Cold Open: Tupac and Biggie - two of the biggest stars of all time. And neither of them would see the age of 26. Their West Coast/East Coast rap feud helped sell millions of records, helped launch the career of Puff Daddy. Cemented as one of the greatest hip hop labels of all time. I listened to a ton of Tupac growing up. And who hasn’t heard some Biggie? But how much do we really know about either man? Well, after today’s episode, you’ll know a lot. Biggie, biggie, biggie, can’t you see that we’ve got to learn a little bit about you and Tupac’s history, today, on Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome! Happy Monday Timesuckers! I’m Dan Cummins aka the MasterSucker, the 4th leg of Bojangles - and this IS Timesuck!

Welcome to the Cult of the Curious

Recording from the Suck Lair. Josh Krell monitoring the sound waves.

Space lizards! The app has been updated! Hail Nimrod! New update that fixes pretty much everything up now at the Google Play and the Apple app stores. So happy that is happy. Thank you Bit Elixir! It’s working great on both my Android and my iPhone.

Thanks to all those Space Lizards who made the Trek to Couer d’Alene. I’m recording this Suck before our get together, but, I’m just gonna assume we had a great time I’ll be posting lots of pics on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter - @timesuckpodcast

Back on tour this week! Stand up shows in Minneapolis, March 2nd and 3rd at Sisyphus Brewing. Both early shows are sold out. Some tickets still available for the 10PM shows.

Brea Improv - SoCal- March 8th - 11th Hilarities in Cleveland March 22-24th. Lake City April 20-21st.

More tour dates at www.dancummins.tv - big Southern tour in early April. And now, time for Timesuck 76 - Tupac & Biggie: Fame, Money, & Murder.

PAUSE INTERLUDE

II. Intro: Alright - you guys read for a giant timeline today? Kind of a dueling timeline really. Tupac and Biggie were just barely a year apart in age, and they died within six months of each other. So, it makes sense to bounce back and forth between their childhoods and ascent to hip hop superstardom in a little dueling timeline. Let’s get it started.

PAUSE INTERLUDE

III. Tupac Timeline

A. June 16, 1971: was born on June 16, 1971, in East - City. He was born Richard William Jr. but changed it later because a exec told him that no one was gonna buy a hip hop from a guy named Dick Willie Jr.

No.

He was born Lesane Parish Crooks, but in 1972, when he was barely a year old, his mom renamed him after Túpac Amaru II, an 18th-century Peruvian revolutionary who was executed after leading an indigenous uprising against Spanish rule. And, since dad didn’t stick around, she didn’t feel like it was fair to have him take dad’s last name, and, I gotta say, I agree with that logic.

You know your mom is a wee bit more intense than other moms when, instead of naming you after a grandpa or Uncle, you get named after a Peruvian revolutionary even though you’re not even 1% Peruvian.

Well - Afeni Shakur Davis was more intense than your average mom. She wasn’t a homemaker. She didn’t have a white collar job. She didn’t work as a checker at Safeway. She was a high ranking member of the Black Panther revolutionary political movement.

Both of Tupac’s parents were Black Panthers. Revolutionaries.

Afeni, born Alice Faye Williams, met Tupac’s father, Billy Garland, while working for the Black Panther Party. They had a brief romance that produced a baby. Not sure about all the details of the romance but I’m certain it involved a penis inside a vagina and an overly relaxed attitude towards birth control.

Afeni specialized in raising bail money for jailed Panthers – which was an important organizational role considering the Black Panthers were constantly getting arrested. Law enforcement HATED them. Mostly because they openly hated law enforcement.

Alfeni operated alongside prominent Black Panther member Geronimo Pratt, who would later be named Tupac's godfather. Geronimo was born Elmer Pratt. Not actually joking this time. Hard to be taken seriously as a revolutionary when your name is Elmer, as in Fudd. And Elmer Fudd was no revolutionary. He was a ‘Wabbit hunter! Kill d rabbits, kill d rabbits, kill d wabbits!!

Elmer renamed himself after the famous Apache warrior. And he would go to prison in 1972 for a murder charge that would later be vacated in 1997 because the prosecution upheld key evidence from the jury, such as the fact that their key witness was an FBI informant. Pratt claimed to be 350 miles away from Santa Monica, where the murder occurred, when it actually did occur.

Twenty-five years on a bullshit murder charge. Damn. After getting out, he left the country and moved to the East African country of Tanzania. Don’t blame him! And why was he charged in the first place? Probably because he was a member of the Black Panther party, an organization formed in response to numerous acts of police brutality.

In 1969, Afeni and 20 other members of the party were jailed while facing trial on some trumped up charges of planning a series of bombings in ; Shakur was pregnant with Tupac at the time. Tupac later told a reporter, “I was cultivated in prison, my embryo was in prison.”

After reading Fidel Castro's History Will Absolve Me while incarcerated, Shakur chose to represent herself in court, telling other accused Panthers that if they were convicted, they would be the ones serving jail time, not the lawyers. Pregnant while on trial and facing a thirty-year prison sentence, Shakur interviewed witnesses and passionately argued in court.

And she won.

She and the other members of the Panther 21 group were acquitted after an eight-month trial and released from prison in May 1971. The following month, she gave birth to Lesane. And then she changed his name to Tupac. She’d later say:

“I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people in the world. I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighborhood.” Again, not your typical mom. Not gonna be a typical childhood when that’s your origin.

1. Who were the Black Panthers? Little more about the Black Panthers before we move into Tupac’s childhood. Who were they? Well, the Black Panthers - who deserve their own Suck and I’m sure will get one someday- kicked off on October of 1966, in Oakland, California.

And, apparently, they have nothing to do with the new Black Panther movie even though the comic book character of the Black Panther also debuted in 1966. The party was formed in October. The comic came out in July. Weird timing. The Black Panther character was the first mainstream African American comic superhero. Did the the party take their name from the comic? Supposedly not, but, again, weird coincidence.

Or did the party take their name from Pootie & Juju, issue #58: Pootie Gets a Black Panther and Names It Hootie, which is how the band Hootie and the Blowfish got its name.

That issue of Pootie & Juju came out in August of 1966. Pootie Gets a Black Panther and Juju freaks out because A) it’s illegal to have a black panther for a pet, B) Juju is allergic to cats, and C) Pootie told Juju that he got Hootie for a really good price because Hootie had eaten her two previous owners.

Well, luckily for Pootie and Juju fans, Hootie didn’t eat either of them in the episode! But, she did eat Juju’s pet goldfish, Muffintop. And when Juju came home to find a Black Panther with a wet face and a missing goldfish, he’d had enough.

“No more Hootie, Pootie!” He screamed. But it was hard to understand him because his face was swelling up due to his cat allergies. And Pootie said, “What? No more Pootie Tooties?” And Juju screamed “No more Hootie, Pootie!” And Pootie heard him this time and said, “What if we just keep him in the yard? Then your face probably won’t swell up as much.” And Juju screamed “Too little, too diddle Pootie!!” And they argued back and forth about whether or not to keep Hootie for 235 consecutive pages. And by the time they were done, Hootie the Black Panther had died of old age.

It wasn’t one of their more popular issues. And I hope new listeners realize by now I’m joking about Pootie and Juju.

Anyway, the organization was founded in the wake of the assassination of black nationalist Malcolm X in 1965 and after police in San Francisco shot and killed an unarmed black teen named Matthew Johnson in September of 1966.

The Black Panther Party's initial reason for existence was to form and organize armed citizens' patrols that monitored the behavior of the Oakland Police Department. As I said, they were formed as a response to continual police brutality against African Americans in the 60s. And, as organizations typically do, they evolved. In 1969, community social programs became another core activity of party members. The Black Panther Party instituted a variety of community social programs, most extensively the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, and the provided community health clinics to address issues like food injustice. They were nationwide but had their largest presence in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.

And this is the culture Tupac was born into. Son of Black Panthers. No wonder they lyrics of so many of his songs would be so insightful and intense. No wonder he emphasized rising up against the powers that be.

It was a harsh beginning for Tupac. Afeni’s life was so chaotic during his early years. The Black Panther Party was dying but it still had active groups that held meetings and rallies that Afeni often attended, carrying Tupac with her. Family friend (and later Tupac’s publicist) Karen Lee has said, “I met Tupac for the first time at the Armory in New York City on 168th Street. I had gone over to hear Minister Louis Farrakhan speak at a rally and Afeni was there with him. He was a tiny baby about two months old.

Shorltly after Tupac’s birth, Afeni was a free woman, but as an unskilled high school dropout she had a hard time finding work. That difficulty was compounded by her being an ex-Panther once accused of conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks. Immediately following her release, Afeni accepted invitations to speak at colleges and universities (including Harvard). When black radicalism stopped being chic among the white upper classes, Afeni’s audiences vanished and so did her income.

Afeni was also more into the Black Panther cause than she was into being a dependable mom or provider. As an infant, Tupac crashed in the apartments of random rally attendees, on the couches of relatives, or in homeless shelters. Tupac recalled that they moved from Manhattan to and back at least eighteen times from the time he was born until he was ten years old. Tupac said that each time “I had to reinvent myself. People think just because you born in the ghetto, you gonna fit in. A little twist in your life and you don’t fit in, no matter what. I felt like my life could be destroyed at any moment.” Such a lifestyle had profound effects on young Tupac, risking equally profound consequences. “I was crying all the time,” Tupac later told an interviewer. “My major thing was I couldn’t fit in, because I was from everywhere. I didn’t have no buddies that I grew up with.”

Afeni eventually found employment at a nonprofit organization that provided free legal services to the poor. By the time Tupac started kindergarten, Afeni had married a man named Mutulu Shakur (no relation to her first husband) and had another child, a girl she named Sekyiwa who’d go by Sek (“Seck”) .

2. May 21, 1972: Less than a year after the birth of Tupac, another future hip hop star is born in New York City. The B.I.G. Born Dilbert Von Wrinkle-Squirt. Junior. Esquire.

Of course not. That’s a horrible name for a future hip hop star. Or anyone actually.

