A GUILTY CONVICTION WILL NEVER BRING TUPAC BACK

By

Levy Lee Simon

So, finally the only living person responsible for the murder of the iconic Tupac Shakur has been tried and convicted. And to be honest I hope they give Kiffe Dee life without parole, and I pray when he comes back, he will have to do another life sentence. I know that sounds cold, but I have reasons beyond what the average person may know. Tupac was not only a friend, but he was like family, who I’d known since he was eleven years old.

And to think that some people who’s only objective in life is to cause death and destruction took his life, seems so unfair. At least now, there is some compensation for his death. Its will never bring him back and we will never know what he would have accomplished over thirty years. Of course the people that took his life didn’t care about that. They only cared about their world of hatred towards other people who look just like them. OK, I am not in that world, and I know there is a price to pay for those that live in the world of gang banging. I am not here to pass judgement on that lifestyle because there are reasons that it exist in the Black and Hispanic communities. I grew up in Harlem USA, and I know first-hand the mindset of those that go that route. Tupac was not one of those people. He was not cut from that cloth.

I spoke to Tupac two weeks before he was shot in Las Vegas. I’d just arrived in Iowa City to begin my grad program in the University of Iowa Playwright’s Workshop. I hadn’t talked to him for at least a year or so before his call. Tupac had the habit of calling me out of the blue at crossroad periods in my life. I didn’t even know he knew I was in Iowa.

“Yo Lee, it’s Tupac.”

“Yo, what’s up man?”

“What the fuck are you doing in Iowa?”

“I’m in grad school. How did you know I was in Iowa?

“I know everything! Iowa? What? What them white people going to teach you? You need to be teaching them.”

I laughed because one thing about Tupac, he always spoke his mind.

“I’m not here for acting. I’m getting my masters in playwriting.”

“Oh shit. Word. You writing now?”

Tupac knew me as actor going back to when he first started out in Harlem when he was eleven.

“Yeah man. I think I got some things to say.”

“You got that right. You sure do.”

We laughed and the conversation continued for about an hour. Us, just talking about life, acting, people we know, girls, etc.  There was no thug talk or street talk. I didn’t know that side of Tupac, and he knew that I knew better.  I knew him as an extremely talented actor and poet.

Tupac was ten or eleven years old when his mother Afeni started bringing him to the infamous African American Studio for Acting and Speech in Harlem, run by, the late great  Ernie McClintock. At the time of that call, Ernie was still alive. Ernie’s company held acting classes at the Harlem Y, back then. We studied all aspects of the craft, scene study, voice and diction, dance and movement, character development, you name it. The company had a group of actors that I still consider one of the most talented group of artists I have ever worked with. They included, Ed Sewer III, Helen Butler, Carolyn Jenkins, Bahni Turpin, Charles Watts, Gregory Wallace, Bernard London, Scott Lesane, (Tupac’s Cousin) Seal Coleman, Hazel Smith, Lola Louie, Jerome Preston Bates, Barbara Smith, Mamie Louise Anderson, Bruce Jenkins, Pat Matthews, and more.

The classes and training were intense. When Afeni brought Tupac in, he was a quiet kid at first. He’d sit next to Ernie and just observe. There were other kids around too, Bokeem Woodbine the son of Mamie Louise Anderson and Terrence Howard the grandson of Minnie Gentry, to name two. They were just little kids running around but Tupac would just sit and watch.

Then in 1984, Ernie announced that we would be performing A Raisin in the Sun at the Apollo Theatre as a fund raiser for Jesse Jackson who was running for president back then. Jessie would be speaking at intermission. Tupac was casted as Travis, the twelve year old son of Walter Lee. Initially I was not cast in the part of Walter Lee. I was supposed to be understudying Ed Sewer, and I was cool with that until Ernie announced at rehearsal one night that Ed had dropped out. Why? I’ll never know but suddenly I was going to be playing the part of Walter Lee on the stage with powerhouse actors, Helen Butler, Carolyn Jenkins, Gregory Wallace, Charles Watts, Bruce Jenkins, the great Minnie Gentry and Tupac.

That night the Apollo Theatre was packed and electricity rain through the air. I’d never been more nervous. Everybody knows the Apollo crowd is the toughest crowd in the world because if they didn’t like you they will let you know it, with chorus of boos, an apple or banana throw at you. From the moment Tupac stepped on the stage the audience loved him. We all knew the kid had this illuminous smile and charisma but it wasn’t until that night that we sensed he had that elusive element called, “the It factor.” What that was, he had it. They laughed with him and cried with him. I got by that night, but this is not about me, it’s about Tupac.

That summer the 127th Street Repertory Ensemble did a six-week run of the play at the Waldon Theatre at 88th and Central Park West. In a few months Tupac was no longer a shy kid around us. He was rambunctious and playful, always up to something, like when he’d sneak into the women’s dressing room, steal a pair of big bloomers from one of the big butt women in the cast, put them over his head and run around the theatre with the owner of the bloomers chasing him. I can see it now, hilarious. No one was safe from his antics. We’d chase him for doing all kinds of stuff, grab him and give him a “nuggee,” or punch him on his legs. He’d get up acting like he was going to fight but Tupac couldn’t fight. LOL … We’d try to teach him because there were some fighters in the ensemble. Bernard London was a 3rd  degree black belt. Bruce Jenkins was also a Black belt, Scott studied the martial arts too, and I was just a Harlem Street fighter. I grew up fighting. I never was one to start a fight, but I knew how to handle myself when I needed to.  “Anyway!” We tried to teach Tupac how to punch and block, dip and dive, but he just wasn’t a fighter, at least back then he wasn’t. He did have heart though because no matter how rough we were with him, he’d never stop or give up. He always had heart.

