Some of the most impactful moments in Tupac Shakur’s career took place on camera. Obviously, he had some iconic film roles like the intense and horrifying Juice or the oozing charisma in Poetic Justice and Above The Rim. But this also extends to his rich music videos. The taunting on “Hit ‘Em Up”, the carefree bliss on “I Get Around”, or the Mad Max references on “California Love” all burn into the psyche after one watch.
However, one of the best Tupac music videos of all time had little to no Tupac involved at all. Instead, he spotlighted his mother Afeni Shakur for the tender, iconic “Dear Mama”. In a 2023 interview with Okayplayer, director Lionel C. Martin reflected on the first time he started working with Pac. At the time, the All Eyez on Me rapper was in jail while Me Against The World was out in 1995. By that point, he had seen a lot of Martin’s work up to that point.
Consequently, Interscope Records reached out to the director because Pac specifically wanted him to do a video for “Dear Mama”. Afterwards, they got on the phone and he only had one simple request: make sure his mom and women as a whole were spotlighted.
The Director of “Dear Mama” Reflects on the First Time He Spoke With Tupac
“I got on the phone with him and it was surreal. He sounded very cool and extremely intelligent. He was like, ‘Hey, so these are some of the ideas I want and it’s really important that it really shows my mom. I want my mom to be in the video and it has to be really strong to women.’ Those were words he used. I replied, ‘No problem. Anything else?’ He said, ‘No, man, I trust you, man… The label will have you get in touch with my mom and you can talk to her and everything like that,’” Martin recalled talking with Tupac.
“That was the start of working with Afeni Shakur. She was really a beautiful woman with a beautiful spirit. She sent me all of these pictures of her son, and we made copies of them. It was really cool because some stuff I’d never seen before. We incorporated those pictures into the video, and I told her the concept of what I was going to do. To this day, it’s still one of my favorite videos,” Martin continued of Tupac Shakur’s “Dear Mama”. “After we shot the video, I remember sending his mom some roses. His mom came with her sister. Her sister was there on the set too. I think her sister is in one of the shots of the video.”
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