Christopher George Latore Wallace was born on May 21, 1972 in . His parents both hailed from the Caribbean island of Jamaica — his mom, Voletta ran a jerk chicken stand. And his father ran another jerk chicken stand. No, Voletta taught preschool and his pop, Selwyn, was a welder and local Jamaican politician. Sorry - jerk chicken is the only thing I know about Jamaica.

His father, in addition to having a job as a welder, also had a whole other family back in London, England, and abandoned Biggie to return to them before he was two. So that’s unfortunate.

Dads not sticking around. Too much of that in this story. Too much of that in general in society! Both Tupac and Biggie’s dads didn’t hang around, and they were both the first born. While Tupac would have a sister. Chris would remain an only child.

Unlike Tupac, young Biggie was well cared for by his mother. “I made sure my son had education, a good mattress, clean sheets, good quality clothes, and I gave him quality time,” his mom would later state. His mom had come from a nice, middle-class family in Jamaica. She could’ve stayed in Jamaica and had a nice, middle class life. But, she didn’t want it. She wanted to explore the world. And so she set off for New York on her own at the age of 17.

While Chris may have had a positive maternal figure in his life, she didn’t live in a good, posotive neighborhood. She had a small apartment in between the Clint Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant (“Sty- vuh-sunt”) neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Heroin and crack were sold on street corners. The family heard gunshots and police sirens way, way too often at night.

And Christopher fell into a bad crowd young, but, because he was so intelligent and sneaky, so polite and well-spoken when he needed to be - his mom never saw it. He sounds like, well, me! I was a sneaky little bastard. Best way to get away with criminal activity is too get good grades and not cause trouble in school. Which is not good life advice by the way young Suckers. I did that but I was very lucky not to get caught and derail my life.

While raising Chris - Voletta went back to school, graduating with a teaching degree from Brooklyn college and getting a job at a jerk chicken shack. I mean school. She worked as a grade school teacher.

Chris began attending nursery school at two years and five months. He could write his name by three. He could make some bomb ass jerk chicken by two. He went to a Catholic grade school & middle school: Queen of All Saints. He excelled. He also spent a few months of every summer back with his mother’s family in Jamaica. Did that until he was 16. His uncle there worked as a DJ in reggae clubs.

Through grade school - Chris’s house was the place to be. He had an Atari, and Intellivision, AND a Colecovision. Wow. I only had Atari! I don’t even remember those other two.

Unlike Tupac - Chris’s early years weren’t as impoverished as he claimed them to be. He’d exaggerate his street cred later, just like O’Shea Jackson aka Ice Cube would do with NWA. Ice Cube grew up in South Central LA - but he grew up in a middle class household and never gang banged or was ever arrested.

He did grow up without a dad though, seeing his father rarely after the age of two and seeing him for the last time in 1978 at the age of 6.

His mom spoiled him as he grew up - buying him Timberlands, Tommy Hilfiger, whatever he wanted.

Chris showed artistic abilities as a young kid. Voletta remembered him being able to look at a picture in a magazine and then being able to sketch an exact replica, freehand.

At age ten, Wallace fell off a city bus and broke his right leg in three places. His mom sued the city of NY and settled for a five figure sum. Laying around the house for six months, Chris, already a husky kid, began to put on weight. He put on pounds that stuck around long after his leg healed.

1981: In 1981, when Tupac was ten when his stepfather, Mutulu, became a fugitive from justice. It was around this time that a minister asked Tupac what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A revolutionary,” he replied. And, in is way, he would become that. Mutulu was part of an organization known as the Weather Underground.

The group had formed in 1968 in response to the failure of the antiwar and civil rights movements to fully and effectively end the war, eliminate racism, and implement a vast range of reforms for social justice. Their name was taken from Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

The Weather Underground bombed targets across the through the 1970s, selecting places they deemed emblematic of strife and violence around the world. They wanted to get the attention of the authorities and had accomplished that objective earlier in the decade when a group of them accidentally blew up three of their members along with a townhouse on 11th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. Tupac’s stepdad made the FBI’s most wanted list.

According to government prosecutors, Mutulu and the Family began robbing banks and then armored cars. By the summer of 1980, they had amassed more than $900,000. The cash was supposedly going to be used to finance a revolution. The perpetrators intended to transform the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina into a territory inhabited only by black people.

On the run from the law, Mutulu was out of Tupac’s early life.

Surrounded by constant turmoil, Tupac withdrew. He’d later say, “When I was young, I was quiet, withdrawn, I read a lot. I wrote poetry. I kept a diary.”

Poetry skills were not particularly valued in his family, among his mother’s compatriots, and certainly not in the tough ghetto neighborhoods where he lived. It frustrated him that he “didn’t feel hard” like the folks around him. Funny for a guy who get a nationwide reputation for being a gangster later.

Tupac’s next “daddy” was a gangster who once worked for infamous drug dealer Nicky Barnes. Afeni’s new boyfriend went by the name of Legs, and Tupac became very attached to him. It was Legs who introduced Afeni to crack cocaine. “That was our way of socializing,” she recollected. “He would come home and stick a pipe in my mouth.”

Holy shit. Turns out I’ve been socializing the wrong way all these years! I thought socializing involved small talk or maybe a few cocktails or catching up on the day with someone - I didn’t know when you wanted to socialize with someone you were supposed to literally stick a crack pipe in their mouth. I guess that would make socializing so much more exciting and unpredictable. Are you gonna end up talking about your day still? Or rob a liquor store? Or suck a stranger’s dick for more crack?

1983: In 1983, twelve-year-old Tupac, who wasn't into sports and had no interest in being some tough, thug type kid - he was sweet and artistic actually - enrolled and was chosen for the role of Travis in a community production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. And he loved it: “My first acting job was at the Apollo Theater when Jesse Jackson was running for president. It was a fund-raiser. . . . when the curtain went up, I just caught that bug.” After all his bouncing around, he found something he was really good at it. Something to receive positive attention for.

And then stepdaddy Legs went to jail for credit card fraud. Another father figure gone from Pac’s life. Unable to pay the rent once again, Afeni, Tupac, and Sekyiwa moved in with Gloria and her family. Then Afeni packed up her children and left New York City for good. Next stop? Baltimore, Maryland.

And Tupac’s childhood in Baltimore would later become the inspiration for The Wire - one of the best shows in HBO history. That's not true actually. The Tupac part. The Wire is phenomenal.

3. 1984: Afeni, 13 year old Tupac, and Sek moved to Baltimore in 1984. Afeni tried to make a good life for herself and her children. She got on welfare, signed up for free computer classes, and spent her free time making sure that the kids were doing well in school.

Shortly after they arrived from New York, Afeni learned that Legs, although released from jail, had died from a crack-induced heart attack. “That hurt Tupac,” Afeni remembered. “It was three months before he cried. After he did, he told me, ‘I miss my daddy.’”

Afeni enrolled Tupac in the Roland Park Middle School. And check out this description from a former classmate: “On his [Tupac’s] first day in mid-November he walked into homeroom late. . . . He wore baggy pants of thin blue fabric, like surgical scrubs, with staples encircling the bottom of each leg along the hem. The pants hung loosely from his skinny frame, below a generic long-sleeve shirt tucked in at the waist where a drawstring held the rag-tag ensemble in place. His hair was lop-sided, like some two-tiered wannabe Bobby Brown cut. And he exposed poorly kept unfinished braces along both rows of teeth with every parting of his lips. Only the metal anchors were in place on each tooth; no wires connected them.”

Oh my God. He had braces that were doing nothing to help his teeth. That’s the worst! That’s terrible. And awesome. What an image.

He was an object of ridicule for the two years he attended Roland Park, but he never complained. And he did well in school.

Christopher Wallace, around this time, was getting substantially less interested in school.

4. 1985: By 1985, 13 year old Chris Wallace was nearly six feet tall and thick. He had the build for football but didn’t want to play. Didn’t want to really commit to anything school-related. He was becoming disillusioned. He left Catholic School behind, a school that had once graduated NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani for Westinghouse High School, whose alumni included the rappers DMX, Jay-Z, and . That’s pretty school that so many hip hop giants went to the same high school.

Not sure how many hip hop legends went to my high school, Salmon River High in Riggins, Idaho. I think zero. I’m not positive. But I’m pretty sure it’s zero.

5. 1986: Chris became a smart ass with teachers. Grew restless. In 1986, Chris heard about how much money was being made selling crack on a 48 Hours tv special with Dan Rather. Realized other kids around his age - 13 or 14 - weren’t asking their mom for ice cream money anymore. They were making bank selling rock cocaine.

This is hilarious to me. Biggie getting the idea to sell crack from watching Dan Rather do a news special about the dangers of crack. Reminds me of the start of Breaking Bad, when Walter White watches a news clip of his brother-in-law Hank making a meth bust. And he sees a whole bunch of cash piled up on the table and asks, “Hank, how much money is that?” And Hank says, “It’s about 700 grand”. And the idea to make meth is born. Who hasn’t thought about making fast money, illegal or not, at least for a second.

Chris had previously thought about becoming a commercial artist. An art school, The Pratt Institute, was right down the street and commercial artists lived in the neighborhood. But, why struggle as an artist when for years when you could make good money selling crack right now.

That’s literally the first thing I think when I wake up each morning. Why am I trying to right jokes? Why am I killing myself researching every week when I could be making good money, right now, selling crack. How many crack dealers could Coeur d’Alene, Idaho have? Maybe zero. There could be possibly be no crack being sold in Couer d’Alene right now? I haven’t notice a single crack dealer hanging around the Suck Dungeon. I could own the entire crack market. I could go on the Dark Web - get some bitcoins - order me a big ol’ box of crack, and get to work. I might do that tomorrow. Yep. Tomorrow I’m gonna sell me so much crack.