During that summer Tupac’s birthday came, actually it’s June 16th. The ensemble took a collection so he could get a birthday present because Afeni was struggling. Tupac took his birthday money and brought groceries for him and his sister. Remember he had just turned thirteen. I should mention, though Afeni was struggling she would have fish fries every other Friday or so at her places on 122nd Street between Lenox and 7eth Avenue, where the ensemble would eat, drink and party.

Afeni decided to send Tupac to Baltimore because as I said she as struggling with addiction at that time. It was while in Baltimore that Tupac got accepted to the Baltimore School of the Arts. After graduating he left Baltimore for San Francisco. In meantime, I was having my own issues with substances. I fell to the plague and became a victim of the crack epidemic myself. It was a rough time and my life. My good friend and life mentor Black Panther Jamal Joseph suggested that I get out of the city and go stay with Afeni who was getting her life together in Connecticut at the time. So, I went to stay with Afeni for a few weeks just to get off the streets of Harlem and clean up my act. One night while watching. “Rap City,” there was Tupac on TV in Digital Underground video, Same Song. I was surprised standing in front of the TV with my mouth open. I had no idea he had gotten into rapping. Afeni called him right then and we had a long conversation on the phone. He talked about how much he loved Hip-Hop, but he would always be an actor first.

I watched from a distance as Tupac became Tupac or Pac as everyone was calling him. He was excelling and making his name as a rapper and an actor.

Later in 1993, I was clean and sober when I was doing the Broadway bound play, The Kentucky Cycle at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

One day Ernie who was living in Norfolk Virgina at the time called me.

“Levy, somebody wants to talk to you.”

It was Tupac. He was on tour with Death Row, and they would be in DC in a few days. That conversation as I remember was so cool. He expressed gratitude for his early beginnings at with the African American Studio/127thStreet Repertory. He’d already done Juice and was making his name in Hollywood as an actor too. We were all every proud of him. But there was a dark side to his journey. That same day Ernie said to me on the phone.

“Levy, you need to talk to him. He got this people in my house. Levy I done’ seen some niggers in my lifetime but I ain’t never met no niggas like these niggas before. They smoking reefers in my house, cussing and talking loud and all they talking about is hurting people. They got me scared in my own house.”

I could tell Ernie was scared. And Ernie was not fearful person.

“When you see him talk to him, please.”

Tupac told me that we would be in DC and was going to leave passes for me at the stage door. I was excited to go but when I told my friend Kate she wanted to go too. Kate was a white girl who I had befriended a few years before when I worked at Arena Stage. Kate was wild child. She had a mohawk hairdo and wore micro mini-skirts with no underwear and cowboy boots. There was no way I was going to take her around Tupac’s Death Row crew. I could not see that ending well. And, if I went alone, I’d never hear the end of it from Kate, so I didn’t go.

Shortly after that, Tupac got shot at the Quad Studios in New York. It was the incident that ignited the East Coast-West Coast beef. It was after the shooting that Suge Knight stepped in  while Tupac was on Rikers Island and things just escalated out of control.  He survived that incident but was facing charges brought by some chick in a hotel room. Then there was the incident in Atlanta when he shot the police officer. Afeni called and implored me to talk to him. I called Jamal and we both told Afeni that we’d talk to him because he was spiraling out of control. Afeni was worried sick. We both called Tupac but couldn’t reach him, well I couldn’t anyway. He did call me back, but we kept missing each other.

Two weeks after the phone call in Iowa, I was awakened by my radio alarm.

“Tupac Shukur shot in Vegas.”

I sat up in my bed. My heart raced. How bad was it? I was hoping and praying that it wasn’t bad. I called Afeni. The phone rang. I wasn’t expecting her to pick up but she did.

“Afeni.”

“Hi Lee.”

“How is he?”

There was an excruciating long pause.

“It doesn’t look good, Lee.”

I didn’t know what to say. And there was another long pause.

“Lee, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

I never talked to Afeni or Tupac again. Tupac died a week later from his wounds and Afeni became a recuse. She only talked to a few people over the years. I’d send messages through people we knew and they’d tell me, she sends her love.

Of course, I always wonder if I could have done more but I know that may not have changed anything. When I saw the images of the that night in Las Vegas when he beat down Orlando Anderson, I kept looking and playing it over and over. Who is that guy?  He’d gotten caught up in a game he wasn’t supposed to be playing. Tupac was not a gang banger. That was not his calling. And the people that killed him had no clue as to what they took away from an entire people, our culture, our collective legacy.

Yes, I was heartbroken when he died. I was angry that ignorance and stupidity had taken his life and had won. And as I said earlier, I guess there is a certain satisfaction that the only living person responsible for his death will probably spend the rest of his life in prison, but that will never bring Tupac back. We’ll never know what other brilliance he would have gifted us with through his music, acting, poetry and activism. It remains one of the most devastating loses of my lifetime. I’m sure other people feel the same, not to mention what it meant to his family, Afeni and Tupac himself.

Levy Lee Simon