- [Tupac Shakur] I'm trying to find my way in the world.
You know, I'm trying to be somebody,
instead of just make money off everybody.
If there's something on my mind, speak it.
I think being humble is sexy.
I know you rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars,
but can you just keep it to one house?
And that's our job,
is to spark.
I just quit my job. Today actually.
Because I wanted to come and do this.
I think everybody shines in different things.
♫ We are hungry, please let us in.
♫ WE are hungry, please let us in.
I love my childhood. Even though it was bad,
I love it.
You. I mean you need to do something.
- He was an American Rapper, Author, actor and poet.
- He sold over 75 million records worldwide,
making him one of the best selling artists of all time.
He consistently ranks as one of the greatest
rappers ever.
- He's Tupac and here are his top ten rules for success.
- [Interviewer] What do you think you are most known for,
your acting, your music, or the controversy that
surrounds you?
- Well, my big mouth. My big mouth.
I got to big mouth. Can't help it. I talk from my heart,
I'm real. You know what I'm sayin'? Whatever comes comes.
But, my controversy probably. It's not my fault.
I'm trying to find my way in the world. You know?
I'm trying to be somebody instead of just make
money off everybody.
You know what I'm sayin'?
I go down paths that haven't been traveled before.
And I usually messed up, but I learn.
You know what I'm sayin'? I come back stronger.
I'm not talking ignorant, You know what I'm sayin'?
So I obviously put thought into what I do.
So I think my mouth and my controversy.
I have not been out of the papers since I've been,
since I joined Digital Underground, I've been in
You know what I'm sayin'? My name has not been not uttered.
You know what I'm sayin'? And that's good for me
because I don't want to be forgotten.
If I'm forgotten, then that means I'm comfortable.
And that means that I think that everything is okay.
My mother taught me three things. Respect
Knowledge, search for knowledge, it's an eternal journey,
That's like my haircut. The line, 360 degrees of
knowledge, always.
And, she taught me to not be quiet.
To, if there's something on my mind, speak it.
That's what God, that was a breath.
She always taught but also to listen.
And, she told me this little joke, that God
give you two ears to listen and one mouth to speak.
Two ears and one mouth.
Common sense. One mouth. You should speak but you
should also listen.
And that's where the knowledge come from. Listening.
And once you get the knowledge, then you can speak.
And, it helps you.
So, she taught me respect, knowledge and understanding,
mostly just listen a lot.
- One of the characterizations made of rappers,
often is that they are very boastful.
It seems like right now you are taking pains
to be humble and look at things from a very realistic
perspective. Is that accurate?
- Yeah. I think being humble is sexy.
There's too much money here.
I mean nobody should be hittin' the lotto for 36 million,
and we got people starvin' in the streets.
That is not idealistic, it's just real.
That is just stupid.
There's no way Michael Jackson should have or
whoever Jackson should have a million thousand
druple billion dollars and then has people starvin'
There's no way. There's no way that these people
should own planes and there are people don't have houses.
Apartments, shacks, drawers, pants.
I know you rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars,
but can you just keep it to one house?
You only need one house.
And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it
to two rooms? I mean why have 52 rooms and you
know there's somebody with no rooms.
It just don't make sense to me. It don't.
And then these people celebrate Christmas.
They got big trees,
huge trees, all the little trimmings,
everybody got gifts, and there's somebody that's starvin'
And they havin' a white Christmas. They're havin' a
great Christmas, Egg Nog and the whole nine.
That's not fair to me.
All this society is doin' is leachin' off the ghetto.
They use the ghetto for their pain,
for their sorrow, for their culture,
for their music, for their happiness, for their movies,
to talk about Boyz in the Hood, You know what I'm sayin'?
I don't want to be another
I don't want to be 50 years old at a BET
we shall overcome achievement awards,
Uh uh, not me. I want when they see me,
they know that every day that I'm breathin',
it's for us to go farther, you know?
Every time when I speak, I want the truth to come out.
You know what I'm sayin'?
Every time I speak I want a shiver,
You know, I don't want them to know what I'm
going to say 'cause it's polite.
They know what I'm going to say.
And even if I get in trouble, You know what I'm sayin'?
Ain't that what we're supposed to do?
I'm not saying I'm going to rule the world, or
I'm going to change the world, but I guarantee that
I will spark the brain that will change the world.
And that's our job, is to spark somebody else watchin' us.
We might not be the ones, but let's not be selfish,
and because we not going to change the world, let's not
talk about how we should change it.
I don't know how to change it.
But I know if I keep talking about
how dirty it is out here, somebody going to clean it up.
I can't hold a job. I just quit my job today actually.
Because I wanted to come and do this.
And they wouldn't let me.
And I thought it was important and more important
than serving pizza. And we had enough people, so.
I felt like, since I'm an actor, they should understand
and let me do it, but they didn't.
And I had a cold, and they had me working the freezer.
And I'm really not one to be disrespected
and I felt like that was disrespectful because I asked and
you know? So I quit.
And he told me I couldn't quit.
And that even made me hyper. I'm arrogant.
So, when he told me I couldn't quit and
we had all these customers, I chose that time
jump on the soapbox, grab my leather jacket,
light a cigarette in front of him, smoke and leave.
In the middle of a rush. So that's arrogance at the top.
I can't explain why
I shine and no one else shines, I think everybody shines,
in different things. And there's a lot of things I can't do
I can't play basketball like every black person in America.
But I can act. I know how to go to that true spot,
because I'm there every day
I can be me. I can be whoever because I'm true to me.
I can go to neutral easy. A lot of people, black, white,
Mexican, young or old, fat or skinny have a problem
being true to they self.
They have a problem looking in the mirror
and looking directly into their own souls.
The reason I sell six million records.
