More To The Story: Last month, Duane “Keffe D” Davis was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of rapper Tupac Shakur. The verdict came 30 years after Tupac was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas that for decades remained cloaked in conspiracy theory and mystery. It’s impossible to overstate rapper Tupac’s influence on music and culture in the 1990s. One of the era’s bestselling musical artists, he helped define West Coast hip-hop through vulnerable, introspective lyrics and Black power politics. By his own admission, sports writer Jeff Pearlman is not the rapper’s likeliest biographer. But as he waited for what he called “the big, fat biography” of Tupac, his impatience and long-standing fascination with the rapper got the best of him. So he set out to write it himself. On this week’s episode, Pearlman talks about his book Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur; discusses how Tupac’s Black Panther mother, Afeni Shakur, shaped her son; and examines the nuance and mystery that surrounded Tupac’s life and death for decades.
This episode first aired in
June 2026.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
Read:
The 24 Best Books We Read in 2025 (Mother Jones)
Listen:
Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops (More To The Story)
Read:
Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur (Mariner Books)
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