Chris’s mom Voletta would say later that he was a good kid up until the age of 13. Then, at 13, he transitioned from Christopher to Notorious. At first, Chris hid his new crack dealer life from his mom. He’d wear the clothes she bought him when she was home. He’d hide the much more expensive clothes and jewelry he bought with crack money on the roof. He’d change on the roof and then come down the side of the building and go to school. Then, when he’d come home, he’d go up the side of the building to the roof, and change back into his mom’s clothes before coming back down and going inside. Haha! There’s something both so cute and so tragic about this. He’s enough of an adult to make money selling crack but still is enough of a kid to worry about his mom catching him sell crack.

At school, the former honor roll student began missing more and more classes. More and more truancy letters started showing up at home his sophomore year. His mom begged him to stay in school but there was just too much money to be made on the street. He’d later say he was making $1200, $1300 a day selling crack as a teen. By 16, he’d drop out of school altogether and sell crack full time. But, he also still lived at home at first. Again, both cute and sad. Ready to be a full-time crack dealer; not ready to leave momma.

What about Pac?? What’s he up to in the mid-80s?

6. Back to 1985: Back in 1985, Tupac started sucking dick for crack. For two full years, he’d do noting but suck dick for crack.

No. Sorry. Whenever I hear about crack, I think about stories of people hitting rock bottom and selling everything they have and then eventually, sucking dick to get a little more crack.

No, in 1985, Tupac starts attending Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School in Baltimore. And then he auditions for the Baltimore School for the Arts and landed a spot at the much sought after institution. He said, “The high school I went to was mostly for white kids and rich minorities.” A drama major, Tupac found himself immersed in a strong academic program and a broad range of arts instruction, which included voice and ballet. Tupac’s attending the Baltimore School for the Arts harnessed his creative talent, gave him an outlet for its expression, and focused his desires for the future.

It was during the Baltimore years that Tupac wrote his first rap, calling himself MC Puddin’ Pop. His first song was a parody of Old McDonald Had a Farm. It was called Old King Kong Had a Mom. It was about US race relations. About how King Kong represented slavery and his hunters represent white oppression. And King Kong grabbing that white woman represented the fear of the black man taking white women away from white men. And the name Puddin’ Pop was a reference to a Malcom X speech about how pudding represented oppression. But Puddin’ Pops represented freedom. And King Kong was mad because he missed his mom. And his mom represented Africa. And Africa represented pudding. And pudding represented pops. And this whole MC Puddin’ Pop shit represents nonsense that I make up a lot.

No. That was all bullshit. His first rap name was MC New York. Glad he didn’t stick with that. Kinda generic. Kinda wack! His actual name is way better.

Tupac participated in high school rap competitions. Mining through the drama of his past, he drew his first rhymes from an incident involving the shooting of a friend. Word got around he had skills. He began to dream of someday landing a record deal and becoming recognized in the hip-hop community. Him and about a million other teenagers.

Tupac met two people at the Baltimore drama school who would become his lifelong friends: Jada Pinkett and a white guy name John Cole. He would later immortalize both friends in one of his many poems, which have all been published in a collection entitled The Rose That Grew From Concrete. Very critically acclaimed by the way - and still selling. Still sells a lot of copies. Pretty amazing how much content Tupac put out in such a short time. And to do it all so young. Pretty sure I wrote a bit of poetry in high school and I’m VERY glad no one has found it.

Again, unlike Christopher Wallace, Tupac loved school. It was his great escape from a tough, unstable home life and the streets. He was happy at school because he did not have to pretend a toughness that he did not feel. He was intellectually curious, excelled in his classes, and was getting better and better with his rap. He was a Timesucker!

Jada Pinket would later recall how poor Tupac was. She later explained, “I mean, when I met Tupac, and this is not an exaggeration, he owned two pairs of pants and two sweaters. Okay? He slept on a mattress with no sheets when I went into his room, and it took me a long time to get into his house because he was embarrassed. He didn’t know where his meals were coming from.”

Rather than hang around the apartment he was embarrassed by, Tupac stayed with his friend John Cole much of the time. Tupac had fun over at John’s, with people streaming through all of the time. Food, liquor, and marijuana were always in good supply, and there were clothes and other amenities like sheets for beds that most people took for granted. For Tupac, John’s world was like falling into a gold mine. John’s parents, far from being resentful about Tupac mooching off of their son, shrugged him off and satisfied themselves with being happy if their son was happy.

Eventually John moved in with his older brother in Reservoir Hill, just under a mile away. It wasn’t as nice as John’s family home, but was good enough, and Tupac didn’t hesitate to join him, since it was still far better than living at home. Tupac didn’t take up much space in the two-bedroom apartment. He and John slept on different couches while John’s brother and a friend named Richard took the two bedrooms.

John and Tupac spent much time discussing everything from political systems to metaphysics. Their bond strengthened by John’s dating Jada. And then, suddenly, it was over. Tupac arrived home at the Reservoir Hill complex one day and was told that he’d have to move out. John’s brother moved into another building, John wasn’t coming around anymore, and suddenly Tupac was staying in the apartment with John’s brother’s friend Richard who wasn’t interested in having a high school student living with him.

And then in the middle of his junior year, after Tupac had completed his college applications, his mom Afeni got evicted from her apartment and decided to leave the state and start over yet again. Since Tupac was underage, he couldn’t stay on at Richard’s house without her consent. So Tupac and Sek would have to leave Baltimore and go stay with an old political friend of Afeni’s, an old Black Panther comrade, Assante, in Marin City, California. Having to leave BSA devastated Tupac and changed the course of his life. When he climbed on the bus that would take him to the West Coast, he carried five dollars in his pocket and four chicken wings in a paper bag.

Imagine that level of poverty? Heading out a bus to take you across the entire country with five dollars and four chicken wings. God I hope that was exaggerated. I was poor here and there growing up. But, like, Biggie poor. I was never four chicken wings and five bucks on a bus poor.

7. 1988: In 1988, Tupac and Sekyiwa arrived in Marin City, across the bay from Oakland,. He was seventeen years old and she was thirteen.

Assante lived in a poor housing complex that was rife with crime. In fact Marin City’s crime rate had soared to such levels that people referred to the community as “the Jungle”. Assante had agreed to house them, so Afeni sent the kids ahead of her until she could come up with some money for a ticket of her own. And then one day she got a call from Assante saying that the kids needed a new home.

When Afeni got to Marin City, Assante was nowhere to be found. Tupac and Sekyiwa were with a neighbor. Afeni had no idea what her kids had been enduring. Assante was a raging alcoholic who often passed out on the floor and lay there sleeping for hours. She didn’t cook regular meals and never lost an opportunity to let them know that their presence was a burden.

Tupac wasn’t well liked in his new neighborhood either. It was no haven for a dude who had recently been studying creative arts. He earned money as a pizza delivery boy and tried to pretend not to care about books and formal education. “I didn’t fit in,” Tupac later stated. “I was the outsider. . . . I dressed like a hippy, they teased me all the time. I couldn’t play basketball, I didn’t know who basketball players were. . . . I was the target for street gangs. They used to jump me. . . . I thought I was weird because I was writing poetry and I hated myself, I used to keep it a secret. I was really a nerd.”

Life got even worse when Afeni started using drugs again. Local rapper Manny Man remembered that Tupac “stayed with us for a little while because his sister was dating my brother.” And that wasn’t all that Tupac was doing. “I was broke, nowhere to stay. I smoked weed. I hung out with the drug dealers, pimps, and the criminals. They were the only people that cared about me at that point. My mom, she was lost at that particular moment. She wasn’t caring about herself. She was addicted to crack. It was hard, because she was my hero. I didn’t have enough credits to graduate. I dropped out. I said I gotta get paid, I gotta find a way to make a living. I started selling drugs for like two weeks and the drug dealer said give me my drugs back, cuz I didn’t know how to do it.”

Meanwhile, in the late 80s, Christoper Wallace did know how to do it. He was great at selling drugs.

8. 1988: In early 1988, the 16 year old Chris Wallace meets Jan Jackson, future mother of his first child and on again off again love interest. And the two teens fell hard for each other. Said he had the charisma of more than five men. Said he had a crazy amount of sex appeal for a big guy.

Around this time, he’s also getting pretty enamored with hip hop, working on his rhymes whenever he’s not busy on the street. Starts to get a reputation for someone who has some real freestyle talent. He got real into Run DMB and LL Cool J. Isn’t that crazy - when Biggie Smalls was 16 he was listening to LL Cool J who looks 40 now. Did you know that James Todd Smith aka LL Cool J is 68 years old? Well, he’s not. He’s 50. But he started putting out records when he was like 17, so it feels like he should be around 68. He was into , Erik B & Rakim, Ultramagnetic MCs. His main influence was Big Daddy Kane.

Biggie and his friends used to mess around at one of his friend’s houses with a turn table. Spitting rhymes for fun. Challenging each other.

How did he get the MC name of Biggie Smalls? One day he and his teenage buddies were watching an old Bill Cosby/Sidney Potier movie called Let’s Do It Again in a Day’s Inn lobby in Raleigh, N.C. - one of the characters was named Biggie Smalls. Chris liked it because “it was gangster and it was funny”. Why were they in Raleigh? In a word, “crack”. They had started taking bus drops to Raleigh and selling coke and crack to college kids.

9. 1989: In 1989, Wallace doesn’t get arrested for drugs - he never would - but, he does get arrested. He gets nabbed with an illegal gun. He’s seventeen and he gets five years probation for having a loaded, unregistered firearm in his possession.

10. 1990-1992: From 1990 to 1992, Biggie and a New York buddy rented a house in Raleigh and sold coke down South. Chris kept selling crack and kept his rhyming as a hobby, writing rhymes in a notebook in his spare time. He was taking trips back to NYC on a regular basis where the hip hop scene was exploding - old friends of his were getting minor record deals and meetings with A&R reps but Biggie didn’t try for any of that - he’d say later he was too worried about being rejected. So he just kept dealing drugs and practicing.

And then he met the man who would take him under his wing, mentor him, and change hip hop forever: Robert Matthew Van Winkle. AKA, Vanilla Ice. Sing it with me!

