disappointing one, which is People thought there was this narrative that he got the Thug Life tattoo to represent something.
00:44:44
Speaker
And the truth of the matter is, as sucky as this is, he got the Thug Life tattoo because he thought it was a cool tattoo. And he'd heard the term Thug Life. from it There was a guy in ah Marin City named Marku Reynolds who used to say it, a rapper dealer.
00:44:56
Speaker
He would say Thug Life. Different guys would say Thug Life. He liked it. So he got the tattoo across his chest in Houston, Texas. And he comes back and his manager... Watani is basically like, what the fuck is that?
00:45:09
Speaker
He's like, you don't like it? He's like, no, I don't like it. But then they came up with this sort of, in a way, narrative about it that Tupac really liked, which is, you know, um the hate you give, blah, but blah, blah, blah. And this whole sort of, we're going to get people together and we're going to have this movement.
00:45:24
Speaker
And there was also part of it, it was ah was mut Mutula Shakur, who was in prison, who was a big role model in his life. And they talked about that. But The tattoo itself, as much as it sucks, was just him getting a tattoo he really liked. I'm going to get killed for that, but it is the truth.
00:45:41
Speaker
It's God's honest truth. And that does not come from me guessing. That comes from me interviewing a ton of people, including the tattoo artist. Right. Well, you're talking about Bishop too. I mean, there there are other actors who might be like method to really impart that staying character, but in a way it kind of went reverse and in a way like the character made him almost be like a method actor in real life, embodying a certain spirit that, uh, that was fake to real.
00:46:09
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, i will say this, like Bishop was not fake and that, that part wasn't fake. Like, Tupac, so but again, Tupac lived in Baltimore, moved to Marin before senior of high school, went to Tam High School.
00:46:22
Speaker
While he's in Marin, he basically has this moment. He actually has a a moment where he's rapping and he does a rap battle and he gets his ass kicked in a rap battle by some guy from the jungle.
00:46:33
Speaker
And he he is devastated. And he asks a local crack dealer if he could follow him around for a week. And he basically vanishes for a week. Tupac vanishes for week. He's literally not, he's staying with a guy named Demetrius Striplin. He's not showing up at apartment.
00:46:47
Speaker
The people live there, this guy, August Terry interviewed, is like, where the fuck is Tupac? I know where Tupac is. He shows up one day. He's like, Tupac, where were you? You know, like getting laid? And he's like, nah, man, I was following around this guy. And he followed around this guy, taking literal notes with a pen, how to be a rapper, or not how to be a rapper, but how to be thug, how to be tough, how to be a dealer, how to live that life.
00:47:11
Speaker
And I think he really sought to exemplify that in Bishop, in his music, and a little bit more in his persona, Juice and Post-Juice. I think probably some of the harder parts to report and write about were some of the alleged sexual abuse that that took place as well with a few of the women that you you spoke with regarding this. like Just take us to how and just you know there are moments of the reporting that I imagine are very fun, and then you're talking about this. This is like really sober, disturbing stuff.
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, it sucks. You know, he had the Ayanna Jackson alleged rape case that he went to prison for, at Nell's and that was um it's weird. You think about how you would respond to this at different points in your life. And like this woman factory gave him a blow job on the dance floor at Nell's.
00:48:03
Speaker
And I think it's so and so age. You'd be like, well, she, you know, she was asking for that, you know, like dumb, young frat bro kind of thing. Well, what do you expect? She was giving a blow. But like you read more about it and it's really over a couple of days where she comes back to his hotel at the park Meridian.
00:48:20
Speaker
Either way, Whether he raped her or didn't rape her, it is not a good reflection on Tupac because either he did or his friends did. And he was like, what am i Because even in his interview with Kevin Powell on Viby's like, well, i don't know what i was supposed to do.
00:48:35
Speaker
So that was that was bad enough. Right. Like that was bad enough. Then. in like your not fun moment of reporting, I found a second accusation that was made four months earlier in Los Angeles by a woman at a club in LA and she filed a full police report.
00:48:55
Speaker
I found a redacted copy and an unredacted copy, called the woman, interviewed the woman. The woman has initially didn't want to talk to me. Then I showed her, I said, do you want to see the report? And she goes, yeah. And i showed it to her and she was furious because it reminded her of what happened at the time.
