Crib Notes

Tupac’s been known to incite a lot of things — in life and death. But laughter?

Tonight at Stone Mountain’s Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts (5616 Memorial Dr.), comedian Mike Epps presents a birthday celebration and benefit concert in honor of the fallen rapper. Featured guests include Big Boi, Bun B, members of Dungeon Family, Eightball & MJG, Lil Scrappy, Playaz Circle and more.

As for the comic relief, Mike Epps says his streetwise brand of comedy was inspired by Pac, per the press release below:

“I’m a long-time fan of Pac’s music. It’s always been the soundtrack for overcoming struggle and when my life was in a desolate place it was his messages that helped bring me through,” says Epps. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for his inspiration. It’s an honor for me to stand alongside his mother, Afeni Shakur in celebrating such a personal moment in her son’s history.”

On a side note, I interviewed Mike Epps via phone a few years ago. It was memorable. I think I sorta pissed him off after inquiring about whether he’d used drugs in the past. He responded by unloading his gangsta dossier. I kept listening for the punchline. It never came. The fact that he was serious made it that much funnier. Trying to keep a straight face while Mike Epps snaps on you is like watching Eddie Murphy sing without busting a gut. Whether its “Party All the Time” or his Jimmy Early solo in Dreamgirls, it just ain’t happenin’.

Funds raised at tonight’s event will support the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts.

Tupac Shakur Birthday Celebration and Celebrity Fundraiser. $35. 7 p.m. Tonight. Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts, 5616 Memorial Dr. 404-298-0790. www.tasf.org.

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For years, rumors persisted that Tupac Shakur wasn’t dead, he was just laying low in Cuba, chilling with his godmother Assata Shakur, perhaps. The circulating video footage of a 2pac look-a-like spotted at a Lil Wayne concert has fanned those flames.

Maybe dude is just trying to get a head start on the audition process that’s sure to round up thousands if and when the troubled Tupac biopic deal is ever struck.

(more…)

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SIZE MATTERS: Kevin Phillips (left) and Jamal Woolard as Biggie Smalls

HOLLYWOOD PRODUCT: Notorious

GENRE: Rags-to-riches rap biopic

THE PITCH: Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G. (played by newcomer Jamal “Gravy” Woolard, who only has two names) rises from the violence of Brooklyn drug dealing to the violence of the 1990s hip-hop scene.

MONEY SHOTS: Young Biggie triumphs in a street corner rap battle. A fight breaks out — or does it? — during one of Biggie’s first concerts. At his wedding to singer Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), Biggie shoots the preacher an amusing look during the part about “forsaking all others.” Faith gives a beat-down to a hotel room ho when Biggie fails to forsake all others. Biggie’s ex, Lil’ Kim (Naturi Naughton), raps in full woman-scorned mode before an audience.

BEST LINE: “What kind of man, a grown-ass man, calls himself ‘Puffy?’” wonders Biggie’s perpetually worried mother (Angela Bassett) about her son’s Svengali. Read the rest here.

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Almost every year since 1996, another CD, book or documentary is released that further fuels the speculation and suspicion surrounding Tupac Shakur’s short-lived ‘Thug Life’ and subsequent death at age 25.

L.A. Times reporter Chuck Philips stirs the cauldron yet again with his latest story on the neverending saga.

After publishing a 2002 piece by Philips that implicated slain rapper Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace in Tupac’s death, the L.A. Times yesterday published “An attack on Tupac Shakur launched a hip-hop war” — a piece reported and written by Philips that fingers both B.I.G. and his former boss, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, for setting Shakur up in the 1994 robbery attempt at New York’s QUAD recording studios.

Unfortunately, he fails to provide any real clarity.

Though Shakur survived the infamous attack, it was the beginning of his status as a living legend, and it sparked the East vs. West war that would splinter rap.

You can read all about it in Philips’ piece, which details the plotter’s apparent motives leading up to the shooting/robbery and the feud that ensued as a result.

If you’re looking for a good ol’ whodunit, the story fits the bill. But the true crime is that the case has never been solved by police. Neither have the Biggie/Tupac murder cases. Meanwhile, more books, documentaries and news stories draw links between the victims and their would-be killers.

While it would be nice to think that the report was motivated by the idealism of investigative journalism, it’s more than likely a case of a paper exploiting the volatile story of a mythic figure’s life and death for its own gain.

Mostly, Philips has pieced together stories that have already been reported over the past decade, though most were never confirmed. And his only confirmation comes from unnamed sources.

This isn’t investigative journalism; it’s incendiary and ill-targeted. But it’s sure to garner a lot of online hits. (After 12 hours, the story had generated over 200 comments and counting.)

In the end, media outlets such as the L.A. Times may be just as culpable as the LAPD, NYPD and the criminal justice system for adding fuel to the fire that ravaged the bi-coastal rap war in the first place.

It’s almost as if one institution has chose to ignore the machinery of murder, while the other oils it.

And somewhere, Suge Knight is smoking a fat stogie.

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