The reason I can go to jail and come out without a scratch,
the reason I can walk around,
the reason I am who I am today is because I can look
directly into my face and find my soul.
It's there, it's not sold, I didn't sell it.
It's still within me , I still feel it.
My heart is still connected to my body.
So any character I can bring that intensity,
that truth, that honesty to it.
Because I have to repay that blessing from black Jesus
from God, I have to pay for that by shinin'.
If he gives you the voltage and you waste it,
that's the curse. If he gave me the voltage, Im'ma shine.
It's not Mars. It's from God. It's God.
Not that it's so special that nobody got it,
but all of our gifts and blessings and
our strengths and our weaknesses come from God.
Come from black Jesus or whoever, it comes from
within you. You know what I mean? So, it's not really tricky
Everybody can do it if they just go to that spot.
I guess all the things that happen to me in my life,
allow me to go there easy.
- [Interviewer] The intensity of the music
has built to the no hope, the I don't give a, attitude.
How did we get from grandmaster Flash, the message
to where we are now in Hip Hop?
- Um, again, you have to be logical.
If I know that if in this hotel room they have food
every day and I'm knocking on the door every day to eat
and they tellin it.
Open the door, let me see the party. Let me see
them throwin' salami all over, just throwin' food around
There tellin' me there's no food in here.
You know what I'm sayin'? Every day, I'm standing outside
tryin' to sing my way in, You know what I'm sayin'?
♫ We are hungry please let us in.
After about a week that song is going to change to
♫ We are hungry, we need some food.
After two or three weeks, it's like
Give me all your food, knocking down doors.
After a year, I'm just like picking the lock,
coming through the door, blastin',
You know what I'm sayin'? It's like you hungry,
you reached that level you know where we asked ten years ago
We was asking with the Panthers, we was askin with them,
you know the civil rights movement, we was askin'.
Now those people that was askin', they all dead or in jail.
Now, what do you think what we're going to do?
And we shouldn't be angry.
And my rap, I'm rappin' to my community,
shouldn't be filled with rage.
You know what I'm sayin'? It shouldn't be filled
with the same atrocities that they gave to me.
In the media they don't talk about it,
so in my raps I have to talk about it.
And it just seems foreign because there's
no one else talkin' about it.
- Alright, well I'm playin' devil's advocate.
Somebody might say, well what does Tupac have?
He's a movie star, he's got hit records.
What does he have to complain about?
- And I'm going to tell you. It's like being the last
person alive. After three days you can't do anything.
What can I do?
Where can I go?
There's no black neighborhood, You know what I'm sayin'?
Where black people have the same amount of money as me.
You know what I'm sayin'? There's richer and there's poorer.
There's no, just, you know, did a movie got a little
bit of money, livin' okay, black neighborhood.
I have to be in a white neighborhood.
So I don't fit in. That's hell. It's hell when you can't
be around your peers. All my life I grew up around
black people, poor people, but I can't live around poor
people now, because they'll rob me.
And why will they rob me? Because they are starvin'.
'Cause there's no money here. But they're tellin' me
that because I made a little money, I have to move here.
So, it's not like, no one's ever tryin' to deal with
this section. They are just movin away from it.
And we got more start comin from the ghetto
and they all going to move this way.
If you grew up happy, too happy. You know like in
fairy tale land. Not fairy tale, if you grew up
where every Christmas you got a present
and every birthday you got a present and every
holiday was a holiday and everything was peachy
and your parents took care of everything and you
just grew up, I don't think that prepares you for the world
You know? My mother had a really bad childhood.
And my father had a bad childhood. And I had a bad
childhood, but I love my childhood.
Even though it was bad, I love it. I feel like it's
taught me so much.
And I feel like nothing can phase me. Nothing in this world
nothing can surprise me. It might set me back,
but only momentarily. Only to spring back.
And I think it's helped me to learn.
It really did help me to learn.
And since my mother had a bad childhood,
she knows the importance of being honest.
And the importance of facing each situation as it comes.
And not dealing in a fairy tale land.
Being realistic about the problem, and
analyzing it and solving it. Seeing what you can
do to solve it.
So, if you have a happy childhood, you tend to
want your child to have a happy childhood.
So, you tend to want to keep the bad things out,
and I don't think that's good because then
you're not prepared for the world.
- [Interviewer] So basically, you have to be realistic
with your kids?
- You should tell 'em. But don't get the wrong idea,
I feel like I'm being gloomy.
I don't need to be just like, everything's bad out there,
but when the good things come and they are going to come
and everybody knows that. Good things are going to come
And you're going to see em for yourself, you're going to
see you did good. But it's harder to see the bad things.
And everybodyss going to shield the bad things
and that's where it gets complicated and it gets rotten.
That's where everybody gets surprised and
Oh my god, I'm committin' suicide, that's too much
overwhelming. If you know about it, it won't be so
overwhelming. You know? So that's what I think about that.
All BS aside, it all comes down to we got to survive.
I mean, even warriors put their spears down on Sundays.
We got to survive here in this country.
'Cause I'm not going back to Africa. We got to survive here.
For us to survive here, white folks, black folks,
Korean folks, Mexican folks, Puerto Ricans, we got to
understand each other. We got to take a bigger chance.
And when I say Americans, people think I'm talking
about uncle Sam. I mean like actually Uncle Sam, with the
gray hair and the flag.
I mean, you, you, you. The guy, you know, you.
The mechanic, wherever, you, I mean you need to do somethin'
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
I'd love to know which of Tupac's top ten rules
meant the most to you, had the biggest impact.
Leave it in the comments below and I'll join in the
discussion.
- And tell us which one you want us to
feature on this channel next time.
- Thank you guys for watching. Continue to believe.
And we'll see you soon.