Iconic hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, who was shot and killed in September 1996, is truly resurrected in the new documentary Tupac: Resurrection, produced by his mother and narrated in his own words through a variety of interviews, journal readings, private home movies and never-before-seen concert footage.

Story

"I got shot," Shakur eerily observed after being shot five times during a robbery at a Manhattan recording studio in 1994. "I always felt like I'd be shot but I didn't think it was going to happen at that particular time." Those prophetic words, pulled from scores of archived MTV interviews, are what make this documentary so haunting. Although the performer lost some $40,000 worth of jewelry in the mugging, he would live--until 1996, when he was killed at age 25 in a Las Vegas shooting. In Resurrection, Shakur walks the audience through his life, from the womb (his mother, former Black Panther member Afeni Shakur, was pregnant with Tupac while she was jailed in 1971, accused in a bomb plot) to the deadly rivalry between his label, Suge Knight's Death Row Records, and Sean Combs' Bad Boy Records in the mid-90s. Almost voyeuristically, the film includes glimpses of the artist as a gregarious student at the Baltimore School for the Performing Arts, as a vocal campaigner in the black community, and as an inmate during an 11-month stint in prison for sexual assault (accused of raping a 19-year-old woman he'd met in a nightclub in 1993, Shakur gives his version of what happened that night: "She gave me a massage, came out, went to sleep, woke up. She screaming rape, rape, I raped her and the next thing I know I'm going to jail.") In a life fraught with controversy, Shakur is never apologetic, and upon reflection admits only to being young and shortsighted. "I believe I'm more responsible, more mature and more focused, and I will be more focused and even more responsible and even more mature in time," he told former MTV news anchor Tabitha Soren shortly after he was released from jail in 1995. This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Shakur's death: Fans not only had to mourn his loss, but they would mourn his potential as well.

Direction

Tupac: Resurrection is a fitting directorial debut for Lauren Lazin, the executive producer behind MTV's hit series Cribs and Diary. The bulk of the footage comes from the music cabler's archives, much of it from an interview Soren conducted on Oct. 27, 1995, on California's Venice Beach shortly after Shakur was released from prison. The rest of the documentary is peppered with rare footage of Shakur, including never-before-seen clips from the inaugural 1994 Source Hip-Hop Music Awards at the Paramount Theatre in New York; video of the truce picnic between the Crips and Bloods in Los Angeles; and soundbites of Shakur speaking frankly about his close relationship with Jada Pinkett Smith and his experiences on the set of the 1993 drama Poetic Justice. (Shakur said Janet Jackson's camp asked him to undergo an HIV test prior to filming their love scene). Lazin also used entries from Shakur's journals to create title treatments in the star's handwriting throughout the film. But unlike Nick Broomfield's 2002 documentary Biggie & Tupac, Tupac: Resurrection does not attempt to solve or uncover new evidence in Shakur's murder; it is instead a look at the hip-hop artist as he reflects upon his own life. It is startlingly honest and doesn't skimp on unflattering details of the family's life, including Afeni's past addiction to crack cocaine.

Bottom Line

Tupac: Resurrection is a surprisingly direct and insightful look at the life of late hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, a cultural icon whose career and persona refuse to die.