"I had no police record until I had a record," says Tupac Shakur in this revealing documentary, ingeniously narrated by the rapper himself using interviews recorded shortly before his 1996 death. Made in collaboration with Shakur's mother Afeni, Tupac: Resurrection is an inevitably one-sided affair that slavishly celebrates its subject with a fervour that borders on idolatry. However, even when viewed through rose-tinted specs, Tupac emerges as a bright, perceptive individual whose murder robbed us all of a bold and uncompromising talent.
"NO STRANGER TO HARDSHIP AND POVERTY"
"This is my story: a story about ambition, violence, redemption and love," says a disembodied Shakur at the onset of Lauren Lazin's film, which uses concert footage, private home movies, and talking heads to chart his rise from ghetto kid to global icon. Growing up with a crack addict mother and street hustler stepdad, Tupac was no stranger to hardship and poverty. And it was this experience of deprivation and injustice that fuelled his angry, confrontational music and "thug life" credo.
"I didn't create thug life, I diagnosed it," Shakur claims. But his support for gang culture and gangsta codes was at odds with the sensitive artist who wrote poetry, kept a journal, and loved his mom. Indeed, watching him spit at news crews or taunt his rival Biggie Smalls, you can't help thinking the role of a woman-hating, gun-toting gang-banger was just a part he was playing - a part that would ultimately cost him his life.
The irony is that his premature demise turned him into one of the best-selling artists of all time, with over 30 million records sold since his fatal Las Vegas shooting. If there is a villain in Lazin's piece, it's Marion 'Suge' Knight, the Death Row Records impresario who cynically exploited the Biggie-Tupac feud and then reaped the rewards while they pushed up the daisies.
Tupac: Resurrection (2004)