“Dance Bum rush the speaker that booms I'm killin' your brain like a poisonous mushroom Deadly, when I play a dope melody Anything less that the best is a felony Love it or leave it You better gain way You better hit bull's eye The kid don't play If there was a problem Yo, I'll solve it Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it Ice ice baby Vanilla Ice ice baby Vanilla Ice ice baby Vanilla”

a) Anyone who knows anything about hip hop knows that Biggie got all 75% of his skills from Vanilla Ice. And the other 25% from the Fat Boys. “I eat it, I need it, Jelly Roll. Well it’s good for the mind, body and soul. I eat it, I need it, Jelly Roll. Who are the Fat Boys - three gold records motherfucker! One Platinum! One really, really bad movie called in 1987.

But the Fat Boys have nothing to do with today’s show. Neither does Vanilla Ice.

No. One day back in NYC, Chris was hanging out with a minor local DJ named 50 grand. He and some other hustlers went to 50’s house where he put Ultimate Breaks and Beats, volume 24 on the turntable and Biggie grabbed the mic. The room was mesmerized as he rapped like a man possessed. 50 Grand convinced him to record a tape with him in the house. b) 1991: In late September, 1991, DJ 50 Grand brought that tape to DJ Mister Cee, who’d just finished a tour with Big Daddy Kane. He was mesmerized when he heard it. A few weeks later Mister Cee and DJ 50 Grand told Biggie they were gonna try and get him a record deal.

Wonder if 50 grand has anything to do with 50 cent’s name? Like, maybe he wanted 50 grand but it was already taken. And then there was some other local rapper named 50 bucks. Some dude in Queens going by 50 Mil. And he’s just like, “fuck it - I’ll just take 50 cent!” c) 1992: Well, Biggie and 50 Grand made a cleaner recording of the raw demo he’d done with 50 grand and then DJ Mister Cee sent the tape to Matteo Capoluongo, one of the editors at magazine. Matt would say that Biggie was like Kane reincarnated. He loved it immediately. Biggie was featured in a “Unsigned Hype” column in the magazine.

A magazine I had a subscription to by the way in 1994 and 1995. I’m guessing I have the only Source subscription in history that has been delivered to Riggins, Idaho. God I felt cool getting a fresh copy of the Source! And yes I wore a giant Starter jacket when I read it. Yes I sagged my jeans. Yes I was so dope. And by “dope” I mean “so not dope” d) 1993: In 1993, the new Biggie tape made it’s way to Sean Puffy Combs - P Diddy! Then, a young talent director at where he worked with groups like and the Boyz and Mary J Blige. Around ’93, he was already turning into a tastemaker. Already becoming Puff Daddy. Puff was a pioneer of - marrying hip hop beats to R&B vocals. He’d just crafted new and Mary J Blige into huge hits and made the label. He was killing it. He was turning Uptown into a major player. But he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted something more raw. Something real. And then he heard that Biggie tape. And it was like nothing he’d ever heard before. And he knew it was what he was looking for.

Biggie wasn’t so sure about Puff Daddy. He didn’t want to be on a label with acts like Heavy D and Jodeci. But Puffy convinced him they could make an album by the summer. The signing process began almost immediately and the first track he recorded for Puffy was a Mary J Blige “Real Love” remix.

And then, that summer, while waiting for the paperwork to finalize, while he was on the radio on a Mary J Blige track but not getting paid yet, he finds out that his on again/off again girlfriend Jan is pregnant. So, to make some quick money, frustrated that his record deal still hasn’t made it past the lawyers so he can get paid, he heads back to Raleigh to sell more crack. e) 1988: Back in ’88, now on the West Coast, 17 year old Tupac is not selling crack. Not selling drugs at all. He is crashing in different places while mom Afeni searches for an actual place for them to live. She finally found an apartment and instead of turning into a home, she essentially had just found a place to not use coke in public.

Tupac is also gaining a reputation as someone who is truly stunning on a microphone. And his freestyle reputation made it’s way to a white music promoter named Leila Steinberg.

Leila quick became half mom/half manager for Tupac. Gave him a stability he never had. He moved in with Leila and her family. She’d grown up as a social activist herself and she saw something special in him. She was the stepdaughter of an LA criminal defense lawyer. She’d grown up in Watts in the 60s and 70s and understood the police brutality and racism that Tupac spoke about.

Leila recalled that teenage Tupac really truly believed he could change the world. And in a way, I guess he would. And Leila introduced Tupac to an up and coming Oakland Hip Hop group you hopefully have heard of - . “ is your chance to do the hump. Do the Humpty Hump, come on and do the Humpty Hump.” So much good music in this episode.

Digital Underground was fronted by Gregory E. “” Jacobs. That funky dude was always wearing fur coats and that prosthetic nose. Tupac started off as Shock G’s roadie and then worked his way into being a backup dancer. Just like J Lo! Starting off as a dancer.

11. 1990: In 1990, the Humpty Dance came out and that was the first song Tupac would come out and dance to on stage - his hip hop debut! The Humpty Dance became a huge hit and Tupac went on tour with the group - the US and Japan. While on tour, his mom Afeni scored a hit of her own. Lot of hits, actually. Lot of hits on that crack pipe. She was a multi-platinum smoking crack pipe artist at this point. She’d gotten clean for a little while, but then someone was like, “Hey, I know you’re clean and all, but, what do you think about smoking some more crack?” And that’s when she went back to smoking crack.

On the Digital Underground’s next album, This Is an EP Release, Tupac made his hip hop album debut. He got a solo spot on ”Same Song” - the first track in what would become the huge Tupac cannon of work.

A soundtrack - that was the beginning of Pac!! That song was used in the 1991, super weird but I like it movie of Nothing But Trouble. , Dan Akroyd, Chevy Chase, Demi Moore.

And Tupac took the beginning of his music career seriously. Real seriously. He got into some fights with Shock G during the This Is An Ep Release sessions. He got fired than rehired. He had to be physically restrained from attacking the sound man because he felt like the guy wasn’t working hard enough to produce the best possible sound for the recording. He was a hot head. But he was talented enough that Shock G and the group wouldn’t let him go. Helped him get his first apartment in fact.

Things were bad with his mom at this time. His little sister, now 13, is living with a 22 year old crack selling boyfriend. That’s not good. Mom’s on crack. That’s extra not good. And, in 1991, Tupac himself would step on a crack and break his mother’s back. So much not good. But seriously - lot of crack around his life.

12. 1991: In 1991 - a demo tape Tupac made found its way to the head of the then struggling . The co-owner of the label, Ted Field, a dude who’s still around and is literally a billionaire - let his 13 year old daughter who wasn’t living with a crack dealer listen to it and she fell in love with both the album and Tupac’s eyes - that was enough for Interscope to give him a record deal.

13. September 25th, 1991: And Tupc’s debut album, 2Pacalypse Now, was recorded. The first single, “Trapped” was released on September 25th, 1991. And it wasn’t your typical “” The album dealt with social issues - imprisonment through poverty. Police harassment. And then, shortly after the album’s release, Tupac experienced police brutality himself. On October 17th, he jaywalked across an Oakland street on the way to the bank. Two white police officers, Alexander Boyovich and Kevin Rodgers stopped him and asked for ID. He produced his ID and they made fun of his name. He demanded that they give him the ticket and let him go. Things got verbally heated and the officers threw Tupac to the ground scratching up his faces. He’d have scars for the rest of his life. They choked him unconscious. The incidents made him headlines. Tupac would sue the police force and they’d settle with him out of court.

14. November 21: On November 21, the full album of 2Pacalypse Now was released through Interscope Records. It was raw and explosive. He was a man on fire. The album spoke to the truths of Pac’s life. One song, “brenda's Got a Baby” was about a 12 year girl who has a baby, is cast out by her family, and throws the baby in a dumpster. Hearing it’s cry, she retrieves in but then ends up as a prostitute and gets killed by a John. You’re left to wonder what happened to the baby. These type of songs endeared him to kids struggling across America. He wasn’t just a hip hop artist, he was a social activist.

15. 1992: In 1992, Tupac, now a hip hop star, appeared in the movie Juice. He was great. I remember watching it. “Juice” was a slang term for having power, influence, and respect in the hood. Tupac played a troubled teenager named Bishop who lived with his grandma and father. In one seen, Bishop is told by another character, Q, that he’s crazy. And Bishop says “You’re right. I am crazy. But you know what? I don't give a fuck.” That line seemed to have been written about Tupac himself.

What was really crazy was that, in less than three years, Tupac had gone from homeless teen to multiplatinum selling hip hop artist and movie star.

But not everyone was a fan.

16. April 11th, 1992: An attorney for a 19 year old man named Ronald Ray Howard from Texas claimed music from 2 Pacalypse Now convinced his client to shoot a Texas State trooper. The accusation made Tupac an enemy of white suburban America and conservative political leaders. Vice President Dan Quayle said that Tupac’s music “had no place in our society”.

Tupac also became an enemy back in Oakland. The people still living in the neighborhood he was no describing in his music as a jungle full of drugs, murder, and hopelessness didn’t appreciate it. He performed at the Marin City Festival in 1992 as a way of apologizing but the apology was NOT accepted. A fight broke out between Tupac’s entourage and other concert goers, a gun was fired from the crowd and a six year old boy was shot in the head in and killed. The crowd blamed Tupac and his friends and he had to hide under a car until police arrived and restored order.

Tupac launched a social reform banner under the ill-named term T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E., which he said actually stood for The Hate You Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone. Most Americans, however, just heard the word “thug". Tupac also had this acronym tattooed across his stomach around this time so he’d never forget where he came from.

Tupac started gaining a reputation as a womanizer as well. Of course he did. He’s 20 years old and single and women are hanging around backstage at concerts begging to have his baby. They hung around his Oakland apartment waiting for him to come home. Offering him anything he wanted. Lucefina has surrounded him! Begone Lucefina! Or, Come to my hotel room for a bit Lucefina! Is that lingerie, Luceifna? Are you wearing a garter belt? Get on in here Lucefina!

17. February 1, 1993: On February 1st, 1993, Tupac releases his second album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. The Source called it “a combination of ‘60s black political thought and ’90s urban reality.” And the controversy around him deepens. One song on the album, I Get Around, was labeled misogynistic and it was banned on various radio stations and got Tupac in trouble with a large population of women.

