It seems news of Tupac’s death has been greatly exaggerated.
When I worked in the pool hall in Grantham I saw a mate of mine on X Factor or Popstars, or one of those shows. He hadn’t told anyone he was going on, or that he’d been on, he just found himself in Manchester on the day of the audition (he was a removal man) and went for it. He sang that Ronan Keating song about saying it best when you say nothing at all. Which in my mate’s case, was very fucking apt. Anyway, he didn’t get the hilarious slating I hoped, but apparently he was told he had a good look for a boy band, but not the vocal strength to be a solo singer. Which was a very diplomatic way of saying you’re shit but at least you’re not ugly.
Anyway, this guy was the person who first told me that Tupac wasn’t actually dead. He mentioned something about Tupac wearing a pair of Nikes in his video that weren’t released until after he died (and reading that link, I bet he wore a size seven). When I pressed him on this total bullshit, he assured me that Tupac had staged his death to get out of the media spotlight, and retreated to a quiet suburban life-style somewhere unremarkable to avoid detection.
I voiced my opinion that I found it all very hard to believe and he replied that until he had met Tupac himself, seen him with his very own eyes, he too was a non believer.
“Hang on.” I said. “You’ve met Tupac?”
Apparently on one of his removal jobs he went to get chips from a chippy in Mansfield and Tupac was working behind the counter. He had had severe cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance, so much so that he was now white. He still went by the name Tupac (obviously), and still wore his trademark bandanna.
“I mean,” he said, “I didn’t believe him at first, but then why would he lie?”
I stopped knocking about with this guy not long after. I couldn’t work out if he was crazy because he’d concocted this whole story, or if he was crazy because he believed the guy who’d concocted this whole story. Either way, it was time for me to move on and stop going drinking with these absolute fruit bats.
All of which came flooding back to me when I read this article in the Observer Music Monthly magazine from a while back. There’s some bad craziness in this world, I think.
July 7, 2008 at 3:22 pm |
A mate of mine at college (well I say a mate, he was more of a weird looking lunatic who always hung around the world cup ‘90 arcade machine) once told me that Tupac was alive and well and living in Tooting. How exactly he thought the deceased Gangsta Rap(ist)per could hang around in somewhere like Tooting without being noticed I’ll never know. I mean first sight of him down the chip shop and my cousin would have rung me up and burbled ‘Oi bruv, have you seen that Tupac bre hanging around the unimaginatively named Tooting Fish & Chips?’
Still, it was probably more plausable than the one a friend of my brother told him; that he was living in that mansion his dad owned in the Bahamas with Snoop and Puffy.