Author Topic: Thug Angel' Producer Says Video Shows Different Si (Read 135 times)

Crenshaw_blvd · « **on:** March 13, 2002, 05:17:13 AM »

The politically charged focus of the late Tupac Shakur is often muffled by the explosive and controversial tone from the rapper, who joined Death Row Records in 1995. But on the documentary DVD/video Tupac Shakur: Thug Angel: The Life Of An Outlaw, scheduled to be released April 2 on QD3 Entertainment/Image Entertainment, viewers will learn more about the rapper's days prior to achieving hip-hop stardom.

QD3, whose company QD3 Entertainment is working on a 12-part series on hip-hop artists and the music culture, told that it was important to introduce people to a side of Tupac rarely captured in the media.

"We started with Tupac because we felt he was the most misunderstood. And the media so far has like really focused on like his thugism, and all the disses, his murder, and all that stuff. We mention all those things in the movie, but we want to kinda of shed some light on how much he was holding back his intelligence. How much leadership skills that he really had from reading all those books and stuff, and the way he grew up with the Black Panthers and all. He was raised to die for a cause, you know what I mean? And I think those are the things that we wanted to bring out and show people that they may not have known," he explained.

The video is narrated by a 17-year-old Tupac Shakur, living in California's Bay Area and expressing his passionate views on police brutality, poverty, and education. The release, produced by QD3, includes interviews with Tupac's stepbrother, stepfather, first managers Leila Steinberg and Atren Gregory, and music industry friends Quincy Jones, Digital Underground's Shock G and Money B, Treach, Ray Luv, Big Syke, and family friend and publicist Karen Lee, among others.

QD3, son of music industry legend Jones and producer for Tupac, Ice Cube, and LL Cool J, explained why Thug Angel is not like other video releases on the rap icon who continues to sell millions of records. "I think what makes this one different than a lot of the other ones, is, with all due respect to the other ones, is that everyone involved in this project, except for the director, but all the producers were people that knew 'Pac very well before he was famous. The whole nine. It was a project made with a lot of love," he said.

ExZit · « **Reply #1 on:** March 13, 2002, 08:42:54 AM »

that DVD will be something really special

QDIII also says..

" Hey, lets just put it this way man, we had over 14 hours to choose from. And basically what it was, was that um, myself and a couple of friends were, filming him from very early on, and um, we even have Tupac on film saying that this was going to be the story of my life. So we followed him around. So we have 14 hours of him, like at the gun range, we have him freestyling with Biggie, we have him on stage with Biggie, Puffy and Warren G back in the day, you know what I mean, when they were friends, and then, we also have like, him at Deathrow, him in the studio recording with different people, him writing lines, freestyling, you know, a lot of the musical stuff we couldn't use because the estate wouldn't license the music. But um, all of the behind the scenes stuff we tried to include in the movie, and then whatever we couldn't fit in the actual movie, we put it in the bonus footage, see what I'm saying. So um, it's like Christmas you know, like, if you like Tupac, you'll be able to really get a good feel, of who he was as a person, not just like his record persona, you know what I'm saying. And um, I think there was a lot more too him than people knew. You know like, all the books that he read, like it's more than you probably think, you know what I'm saying. And that's, that's the positive side of him that we try to bring out in the movie. You know we had a lot of footage of him like, speaking on beefs and getting all into it, and we showed a little big of that in the film, but we tried to focus more on what people don't know about him, and maybe, at a later date, we'll do another film, you know with other stuff, but I just want people to understand who he was, before we give them the bullshit. You know what I'm saying "