00:49:10
Speaker
And basically what happened is according to her, she needed a ride home. Her friends had abandoned hers her as her 21st birthday. She's kind of drunk. Tupac and his friends say they're going to drive her back to wherever she is. Her boyfriend lived at USC was a football player.
00:49:24
Speaker
He's like, wait a minute. We got to stop in my place first. They stopped there. He tells her to come in. He, uh, he assaults her and then they drive her home and his friend assaults her too. And she filed a police report. She went right to the police after this happened.
00:49:39
Speaker
Files a police report, hand, did the rape kit. And whoever the police officer was in charge or the Lieutenant was in charge said that, um, They didn't pursue it because they said she had a chance to escape and didn't.
00:49:51
Speaker
And when I showed her that she was so fucking in angry. She was like, I was 21. I was compromised and I was drunk. Like it wasn't that easy to just run away.
00:50:03
Speaker
So anyway, find this police report and, you know, I interviewed the woman. She finally talked to me and she's like, I have nothing to gain by talking to you. I have there's nothing to gain in my life by talking to you.
00:50:14
Speaker
I'm telling you what happened. It actually happened. I certainly believe the woman, Ayanna Jackson, because it's almost the same exact circumstance. Again, it it ah it's weird.
00:50:27
Speaker
You probably can appreciate this. This actually true, as true as gets. From a book standpoint, a Tupac book standpoint, that story doesn't help me. Like, it doesn't sell books, and it allows people to say, you just hate Tupac. You're just hating on Tupac.
00:50:40
Speaker
Because everything now is a 20-second TikTok click yeah clip, or you or Instagram clip. So be like, This writer says, blah, blah, blah. Well, fuck him. Fuck you. i'm going to come kill you if I see you. Like, I've already gotten death threats over this stupid book.
00:50:51
Speaker
I'm like, but as a biographer, what are you supposed to do? Like, what are you supposed to You're writing about this person's life. his He went to prison for allegedly raping a woman.
00:51:03
Speaker
And here's another police report, almost exactly seen but the same sort of incident, step by step. What are you supposed to do? So that's a story. didn't enjoy reporting it. I don't know what else you're supposed to do as a journalist.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And yeah, yeah what do you, you know, spending a couple years with him and writing the book and going through however many countless rewrites go into this and you're steeped in it?
00:51:28
Speaker
You know, just how do you, you know, feel about about him and, you know, what's your relationship to him having gone through this this process? So I have A really, really close friend of mine and is named Reggie Williams, and he runs Ambrosia for Hedge, which is a hip-hop site.
00:51:45
Speaker
Very close friend. he read the book, and he said, it's a great book, but it made me really sad, right? And I would say, I'm not saying my book is great or not great. like That's not for me to say. But I feel sad. like Tupac's life was sad.
00:51:59
Speaker
More than anything, it was sad. had sex the first time at 14 years old with a cousin. yeah Second time with him was his mother's friend. It's sad. Like, this is not a happy book. And I felt like it was an eye-opening experience to me about trauma in America, in particular about black trauma in America.
00:52:17
Speaker
And as set his sister said to me, he didn't die happy, he died alone. And all these users and all these takers and all these people wanting this and wanting that. And I kind of wish he remained in a lot of ways the 15-year-old kid inside the Baltimore School for the Arts, flooding around, listening to Stevie Wonder and Don McLean and that happiness and that hopefulness.
00:52:36
Speaker
I feel like a lot of that, even though the music was great, I think a lot of that was lost. yeah And speaking of like takers and users, there's ah you know Marion Knight, too, who really took call him Sugar Bear.
00:52:49
Speaker
What's that? We call him Sugar Bear. Sugar Bear, yeah. So, yeah, so Sugar Bear. He really you know takes advantage. Oh, man. I mean, it's funny because they were, you know, Tupac's, Etron Gregory, who was the head of Digital Underground who originally signed him, was trying to bail him out.
00:53:06
Speaker
And Suge Knight comes along and he bails him out. And, you know, Tupac's like, he bailed me out. But the money was off. It wasn't like Suge Knight was being generous. That money was against his his own earnings, his future earnings. i'm like And Suge Knight, there's a really interesting moment. One of my favorites, wrong word, but one of my most telling moments in the book is he's filming gang related in L.A.
00:53:27
Speaker
And one day, and Tupac loved being an actor. Like he really loved being an actor. And he really clicked with the cast of gang related, really clicked with Belushi. It was a tight knit set, tight knit set. And one day, um, Suge Knight pulls up in a new car on the set of Gang Related and he makes this big production.
