*Kevin Powell knew Tupac Shakur before death transformed the rapper into a global icon, and 30 years later, the veteran journalist says prison changed the young man he had come to know.
In a deeply personal Newsweek essay, Powell reflects on three years spent interviewing and writing about Shakur for Vibe magazine and the emotional weight he has carried since the rapper’s death on Sept. 13, 1996.
The remembrance comes shortly after Duane “Keffe D” Davis became the first person convicted in Shakur’s murder, a historic verdict EURweb recently reported. Powell, however, focuses on the person he knew before Tupac became a myth.
Tupac and Powell Were Fans of Each Other
Powell became fascinated with Shakur after seeing him play Bishop in the 1992 film “Juice.” When they later met at Atlanta’s Jack the Rapper music convention, Powell discovered the admiration went both ways.
Tupac recognized Powell from MTV’s “The Real World” and told him he supported Powell during his televised confrontations over racism. Powell recalls Tupac asking him during their first formal interview to become, essentially, the Alex Haley to his Malcolm X.
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The Rikers Interview Deepened Their Bond
After Shakur survived the 1994 New York shooting, Powell says he became the only journalist to receive Tupac’s full account, interviewing him at Rikers Island for a Vibe cover story.
Powell says they connected partly through shared experiences as young Black men raised by strong single Black mothers amid poverty, abuse and racism.
He remembers Tupac as “intellectually brilliant” and well-read, with interests ranging from Vincent van Gogh to Prince. But Powell doesn’t romanticize him, acknowledging the sexual-abuse case that sent Shakur to prison and the violence surrounding and sometimes involving him.
Powell Says Prison Hardened Tupac
When Powell encountered Shakur after prison on the set of the “California Love” video, he saw someone different.
“I did not recognize this Tupac Shakur,” Powell writes.
He says prison and Tupac’s feelings of betrayal hardened him, making the rapper more guarded and more determined to lash out at people he believed had wronged him.
After Shakur was shot in Las Vegas in September 1996, Rolling Stone sent Powell there as the rapper fought for his life.
“The day Tupac died a part of me expired as well,” Powell writes.
Thirty Years Later, Powell Is Finishing the Story
Powell says the trauma followed him for decades. He avoided Davis’ recent murder trial because he couldn’t bring himself to relive that period and largely rejected media requests about Shakur.
Powell has also spent years working on a Tupac biography. EURweb interviewed Powell in 2023 about the planned book and his history interviewing Shakur for Vibe.
Now Powell says he is returning to the manuscript he has struggled to complete for 30 years.
He doesn’t claim to possess the definitive Tupac. Instead, he remembers the heart, laughter, intelligence and contradictions he witnessed firsthand.
Thirty years after Tupac became a worldwide legend, Powell is returning to a promise made long ago: tell the whole story of the human being he actually knew.
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