Not one to be easily labeled, Tupac also had the song “Keep Ya Head Up” on the same record - a song acknowledging the struggles specific to black women. A very pro woman song. Talked about how they were stepping outside in their cutest clothes even though they were “dying inside”. It also defended single moms living on government assistance. The song’s video was dedicated to Latasha Harlins, a young black teen who had been shot to death in a grocery store by a Korean owner who thought she was trying to steal some orange juice. The killer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and didn’t serve any jail time.

18. March 13, 1993: On March 13, 1993, Tupac got into an altercation with a limo driver while waiting to appear on In Living Color. He was charged with assault and released on bail. Later that some month Tupac took a swing at a Michigan rapper with a baseball bat in Lansing and spent 10 days in jail.

19. July 23, 1993: Poetic Justice is released - a John Singleton film starring Tupac as the love interest of Janet Jackson. He caused a lot of drama on set but director John Singleton didn’t seem to mind, he said: “He was a wild cat. But he was 21 years old, he was making a movie with Janey Jackson, and three years previously he had been practically homeless. Of course he was going to act up. He was a kid. All the weed he can smoke, every girl wants to sleep with him, every cat wants to be cool with him You think you wouldn’t lose your mind?”

Critics loved him in the movie and he was even nominated for a NAACP award for a leading man.

Also, in 1993, Tupac heard a song called “” by a then relatively unknown artist - Biggie Smalls.

Meanwhile, while Tupac is rehearsing making out with Janet Jackson - AT HER HOTTEST - on the beach, Biggie is selling crack in North Carolina.

So much fucking crack in this Suck. So much crack.

20. 1993: In mid-1993, Puffy had to track Chris down in Raleigh to convince him to finally sign the deal that had taken months to finalize. Stop selling crack and come make a record. He assured him they would make plenty of money together. Better money than crack money. At first, Biggie was hesitant - he was killing it in Raleigh. Still, two days after Puff called him he got on a train to NYC. He got a $125,000 budget from Uptown to make a record. And for the first time in his life, the 21 year old focused all his energy on hip hop.

His first solo track appeared on the hip hop comedy Who’s the Man? That track was that one that Tupac heard and allegedly loved - “Party and Bullshit”.

Shortly after the release of this song everything almost all ended before it began for Biggie. He and a friend were walking down Gates Avenue one night when some cops strolled up Biggie had an unregistered gun on him and the two guys started running and Biggie tossed the gun. The cops arrested them both and basically told them, “There’s two of you but only one gun. Figure it out.” Who was gonna take the fall? Biggie already had one gun charge on his record and a second would mean serious prison time. His friend D-Roc, even though the gun belonged to Biggie, took the Fall and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Had D-Roc not decided to take the Fall, Biggie goes to prison, most likely for more than four years, and when he comes out, odds are the hip hop world isn’t waiting for him and there is no Notorious B.I.G. - crazy how things work like that.

And then something else happens that almost destroys Biggie’s career before it can really get started - Puffy gets fired from Uptown records. Drama!

In July 1993, just weeks before Wallace’s daughter was born, Combs was fired from the job at Uptown. His success with Jodeci and Mary J. Blige had made him arrogant. It didn’t matter that he had the track record to back up his attitude—he was becoming a cancer in the clubhouse: strutting around with his silver briefcase, showing off his sub label logo, talking to anyone who would listen about Bad Boy. He had his “street team” hit the pavement with fliers of a photo of his godson, in a diaper, one hand grabbing his tiny nuts, with a caption announcing “THE NEXT GENERATION OF BAD MUTHAFUCKAS.”

After he was canned, the label went through his roster to see who should they should let go and who they should keep. And I find this next detail hilarious. The president of MCA’s secretary had gotten a copy of the lyrics to Biggie’s “Dreams.” A song also known as “Dreams of Fuckin’ an R&B Bitch.” A little fantasy ditty about Biggie having sex with almost every major female singer in the business: “Sade—Ooh, I know that pussy’s tight / Smack Tina Turner give her flashbacks of Ike.” The secretary was horrified and Biggie was dropped.

God it would be fun to be a fly on the wall as those record execs listened to that track. Deliciously uncomfortable.

To his credit, Combs hadn’t lost interest in Biggie. Not even a little bit! And he spent the summer of ’93 reassuring Biggie he’d make it all work and trying to get a new situation together. He was fortunate enough to score a meeting with Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records.

When the two men met in the Arista offices, they were mutually impressed: Combs with Davis’s stature and smarts, and Davis with Combs’s ambition and perspective. A deal was struck: Davis gave Combs a $1.5 million advance and complete creative control. Combs immediately used the money to buy back from Harrell the tracks that had already been recorded for Wallace’s album.

And they got back to work on creating a hit record.

Wallace wanted to make one of the violent, darkly humorous hit records that Snoop was making out west or that Scarface was making down south— “My Mind’s Playing Tricks on Me” - but he wanted to do it with East Coast flavor. From his perspective as a former dealer, he knew he could bring a new level of realism to his rhymes about the game.

The album’s rather morbid title, , was Puff’s idea. It was released on September 13, 1994, by and Arista Records. It would be go gold in two months, platinum in just over a year, and go on to be one of the most critically acclaimed hip hop albums of all time. It’s at least quadruple platinum as of this recording. The album, released at a time when was prominent on US charts, according to Rolling Stone, "almost single-handedly... shifted the focus back to East Coast rap".Life was looking good, real good for Biggie right now. He’d just gotten married as well. On August 4, 1994, Wallace married R&B singer after they met at a Bad Boy photoshoot. She’d quickly get pregnant with his child.

Things were going both very well and horrible for Tupac in the early 90s.

21. February 1st, 1993: On February 1st, 1993, Tupac’s second studio album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.., was released in February 1993. The album did better than his debut both critically and commercially. It debuted at number 24 on the Billboard 200. Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z... is generally considered Shakur's "breakout" album. It spawned the hits "Keep Ya Head Up" and "I Get Around" and has reached double platinum status.

The acronym stands for Never Ign'ant Getting Goals Accomplished - the Z makes it plural. And, I’m sure, he enjoyed making white kids across America nervous as to whether or not it was okay to say the name of his own album. Genius!

Rolling Stone gave it five stars. Dude had blown the fuck UP. On top of the world.

22. 1993: In late 1993, Shakur formed the group Thug Life with a number of his friends and his new stepbrother Mopreme Shakur. The group released their only album Thug Life: Volume 1 on September 26, 1994, which went gold. The album was originally released by Shakur's label Out Da Gutta Records. Got his own label now - making some of that label money!

Tupac briefly dated Madonna, after Rosie Perez introduced them at the 1993 Awards in LA. Life is good!!

But then things a turn for the worse.

23. November 1993: In November 1993, Shakur and some members of his entourage were charged with sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room. Shakur denied the charges. According to Shakur, he had prior relations days earlier with the woman that were consensual (the woman admitted she performed oral sex on Shakur). The complainant claimed sexual assault after her second visit to Shakur's hotel room; she alleged that Shakur and his entourage raped her.

The woman testified that she had had consensual oral sex with Mr. Shakur at a nightclub four days earlier. But in the hotel room, she said, Mr. Shakur wanted to share her with his friends, who forced themselves on her. The defense said that she had made the accusations out of jealousy when she saw Mr. Shakur with another woman.

According to the NY Times, as the victim addressed the court, Mr. Shakur stared intensely at her. Then he got up and apologized to her. But he went on to say: "I'm not apologizing for a crime." He added, "I hope in time you'll come forth and tell the truth."

Regardless, he was found guilty.

24. March 23rd, 1994: Tupac’s third film is released in early 1994, March 23rd - Above the Rim. Tupac stars as the film’s villain - a drug dealer named Birdie. The film is a modest success. The soundtrack goes double platinum and strangely doesn’t feature a Tupac track. It does feature the classic Regulate by Warren G! A song that went as high as #2 on the chart - a huge hit “regulators, mount up!” AND, a song that samples Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald’s I Keep Forgettin’!

McDonald’s track: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=cjqOsYRQI0o Warren G’s track: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=1plPyJdXKIY

25. November 30, 1994: On the night of November 30, 1994, the day before the verdict in his sexual abuse trial was to be announced, Shakur was robbed and shot five times by three men in the lobby of Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan. Shakur stated that he believed the robbery to be a setup for the attack, wondering why they would take jewelry and leave his Rolex watch. Shakur checked out of the Bellevue Hospital Center against doctor's orders, only three hours after surgery.

The dude who was worried about not being tough as a kid was certainly tough now. Shot five times and walks out of the hospital a few hours after surgery.

In the day that followed, he entered the courthouse in a wheelchair and was found guilty of three counts of molestation and found not guilty of six others, including sodomy, stemming from his 1993 arrest for sexual assault. His road manager, Charles Fuller, was also charged.

In a 1995 interview with Vibe magazine, Shakur accused , Jimmy Henchman, and Biggie, among others, of setting up the Quad Recording Studios attack. Vibe changed the names of the accused assailants upon publication. Later evidence did not implicate Biggie in the studio assault. When Biggie's entourage went downstairs to check on the incident, Shakur was being taken out on a stretcher, giving the finger to those around.

On March 17, 2008, Chuck Philips wrote in the about an alleged order for an attack on Shakur. He said that Biggie and Puff Daddy "were advised in advance of what was going to happen," Philips told MTV News. "They did not know the assailants were going to be shooting. In fact, [the assailants] were told [there would be] no shooting. But Tupac pulled a gun, and it went haywire. It was supposed to be a severe beating."

The article was retracted by the LA Times because it partially relied on FBI documents, supplied by a man convicted of fraud, which turned out to be forged. Interesting though.

The East Coast/West Coast, Biggie/Tupac feud is on for real now. How did it start, by the way?

Tupac and Biggie first encountered each other in 1993, in Los Angeles. There on business, the Brooklyn-bred rapper Biggie asked a local drug dealer to introduce him to Tupac, who invited Biggie and his party to his house. There, he shared with them a "big freezer bag of the greenest vegetables I'd ever seen," said an intern for Biggie's label, named Dan Smalls, who was part of the group.