00:53:46
Speaker
Yo, Pac, keys for you. You're doing great. Blah, blah, blah. Just want to give this to you. Oh, thanks, man. buth Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Suge Knight drives off and Tupac says to one of the the employees, he's like, none of this is real.
00:53:59
Speaker
He's like, what He's I don't own anything. This car I'm sure leased. Where live is leased. Everything's coming out. Like, I don't own anything. None of it is real. And I feel like that was, that was Suge Knight in a way. Like he did Tupac great musically.
00:54:13
Speaker
Like All Eyes of Me is a great album. Machiavelli is a great album. He gave, he let him do the double album, all that stuff. But like, would I wanna be, to me, Suge Knight is Donald King and Donald Trump.
00:54:25
Speaker
He's just a guy that takes advantage of people. Yeah. And ah you know you're right in the, ah believe in the intro, like ah the mind of a biographer is overwhelmed by obsessiveness and tackling a subject. One doesn't merely observe, he dives in, he chases, he craves, he crawls, he seeks.
00:54:41
Speaker
I love that sentiment. I think it's like there's the whole private eye nature of being a journalist and and specifically journalist when you're really leaning into a central figure. you know In what way are you kind of ah you know energized by this project to you know pursue what comes next?
00:54:58
Speaker
I mean, it's funny because it's to me, i don't know if you feel this way. It's a lot of misery. Like, I don't know, do not feel that or do you? Oh yes. Chronic misery. It's so much misery. It is so much misery. It is so hard.
00:55:16
Speaker
And I'm not saying, I always have to say this, I'm not saying I'm a firefighter or a policeman or a doctor or whatever. I'm not saying that. It's not natural. Like this is not a natural profession. Like writing for Sports Illustrated or traveling around covering baseball, cool.
00:55:30
Speaker
Locking yourself in your room for three years to focus on one person yeah is not mentally healthy and it's not natural. It is not. So like I get psyched when the book, when I see the book, when the book comes out, it's fun. It's thrilling. Oh, you're going to be on NPR. You're going to be on whatever. Like, that's great. It's fun. It's exciting.
00:55:49
Speaker
Lee Monfield, great, great writer said to me years ago, he's like, it's an unnatural thing. You you spend two years in a hole to come out for two weeks. You know, like it doesn't make sense, but it's true. So what energizes me to quote,
00:56:02
Speaker
Your favorite of mine, Jonathan Ige. I was complaining to him in the middle of Tupac Research. We were eating at a place in LA, Crave Cafe in LA. And I sounded like the whiniest little wuss of all time. It's killing me. but He's like, you're getting paid good money to earn a PhD on Tupac.
00:56:19
Speaker
He's like, I was paid good money to earn a PhD on Martin Luther King. I would have done that for free. He's like, and you would do this for free too. And I was like, yeah, that's actually good. It's a good way of thinking of it.
00:56:30
Speaker
And that's kind of what keeps me going, to be honest. when You and I, we shared an editor and Matt Harper, and he's just someone who's amazing. and his thumbprints are all over the front runner in the best possible way. he just got me.
00:56:44
Speaker
I always talk of, when I talk about the book, I often ah you often use the collective plural of of we. Like, you know, we did this because, you know, he he was just such a great steward for the book. And it just, you know, what I want to say that comes in.
00:56:58
Speaker
That comes in handy if the book doesn't sell well. You'd be like, we did this, Matt. Exactly. Say, hey, buddy, my scapegoat. ah But just what was your experience and ah in your dialogue to you know to bring this and shape this and bring it to the world?
00:57:13
Speaker
First all, he's great. He's great. He's supportive. He's positive. He's upbeat. He believes in writers. i've had I've had some really bad editor experiences in my life, and he's one of the best. Him and Peter Hubbard, who's the big gun there, like they're just really supportive.
00:57:27
Speaker
And really good. And for me, it's honestly about having a group of people. I have like a support staff that's always been kind of the same through the years. My my wife is gold. My son, Emmett, who's now a college um sophomore Northeastern, loves hip hop.
00:57:41
Speaker
Very important. My daughter, Casey, named the book. You have these people who are just support staff and people who you believe in and people who believe in you, who will be honest with you. And he's just added to that. You know, he's great.
