2Pac’s father has shared his reaction to being labeled a “coward” on the late rap legend’s song “Dear Mama,” admitting he was initially “upset” at the line.
Billy Garland, the biological father of Tupac Shakur, was asked about the disparaging line in an interview with The Art of Dialogue.
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“No love for my daddy ’cause the coward wasn’t there/ He passed away and I didn’t cry/ ‘Cause my anger wouldn’t let me feel for a stranger,” ‘Pac rapped on the heartfelt track, taken from his 1995 album Me Against the World.
Garland revealed he didn’t appreciate the dig to begin with, but after hearing the line about him supposedly passing away, he realized that 2Pac must have been fed “lies” about him — a suspicion he claims turned out to be true.
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Since his initial dismay at “Dear Mama,” however, Garland said he has fallen in love with the song, much like the rest of his son’s catalog.
“At first, I was upset ’cause I’m trying to see you,” he said. “But then it hit me! One, I ain’t dead and so you really didn’t know ’cause if you would’ve known me then you would’ve known that I wasn’t dead. So I knew there that someone had lied to him from that point.
“And so later on when I found that out that someone did lie to him, that song made perfectly good sense. I understood it totally. When I hear it now, I laugh. I still love the fucking record. I love it, I do. I think it’s beautiful. I love all his music, though. I listen to his music daily — every freaking day, and I like it.”
Garland shed more light on his somewhat strained relationship with 2Pac, recalling a conversation he had with his son about him never being able to fully “relax” like a regular person due to his fame.
“I look in the videos and where he goes and I see him with the autographs, and I said, ‘That’s a different world,'” he said. “He could never be an individual that could relax in society, like he said he wanted to. He said, ‘Pops, I want to go home and watch TV but I know I can’t.’ He would tell me these things.”
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Garland also placed blame for his son’s 1996 murder on Suge Knight and Death Row Records, saying: “It’s a whirlwind and you can get caught up in it, and he did. He said he was gonna stop it but he got with the wrong people on the wrong coast to stop it.”
Elsewhere in his sit-down with The Art of Dialogue, 2Pac’s father criticized Hulu’s Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni & Tupac Shakur docuseries, claiming director Allen Hughes misled him when he was interviewed for the project.
“Allen Hughes asked me to do an interview. He didn’t tell me it was about Dear Mama, he didn’t tell me too much of anything except that it was about 2Pac,” he said. “We did an interview for about two hours. After I saw the interview in the documentary, I was slightly disappointed, let’s just say that.
“I didn’t like it. I thought it was more about something else than about 2Pac, if you know what I’m saying? If I knew it was about Dear Mama, I might have still done it, but I probably wouldn’t have.”
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Garland also said he “resented” the docuseries’ implication that 2Pac was “bipolar” and admitted being asked that question by viewers “broke my heart.”
“Here was a kid that came up with nothing. He had absolutely nothing. He had some success; he had that success taken away from him when he went to jail on flimsy, false charges. To be shot — once, five times by Black people; to be shot again four times later on in Vegas by, we’re not too sure but we believe Black people were involved.
“Bipolar doesn’t fit. How can you be bipolar when people do things to you that make you or changes the way that you believe in them?” he asked.
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“He believed in Black people. He loved Black people. He would do anything for Black people. And then to have that betrayal, to have people talk about him, call him a rapist … it hurt him.
“So he would flare up, he would have his mood changes. But who wouldn’t?! Imagine any human being going through those degrees of emotion. I think you would get different degrees of reactions.”