Tupac got them high and pulled out a "green army bag" filled with handguns and machine guns. "So now, here we are, in this backyard running around with guns, ," continued Dan Smalls in The Fader. "Luckily they were all unloaded. While we were running around, 'Pac walks into the kitchen and starts cooking for us. He's in the kitchen cooking some steaks. We were drinking and smoking and all of a sudden 'Pac was like, 'Yo, come get it.' And we go into the kitchen and he had steaks, and French fries, and bread, and Kool‑Aid and we just sittin' there eating and drinking and laughing. And you know, that's truly where Big and 'Pac's friendship started.

Tupac devoted special attention to Biggie, grooming him and letting him perform at his concerts. Biggie even told him he'd like to be a part of another of his affiliated groups, called Thug Life.

But before Ready to Die came out, Biggie worried he could miss his shot, considering that the new label he was signed to, Bad Boy—owned by his manager Sean "Puffy" Combs—hadn't taken off yet. Things weren't happening for him quickly enough, he complained. He asked Tupac to take over as his manager, but Tupac declined the offer. "Nah, stay with Puff," he told Biggie. "He will make you a star."

And then the Quad studio shooting happened. And rumors of Biggie being jealous of his success. And rumors of Biggie being involved. Tupac was on top and Biggie was cool with him getting knocked off.

"He owed me more than to turn his head and act like he didn't know niggas was about to blow my fucking head off," he said later. And even if Biggie hadn't set him up, he should at least have been able to find out who did it. "You don't know who shot me in your hometown, these niggas from your neighborhood?"

The way Tupac saw it, his own friend had betrayed him—a friend whom Tupac had helped to acquire fame and fortune. And the feud was on. Biggie had disrespected him and he would go on to release several diss tracks attacking Biggie, Jay Z, Puffy and other East Coast rappers in subsequent releases.

26. 1995: On February 7th, 1995, Shakur is sentenced to 1½–4½ years in prison for the sexual assault. He’d been arrested six times since 1993, in incidents ranging from assault to a gunfight, in which the charges were eventually dropped.

The judge describes his crimes as "an act of brutal violence against a helpless woman.” He appeals his case but because of his considerable legal fees, he can’t raise the $1.4 million bail.

27. March 1995: Shakur’s third album, Me Against The World, was released in March 1995 while he was in prison and was HUGE. It’s considered one of the greatest and most influential hip-hop albums of all time. The album sold 240,000 copies in its first week, setting a record for highest first-week sales for a solo male rap artist at the time. It’s sold 3,524,567 copies in the US alone as of 2011. Me Against the World won best rap album at the 1996 Soul Train Music Awards.

28. October 1995: In October of 1995, after Tupac had served 9 months behind bars, , the CEO of Death Row Records, posted the $1.4 million bail pending appeal of Tupac’s sexual assault conviction, in exchange for Shakur releasing three albums under the Death Row label. Wow. That’s how you negotiate a record deal I guess. And, how the fuck did Tupac not have 1.4 million dollars? He has four album out that are selling millions of copies, starred in a few movies, and he should of made a killing off his concerts. Record labels man - so many of them are fucking thieves.

While serving his sentence, he married a girl he started dating the year before, Keisha Morris, on April 4, 1995; the couple were divorced by 1996.

In 1994, Keisha Morris was 20 years and as fate would have it, she met and fell in love with Tupac Shakur at a club in Capitol, New York. The two met in N.Y. in the summer of 1994, while Keisha was attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice and working as a camp counselor. She was 20, he was 21. She married ’Pac while he was behind bars at N.Y.’s Clinton Correctional Facility; their union was annulled 10 months later.

While imprisoned, Shakur became interested in philosophy, philosophy of war, and military strategy by studying the works such as The Prince by Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli and The Art of War by Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. The works inspired his pseudonym "Makaveli" under which he’d release the album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. The album presents a stark contrast to previous works. Throughout the album, Shakur continues to focus on the themes of pain and aggression, making this album one of the emotionally darker works of his career

All Eyez on Me was the fourth studio album by 2Pac, recorded in October 1995 and released on February 13, 1996, by Suge Knight, Death Row Records and Interscope Records. The album is frequently recognized as one of the crowning achievements of 1990s rap music. Steve Huey of AllMusic stated that "it is easily the best production 2Pac's ever had on record". It was certified 5× Platinum after just 2 months in April 1996 and 9× platinum in 1998. The album featured the Billboard Hot 100 number one singles "How Do U Want It" and "". It featured five singles in all, the most of any 2Pac album. Moreover, (which was the only Death Row release to be distributed through PolyGram by way of Island Records) made history as the first double-full-length hip-hop solo studio album released for mass consumption. It was issued on two compact discs and four LPs. Chartwise, All Eyez on Me was the second album from 2Pac to hit number one on both the Billboard 200 and the Top R&B/Hip- Hop Albums charts. By the end of 1996, the album had sold 5 million copies.

The 7 Day Theory, Shakur's fifth and final studio album to be prepareted for release while he was still alive was completely finished in a total of seven days during the month of August 1996.

The lyrics were written and recorded in three days and mixing took an additional four days. Wow. In 2005, MTV.com ranked The 7 Day Theory at #9 on their greatest hip hop albums of all-time list. Love him, hate him, don’t care - the dude had undeniable talent. Holy shit. I’ve heard this album and it’s amazing he recorded the main vocals in three days.

And despite the quick recording time, by the time it would be released, Tupac would be dead.

And now back to Biggie.

29. August 1995: August 1995, Wallace formed a protégé group of his own - kind of like Tupac’s Thug Life. It was called Junior M.A.F.I.A. ("Junior Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes”) and they released their debut album Conspiracy. The group consisted of his friends from childhood and included rappers such as Lil' Kim and Lil' Cease, who went on to have solo careers. The record went Gold and its singles, "Player's Anthem" and "" both featuring Wallace, went Gold and Platinum. Wallace continued to work with R&B artists, collaborating with R&B groups 112 (on "Only You") and Total (on "Can't You See"), with both reaching the top 20 of the Hot 100.

By the end of 1995, Wallace was the top-selling male solo artist and rapper on the U.S. pop and R&B charts. In July 1995, he appeared on the cover of The Source with the caption "The King of New York Takes Over", a reference to his Frank White alias from the 1990 film King of New York. At the Source Awards in August 1995, he was named Best New Artist (Solo), Lyricist of the Year, Live Performer of the Year, and his debut Album of the Year. At the Billboard Awards, he was Rap Artist of the Year.

RIVALRY WITH PAC: And during this year of his big success, the feud with Tupac gets going because of that recording studio shooting. Though Wallace and his entourage were in the same Manhattan-based recording studio at the time of the shooting, they denied the accusation. Wallace said: "It just happened to be a coincidence that he [Shakur] was in the studio. He just, he couldn't really say who really had something to do with it at the time. So he just kinda' leaned the blame on me.”

30. March 23, 1996: On March 23, 1996, Wallace was arrested outside a Manhattan nightclub for chasing and threatening to kill two autograph seekers, smashing the windows of their taxicab and then pulling one of the fans out and punching them. He pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service. In mid-1996, he was arrested at his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, for drug and weapons possession charges.

In June 1996, Shakur releases "Hit 'Em Up", a diss song in which he claimed to have had sex with Wallace's wife, Faith Evans, (at the time estranged) and that Wallace copied his style and image.

Faith would later deny that she ever had sex with 2Pac but did claim he asked her to give him a blow job one time in the recording studio.

And then, 6 months later, the feud ends with Pac’s death.

31. September 7, 1996: On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur attended the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson boxing match with Suge Knight at the MGM Grandin Las Vegas, Nevada. A fight that would last a total of 1 minute and 49 seconds because Tyson, in 1996, was fighting at a video game level. He was making other professional boxers look like me fighting any professional boxer.

After leaving the match, one of Knight's associates spotted Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, an alleged Crips gang member from Compton, California, in the MGM Grand lobby. Earlier that year, Anderson and a group of Crips had robbed a member of Death Row's entourage in a Foot Locker store. Knight's associate told Shakur, and Shakur attacked Anderson along with his huge entourage. The fight was captured on the hotel's video surveillance and I’ve seen it numerous times. It’s roughly 10 guys against one.

After the brawl, Shakur went with Knight to the then Death Row– owned Club 662 (now known as restaurant/club Seven)

At 11:00–11:05 p.m. they were halted on Las Vegas Boulevard by Metro bicycle police for playing the car stereo too loudly and not having license plates, which were found in the trunk of Knight's car; the party was released a few minutes later without being ticketed.

At 11:10 p.m., while they were stopped at a red light at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in front of the Maxim Hotel, a vehicle occupied by two women pulled up on their left side. Shakur, who was standing up through the sunroof, exchanged words with the women and invited them to Club 662.

At 11:15 p.m., a white, four-door, late-model Cadillac with unknown occupants pulled up to the sedan's right side. Someone inside rolled down a window and rapidly fired gunshots at Shakur. He was hit four times, twice in the chest, once in the arm, and once in the thigh. One of the bullets went into Shakur's right lung. Knight was hit in the head by fragmentation.

Chris Carroll, the first Las Vegas police officer to arrive on the scene, heard Shakur's last words, "fuck you". Carroll reports that he refused to say another word to him or another officer.

According to an interview with the music video director Gobi, while at the hospital, Shakur received news from a Death Row marketing employee that the shooters had called the record company and threatened to come finish off Shakur. Gobi informed the Las Vegas police but said that the police claimed to be understaffed. No attackers came. At the hospital, Shakur was heavily sedated, was placed on life-support machines, and was ultimately put under a barbiturate-induced coma after repeatedly trying to get out of the bed. While in the intensive-care unit, on the afternoon of September 13, 1996, Shakur died from internal bleeding; doctors could not stop the hemorrhaging. He was pronounced dead at 4:03 p.m. The official causes of death were noted as respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest in connection with multiple gunshot wounds.