00:57:52
Speaker
He's great. yeah i got I have nothing. Rare is the time that I haveve nothing negative to say about a publisher and editor, and this is one of those times. He's great. Yeah. To your point of way, echoing what you said, I usually write this in the acknowledgement of whatever thing I'm writing, but it's just like writing books is a team sport.
00:58:09
Speaker
Totally. Totally. Well, I mean, also, like, my wife did not, when we got married, i don't think she signed up to hear about Tupac for three years nonstop. You know, like... she She can tell the stories. you know like She can tell the stories now as well as I can. like That's just part of that drill. you know She's not even a Tupac fan. i mean She likes some of his music. but's not Now she knows everything about him.
00:58:30
Speaker
yeah Jeff, as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests just for a recommendation, like a fun recommendation for the listeners out there. and It can be a book or it can just be like something cool that's making you happy. so I would just extend that to you as you as we close out.
00:58:46
Speaker
I'll combine those two things. There's a book. I was in Dublin. My son had to spend a semester in Dublin. And I'm in a bookstore in Dublin. You ever been to Dublin? No, but gosh, I want to go to Ireland bad. Highly recommend.
00:58:58
Speaker
I'm in Dublin in a bookstore. I'm looking for a book. I see a book. just there I go to sports. And it's called Fighter by a guy named Andy Lee, who was a pretty good fighter, like a solid professional boxer. I won a belt.
00:59:12
Speaker
The cover was awesome. I buy this book. It is maybe the best sports book I've ever read. Fighter by Andy Lee. This is the funny part. I go on um TikTok like midway through the book. I'm in London on that same trip.
00:59:28
Speaker
Staying at my sister-in-law, of my cousin-in-law's house. No, sister-in-law's house. My wife's sister's house. My wife's sister. Yeah, anyway. I'm in the basement there and I love this book.
00:59:39
Speaker
And I do a TikTok video. And I'm like, this might be the best sports book I've ever read. This book, Fighter by Andy Lee, is just freaking insane. It's so good. The TikTok video gets like 300,000 views. It's pretty high.
00:59:51
Speaker
He reaches out to me, Andy. He's like, hey, I saw your thing. That's amazing. I had him on my podcast. I get a reach out from the publisher. And they're like, hey, we're thinking of releasing this in America now.
01:00:02
Speaker
Can we use your quote on the top of the book? So the other day, they sent me a copy of Fighter with best sports book ever, Jeff Perlman. And all of this happened because of a TikTok video he's in a basement in London. And it is a great, great, not good, great book, Fighter by Andy Lee.
01:00:18
Speaker
Oh, my God. That brings us all full circle to book promotion, TikTok, and virality that drives these things. You know what I need? I need my me to say, just for someone to say, best book ever.
01:00:31
Speaker
It's Dublin. and We'll publish in Dublin. Oh, fantastic. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for carving out time to do this. The book's amazing. So great to just talk shop and talk some Tupac here and how you go about doing the amazing work you do. So just thank you so much.
01:00:44
Speaker
Thanks, brother. appreciate
01:00:50
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. Thanks to Jeff, and thanks to you for making it this far, if you've made it this far. The name of the book, again, is Only God Can Judge Me. The Many Lives of Tupac Shakord is published by Mariner Books.
01:01:04
Speaker
You can learn more about Jeff at JeffPerlman.com and follow him on a bouquet of social media platforms. Pick a card, any card. I'm about ready to sunset book events for 2025. Like, I'll do a one-off here and there, and I do have something cool coming up in November.
01:01:24
Speaker
But the book has been out for five months, and I'm unsure what more I can do to drum up any more juice for it or to keep its momentum going. It has been a slow burn book tour, if you want to call it that.
01:01:38
Speaker
I think many of us can attest that sometimes these events feel, on balance, pointless. Like, it's a lot of out-of-pocket money to visit faraway bookstores. and ah none of them pay for your travel, nor are they expected to, but all of this shit is out of pocket. It all costs us anything. Authors don't get a cut of book sales.
01:01:58
Speaker
Not from the bookstore or from the actual sale of the book. I think readers still think that every time a book is sold, like we get a we get a cut, like we get a check every month or something. Nope, I still have to sell like 38,000 more books before I see an extra penny.
01:02:14
Speaker
know, we don't get any tangible benefit from doing these events. Not really. The venue gets all the benefit with very little risk. you know, they open their doors and by and large they are warm hosts.
