That Time Tupac Listened to Nas’ ‘Illmatic’ Bootleg in Court During 1994 Trial

Life’s a bitch, then you die. .

This week, we came across a rare story, regarding the Tupac Shakur. While we haven’t seen this publicized by media platforms, Reading Nas’ Illmatic revealed that Makaveli was indeed a fan of Escobar while he was here on earth. In an excerpt from the book, Tupac received a bootleg copy of the debut Nas album, Illmatic, and was listening to it during his 1994 trial in NYC. Upon arriving to the court, Pac had “Life’s a Bitch” blasting in his ride and even continued the listening to the court, where a bailiff had to tell him to turn off the headset or he would be in trouble.

Take a look at the story below.

Excerpt from ‘Reading Nas’s Illmatic‘:

Illmatic was a dirty bomb thrown at the orchestral sonic soundtrack that was The Chronic. The snippets of New York life, the sound of an elevated train, the random gems niggas utter as you pass them on foot, they were the shrapnel. This wasn’t a backyard bikini barbeque where the Ohio Players and DJ Quick are mashed up; this was a three-month bid on Rikers, a dirty dice game, blunts of brown Brooklyn sparked in the park after dark. And Nas was more than a conductor. He was the quiet genius, pen and pad unpacking multisyllables and complex stanzas the way tougher guys from his projects drew semiautomatics. Pac was an instant convert. I dubbed the CD onto a cassette for him. He got his manager to upgrade his rental to a Lexus (he traded some midsize rental from the Cavalier family). The next day he pulled into the courthouse parking lot, his interior cloudy. He pulled his dub from the whip, threw it in his headphones, and arrived in his assigned courtroom blasting Illmatic so loudly that the bailiff yelled at him to turn it off before the judge took his seat on the bench. That day during lunch break Pac got into a scrap with one of the Hughes brothers. The Fruit of Islam broke it up, but not before he tossed me said headphones for safekeeping during the scrap. “Life’s a Bitch,” AZ promised through the small padded speakers, “and then you die. So, we get high, cause you never know, when you’re gonna go.”

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