Rumors of Wallace's involvement with Shakur's murder were reported almost immediately. A two-part series Chuck Philips wrote for the Los Angeles Times in 2002, "Who Killed Tupac Shakur?", based on police reports and multiple sources reported that "the shooting was carried out by a Compton gang called the Southside Crips to avenge the beating of one of its members by Shakur a few hours earlier" and that Wallace paid for the gun. Wallace’s family publicly denied the report, producing documents purporting to show that the rapper was in New York and New Jersey at the time. The New York Times called the documents inconclusive, stating: “ The pages purport to be three computer printouts from Daddy's House, indicating that Wallace was in the studio recording a song called Nasty Boy on the night Shakur was shot. They indicate that Wallace wrote half the session, was In and out/sat around and laid down a ref, shorthand for a reference vocal, the equivalent of a first take. But nothing indicates when the documents were created. And Louis Alfred, the recording engineer listed on the sheets, said in an interview that he remembered recording the song with Wallace in a late-night session, not during the day. He could not recall the date of the session but said it was likely not the night Shakur was shot. We would have heard about it, Mr. Alfred said."

32. Moreover, Philips' article was based on multiple sources. As the Assistant Managing Editor of the LA Times Mark Duvoisin wrote: "Philips' story has withstood all challenges to its accuracy, ...[and] remains the definitive account of the Shakur slaying." Faith Evans remembered Biggie calling her the night of Shakur's death and crying due to him being in shock. Evans added, "I think it’s fair to say he was probably afraid, given everything that was going on at that time and all the hype that was put on this so-called beef that he didn’t really have in his heart against anyone."

Wayne Barrow, Wallace's co-manager at the time, said Wallace was recording the song "Nasty Girl" the night Shakur was shot. Shortly after Shakur's death, he met with Snoop Dogg, who claimed that Wallace played the song "Somebody Gotta Die" for him, in which Snoop Dogg was mentioned, and declared he never hated Shakur.

33. October 29, 1996: On October 29, 1996, Faith Evans gave birth to Wallace's son, Christopher "C.J." Wallace, Jr.

During the recording sessions for his second album, tentatively named "... 'Til Death Do Us Part", later shortened to Life After Death, Wallace was involved in a car accident that shattered his left leg and temporarily confined him to a wheelchair. The injury forced him to use a cane.

34. January 1997: In January 1997, Wallace was ordered to pay $41,000 in damages following an incident involving a friend of a concert promoter who claimed Wallace and his entourage beat him up following a dispute in May 1995.

35. February 1997: Wallace traveled to California in February 1997 to promote his upcoming album and record a music video for its lead single, "Hypnotize". On March 5, 1997, he gave a radio interview with The Dog House on KYLD in San Francisco. In the interview he stated that he had hired security since he feared for his safety; this was because he was a celebrity figure in general, not because he was a rapper. Life After Death was scheduled for release on March 25, 1997. On January 8, 1997, Biggie Smalls and Sean "Puffy" Combs made a video for the song "What's Beef", directed by Dave Meyers.

36. On March 8, 1997, he presented an award to Toni Braxton at the 11th Annual Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles and was booed by some of the audience.After the ceremony, Wallace attended an after party hosted by Vibe magazine and Qwest Records at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.Other guests included Faith Evans, Sean Combs and members of the Bloods and Crips gangs.

Later that night, at 12:30 a.m., Wallace left the party with his entourage in two GMC Yukons to return to his hotel after the Fire Department closed the party early due to overcrowding.

Wallace traveled in the front passenger seat alongside his associates, Damion "D-Roc" Butler - that dude who went to jail for him - Junior M.A.F.I.A. member Lil' Cease and driver, Gregory "G-Money" Young. Combs traveled in the other vehicle with three bodyguards. The two trucks were trailed by a Chevrolet Blazer carrying Bad Boy's director of security. 37. By 12:45 a.m. , the streets were crowded with people leaving the event. Wallace's truck stopped at a red light 50 yards from the museum. A black Chevy Impala pulled up alongside Wallace's truck. The driver of the Impala, an African-American male dressed in a blue suit and bow tie, rolled down his window, drew a 9 mm blue-steel pistol and fired at the GMC Suburban; four bullets hit Wallace in the chest. Wallace's entourage rushed him to Cedars- Sinai Medical Center, but he was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m.

And now the feud was really over. Both Biggie and Tupac were dead. Tupac dead at 25 years old. Biggie dead at 24. Both murders remain unsolved. And their deaths take us out of this epic, duel Timesuck Timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

IV. Tupac Biggie conclusions… A. Alright, so now the big question of the episode. Who killed Tupac and Biggie?

1. Orlando Anderson: One suspect in Tupac’s death is Orlando Anderson. The gangbanger Tupac fought with the night of his murder in that casino lobby. No one will be ever to ask him now though. In 1998, he was killed in a gunfight in Compton, California.

2. Suge Knight: There are theories that Suge Knight, the CEO of Death Row Records — the man in the driver's seat when Tupac got shot — could have had something to do with either death. People believe he wanted Tupac dead so he wouldn't switch record labels, or that he had Biggie killed out of revenge for Tupac's murder. Or that he had Biggie killed to distract investiagtors from pointing the blame for Tupac's death in his direction.

In January 2015, Knight was arrested after a hit-and-run in Los Angeles. He was charged with one count of murder, one count of attempted murder, and two counts of hit-and-run. If he's convicted, he potentially faces life in prison. His trial is currently underway for those charges.

There’s also the possibility that Suge himself was supposed to be killed that night instead of Tupac.

Several sources have reported that in an officially signed affidavit, Thaddeus Culpepper, Knight’s attorney, wrote that the label CEO has “known for many years that Reggie Wright Jr. and his ex-wife Sharitha were behind the murder of Tupac and attempted murder of Knight.” Wright Jr., the then-head of security for Death Row, had previously been linked to Pac’s death by former LAPD detective Russell Poole along with Knight’s ex-wife. However, Knight was the intended target of the shooting, as Poole believes the two conspired to murder him to gain control of Death Row Records.

3. The LAPD: This theory ties in with Suge Knight. LAPD officer Russell Poole, who was a lead investigator on Biggie's murder, accused other LAPD officers of having connections to Death Row Records and Suge Knight, who he thought planned Biggie's murder.

Poole believed that Knight had Biggie murdered as revenge for Tupac's death. He was ordered to stop his investigation on the case, and retired in 1999. Was he ordered to stop because the LAPD was covering it up? Or, was he ordered to stop because he was a nut job chasing a fantasy?

Poole died of a heart attck in August 2015, while he was discussing the case with LA County Sheriff homicide detectives. At the time, he was working on a book about the murders.

4. The FBI: Other conspiracy theorists believe that the rapper formerly known as Puff Daddy (now it's usually just Diddy) is actually the mastermind behind Biggie's murder. The theory is that after seeing how well Tupac's posthumous album did for Death Row Records, Puff Daddy wanted sales to skyrocket for Biggie's upcoming album, ironically named "Life After Death." So he hired gang members to shoot Biggie.

This seems pretty weak to me. Why not make a ton of more albums and make the money that way?

Diddy’s former bodygaurd believes the allegations. According to a retired LAPD detective, Biggie's mother Voletta Wallce believes that Puff Daddy and Suge Knight are repsonsible for her son's murder. Voletta Wallace told The Daily Mail that the murder of her son "hurts me every single day" and that she has "a very good idea" about who killed him. "They've done their investigation, but they just refuse to move forward," she said. "I don't know why they haven't arrested who was involved. It seems to me that it's one giant conspiracy, and someone is definitely being protected somewhere down the line."

So - that’s interesting that Voletta would say that. However, I do think it’s important to keep in mind that Voletta has smoked a shit ton of crack, which is not exactly good for your brain. And it’s not like she was that close to Tupac’s wheelings and dealings.

And then of course, the most popular theory, that they’re still alive. They went the way of Elvis!

What do I think? Honestly. I have no idea. But, I lean towards random gang-type violence. These guys were super, super popular guys making a lot of money talking about and being connected to the criminal underworld. They’re immersed in a culture of drugs, gangs, and violence. Instead of separating themselves from the culture once they got the money to leave the streets - they stayed in. They stayed in a culture where young black men die all the time in shootings. And these weren’t random young black men - they had huge targets on their back. You think killing Pac or Biggie wouldn’t make a big name for yourself in the underworld? Maybe Orlando Anderson did catch up with and kill Pac. He’d just been jumped in that lobby and disrespected in front of a lot of people. And who knows how many other people Tupac had disrespected. Or had felt disrespected. Guys who didn’t hesitate to kill. Same with Biggie. These guys were constantly about that life. Money and fame doesn’t protect you from the bullets of someone who doesn’t give a fuck about killing.

Or - maybe Suge Knight did kill Pac. Maybe Tupac really was considering leaving Death Row records as some have speculated, and Suge knew he was sitting on tons of recordings he could release after Pac’s death, and he killed him to keep all that money. It wouldn’t surprise me. I’m always open to conspiracies where there is a lot of money to be made.

But that’s just what I think. What do the Idiots of the Internet think?

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET INTRO

V. Idiots of the Internet A. Today we go to a video posted by the Youtube channel called All- time Conspiracies, because whenever a video is posted by a user with “conspiracy” in the title, you know Idiot Gold awaits. “There’s gonna be gold in these here threads. Great big nuggets of idiot gold!”

The title of the video is “Who Killed Tupac & Biggie?” And, let’s see what the web has to say.

B. User Lucky Luis comments with a popular conspiracy: “Wrong. Tupac isn't dead.” That’s how you know someone really has made it - like Elvis - when people refuse to accept their dead.

C. User Amruth Nirvani posts an obvious joke, and a good one in my opinion: “biggie killed tupac, tupac then killed biggie and they later went on to kill Michael Jackson.”

Who can’t tell this is a joke? Who can’t tell it’s absurd to claim that person A killed person B and then later, the dead person B killed person A, and then both dead people killed person C. User The Chronic Documentary DreGame, that’s who. He posts: “+amruth nirvani Shut The Fuck Up. Big never killed Pac. and they never killed Michael. his doctor did.”