01:02:26
Speaker
But for the most part they're giving you a roof and a microphone and ah good luck. Many of my book events have been the lick my wounds variety, which always feels like a waste of time, superseded only by the embarrassment of sitting there giving your talk to like one or two people, which is just awkward.
01:02:44
Speaker
It's extremely awkward. know, when I was in Bend this past weekend, I thought I was going to have my first total no-show. ah you know I was pushing it out there, and then you know they were resharing. It was a Sunday, and the weather was nice, and midday.
01:02:59
Speaker
um i was up there by myself in the room, and nobody around. I took a picture of all the empty chairs like right at 1 o'clock when I was supposed to go on. There was nobody.
01:03:10
Speaker
um Then one person came in, and we shot the shit for about five minutes. Then um finally, after about 10 to 15 minutes, um you know five people five more people came in. And I did my little talk.
01:03:23
Speaker
It was fine. It was fun. You know, I give the talk with the same energy for five people as I would for 50. You know, it's the same thing. But man, you think of all the gas money, the food money and the time all to sell the venue five bucks of stock that I had to provide.
01:03:42
Speaker
And he starts to question what the point of all this shit is. Yeah, I realized what the point was while noodling in my journal. You're not really selling the current book. You are, but you're not really.
01:03:55
Speaker
What you're really doing is selling the next one. You're hopefully making a good enough impression that these people will want to follow your career, ah that the bookstores and those venues think that you're kind of a cool person to deal with.
01:04:07
Speaker
And then the the people who do show up, if they email you, you' know write them back right away. Express how grateful you are that they even came out. Even if it felt a little weird that you were giving this talk that is you know for a big audience, but you do it for like three people.
01:04:24
Speaker
As an audience, they couldn't really blend into each other. There's too few people, so I don't know. I imagine sitting in the audience is a little weird.
Opportunities from Events
01:04:32
Speaker
Maybe I'm projecting. But you do these events because you never know what momentum they create. I was just invited to be the first of a series of talks in Eugene this year. First in this year's series. not like the first ever series.
01:04:46
Speaker
A history pub. And it should be very well attended as it's part of the university. ah Stuff like that doesn't happen without showing up at every single event, big or small, over the course of your yeah you're youre promotion window.
Saying 'Yes' to Opportunities
01:04:59
Speaker
Also, over the years, you hear some of these other like these popular bros out there, influencer types, who are like, you have to learn how to say no. ah To that, I say, okay, maybe.
01:05:11
Speaker
but But if you're like a little shit like me, the only answer is yes. It's yes to everything. I don't care if your podcast has one subscriber and it's yourself and you invite me. The answer is yes.
Audience Size and Promotion Ethics
01:05:24
Speaker
you know I'll never forget Austin Kleon when I had him on the show back in 2018 or 19 or whatever. When I was trying to book him, he asked how big my audience was. He's the only person of nearly 500 people who's ever asked what size the audience is as a condition as to whether he would entertain the show or not, whether it was worth his time or not.
01:05:43
Speaker
yeah I fucking lied to him because what the fuck kind of question is that? That always irked me. I've done a lot of podcasts and I check to see what their reach is. and But it's never a condition that they have a big audience for it to be worth my time. Like I like i said, you could be the only subscriber to your show.
01:06:00
Speaker
I'll go on your show and then when it's out, I will put it in my newsletter and put it on my website and push it out on social media because that's what you do. Saying yes is about being part of the literary community.
Community Participation and Boundaries
01:06:11
Speaker
Showing up isn't always about you.
01:06:14
Speaker
You know this. I guess there can come a point where if it's very obvious you're being exploited or taking advantage of, then you might want to set some boundaries.
01:06:25
Speaker
Throw in a rider in there so you can get some M&Ms. ah But for the vast majority of us, who we're not ever going to pack a theater or headline a book festival or be the kind of draw...
01:06:37
Speaker
Where it's only fair for them to pay for your travel and your hotel and maybe a kombucha or something. You bottom line, boil it down.
Finding Joy in Work
01:06:45
Speaker
Is there anything cooler than getting to do what we do when we do it?
01:06:49
Speaker
Think about it. like Like Jeff said in this podcast, so and that anecdote he's recalling from Jonathan I. he's He was like, you're getting paid good money to earn a Ph.D. in Tupac. And it's like you would do it for free.
01:07:02
Speaker
You know, whether we get paid good money or not, there's still no better work than this shit, right? Right? Right? So stay wild, see you in efforts, and if you can't do interviews, see ya!