Holy shit you are dumb DreGame. He was so obviously joking He Who Has a Horrific Sense of Humor. Sounds like a real fun guy to hang around. I would drive him crazy. Timesuck would drive him crazy. “Shut the fuck up! There is no comic called Pootie and Juju! Shut the fuck up about Bojangles. Dogs can’t time travel!”

D. User Nicky Krisalem also makes an obvious joke, posting: Sorry tupac is alive I had a joint with him and listened to his new songs”

And user “Steve” isn’t having it. He simply posts, “No.” haha. I love that he felt it necessary to take the time to post that. Steve was so annoyed. “No. No you didn’t! Damn it! You’re lying! You didn’t smoke weed with Pac! And Zombie Pac didn’t kill Michael Jackson either. I’m so sick of all these lies!”

Well, I like them. I like how they rile up the Idiots of the Internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET OUTRO

VI. Last thoughts. A. Well, now you’ve heard from me. And you’ve heard from the Idiot horde. And I’m sure I’ll hear from you all with some updates. I have a feeling the updates on this episode will be fantastic. Now let’s take another look back on Biggie and Pac with some Top Five Takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEWAYS INTRO VII. Top Five Takeaways 1. Number one. Despite the whole West Coast/East Coast Hip Hop feud that developed, both Tupac and Biggie were both from the East Coast. Tupac got going in Oakland, but, he started playing with rap in Baltimore, and just like Biggie, he was from New York City.

2. Number two. Both Biggie and Tupac were dead by the age of 25. Insane how much content they both produced in such a short time, especially Tupac. Tupac would release five studio names not counting his Thug Life side project between 91 and 96. The first would go gold and the next four would all be platinum. And then, using unreleased tracks, five more albums of original tracks would be released after Tupac died. The first four would go platinum and the last would go gold. The dude get around.

3. Number three: Biggie’s second album, released after he died, titled Life After Death is still the 4th best selling hip hop album of all time. It’s sold over 10 million copies. And it came out just two weeks after he was killed.

4. Number four: Biggie went from North Carolina crack dealer to multiplatinum recording star in less than a year. A true inspiration to crack dealers everywhere.

5. Top Five Takeaway number 5 - new info!: Tupac Shakur: 15 years after his death, Tupac Shakur was enshrined in the 2004 Guinness Book for being the highest-selling rap artist of all time. At that time, he had sold more than 67 million album worldwide. He’s now sold over 75 million. According to random web list articles I’m skeptical to trust, he may now have been beaten by either Jay Z or , or both. Still, quite a legacy for a dude who was only active in the business for about 7 years.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

VIII. FINAL ANNOUNCEMENTS A. TUPAC AND BIGGIE - BOTH BEEN SUCKED! I pulled a double dick, I mean double Suck this week. The epitome of live fast and die young, huh?

Now - some tour dates.

San Francisco Punhline tickets have just went on sale TODAY. April 25-28. Scoop ‘em up! One of my fav clubs. The club I recorded Chinese Affection in.

B. Minneapolis, Brea, and Cleveland coming up in March. Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham, Huntsville, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, Salt Lake City and San Francisco all coming up in April. Everything but San Francisco and Salt Lake City in one big week.

The early shows in Minneapolis are already sold out. Tickets still available for the late shows.

More info up at www.dancummins.tv. Check out those dates and snatch up some tickets. Wear your Timesuck shirts. Or don’t! Just show up and have a great time!

C. Thanks to social media master manager Sydney Shives, Events Coordinator and amazing patron saint of the @secretspacelizards social media accounts Harmony Vellekamp, show notes editor extraordinaire Jesse Dobner and the entire Timesuck team including interns Maddie Teater and Deanna Marino.

Thanks for all the reviews - spreading the suck!! Every review helps every time and you guys write the most wonderful things and I read every review. It helps so much. Thanks for the emails - sorry I can’t get back to each and every one. Not enough hours in the day.

D. Thanks to Jake Sheppard, Scott Long, Sam Clark, Jose Del Rio, Maria barber, Will Cowen, Sean Watterson, and anyone else I missed for suggesting today’s topic.

E. Next Monday on Timesuck we suck on Norse Gods! The first winner of a Space Lizard topic vote. So glad that topic list is working so well on the web and on the app! Huge thanks to Bit Elixir for pushing out the most recent update for the app which has made it work perfectly for 99% of the users. Working great on both my Android and my iPhone.

And now, it is time for some Timesucker Updates.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES

IX. Timesucker Updates A. Jeremiah Lausee [email protected] Dear bad motha sucka,

Hey Dan first off I just wanna tell you how great discovering your podcast has been for me the last 2 months. I loved your standup early on, but sadly being a millennial and not seeing any Netflix or hbo specials I kinda lost track of you.. my loss though! I was luck enough to be catching up on an episode of yourmomshouse that you did a guest spot on, and when you described this show I knew I had to check it out. I started with the episode "timesuck sucks itself" to see what the show would be like, I was immediately hooked and blazed through every episode! I'm gonna be 26 in march and after 4 years of not being able to find a teaching job due to my lack of funds to get an unnecessary masters in Education, I recently decided to stop having my soul crushed working retail jobs because having a degree in Social Sciences and a minor in history aren't super marketable unfortunately. Surprising I know.. But I've decided to start my own small carpentry company, and it could be successful or a huge flop. But after spinning my wheels for 4 years, just hearing about your refusal to give in through the struggles of how you still push through the rejection and constant fuckery that is show business, you have given me inspiration to follow this dream wherever it takes me. I just wanna let you know how much this podcast has meant to me and that I appreciate your dedication and thirst for knowledge! I'll be trying my hardest to come see you when you head down here to Huntsville, but money's tight so if I can't, then hopefully the show's amazing and you can come back to this neck of the woods. Sorry for this long ass email, and I have no illusions that a father and husband that also travels all over the country will see this, but I felt like I needed to tell you keep sucking cause what you're doing matters more than ya know. And on the off chance that you do read this, I'd also be glad to assist with any research you might need. History is my first love, and I've got a lot more free time and more dissertation research than I know what to do with and I'd be happy to put my degrees to some use. Wish you and your family and all those other timesuckers who've been struggling or are dealing with mire of shit that's going on right now in the world, nothing but love and to keep fighting hate violence and ignorance and always stay curious.

- Sincerely, your humble suck puppet, Jeremiah

B. Email From: Damen Velez ([email protected]) Message: Dear Mr. Cummins (I would normally say Master Sucker but I feel like this should be more serious), I have written to you in the past praising the work you put into your podcast, now I write to you about something more important. I wanted to personally thank you for being my go to podcast for grinding out work. I started listening to you, about the same time I started working for a particular soda company. Now, not even a year later, I have moved up from part time to being the fucking District Supervisor for my company!!!! I just received the news and I am filled with some much joy, and I owe you quite a lot. Your podcast made it possible to push through every single hour of grueling back breaking work, and show all my seniors that I could work as hard, if not harder than they could. Your podcast always kept me intrigued and my mind off any negativity at work, so thank you so so much! Starting next month I'll be the youngest District Supervisor they've had, at 21, and I owe you a good portion of that credit. Thank you Mr. Cummins, from the bottom of my heart. Now I plan to not only set my sights even higher but to blow everyone's expectations of me. I'll be forever grateful. I understand how busy all your work must be but I hope you take the time to read this because I couldn't have dealt with the shit I had at work, if not for your humor. So keep on sucking and making other people's lives just as amazing as you've just helped make mine. C. ONE more from Johan Rodriguez ([email protected])

Dear Doctor Reverend Cummins Keeper of the 8th seal of Nimrod, I was introduced to your podcast last year by my brother and fell in love with it instantly. Now my fiancé and other members of my family have become followers of the suck. I love the way you present information in a very approachable way and how open minded you are to others suggestions and point of views. It’s even encouraged me to see things from other angles and broaden my horizon on various topics. I’m a band director out in Texas and your podcast is my go to listen on my commutes to work. With all that is going on I’d love for you to do a gun control suck and to talk about the recent suggestions by politician of arming teachers. Seriously keep doing what you do! Support for you and Bojangles Rodriguez

Yeah Johan - gun control is coming soon. I’m getting so many great emails from so many Timesuckers with so many different points of view on the issue. When I get that episode done, I know it’ll be a good one thanks to all you being so awesome when it comes to informing me.

That’s all for today - thanks Timesuckers for the updates

X. Goodbye! A. Have a great week everyone, see some of you in Minneapolis, don’t start a hip hop diss feud with anyone, maybe don’t sign any prison record deals with Death Row records, and keep on suckin’.

TUPAC SOURCES

Primary book source: “Tupac Shakur: The Life and Times of an American Icon” By Tayannah Lee McQuillar and Fred L. Johnson

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/1997/03/tupac-shakur-rap-death https://trackrecord.net/the-secret-revolutionary-history-of-tupac-shakurs- name-1819093454 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/afeni-shakur-mother-of-tupac- shakur-and-activist-dead-at-69-20160503 http://www.history.com/topics/black-panthers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party https://2paclegacy.net/tupac-shakur-biography/ http://makaveli.com/?page_id=193 http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/08/nyregion/rapper-faces-prison-term-for- sex-abuse.html http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2011/09/love-is-not-enough-tupacs-wife- keisha-morris-excerpt-from-the-sept-2011-issue/

BIGGIE SOURCES

Primary Book Source: Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of The Notorious B.I.G. by Cher Hodari Coker. https://www.biography.com/people/biggie-smalls-20866735 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gqkqz3/tupac-biggie-friends-to-foes http://www.mtv.com/news/2038108/faith-evans-tupac-biggie-sex/ http://www.businessinsider.com/biggie-and-tupac-murder-theories-cases- suspects-2017-3#orlando-anderson-7 http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-suge-knight-trial- date-20170406-story.html http://www.houstonpress.com/music/10-rappers-in-the-guinness-book-of- world-records-6782599 https://www.bet.com/music/2017/04/04/suge-knight-who-killed-tupac.html