A music video of Tupac Shakur made about a month before he was gunned down
in Las Vegas foreshadowed his violent death and shows the gangsta rapper being
ushered into heaven.
The video for "I Ain't Mad," which aired Wednesday night on MTV,
also shows Shakur being riddled with bullets and dying in an
ambulance.
He is met in heaven by comedian Redd Foxx, who is hosting
a jam session with Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday,
Louis Armstrong and Robert Johnson, among other performers.
Shakur's label, Death Row Records, delivered the video to MTV on
Monday -- three days after the 25-year-old rapper died Friday of gunshot
wounds suffered in a Sept. 7 shooting on East Flamingo Road, the New York Post
reported today.
In another eerie similarity to real life, the video shows Shakur
-- who was in a car with Death Row President Marion "Suge" Knight
at the time of the shooting -- riding with a friend in a limousine.
"It is ironic -- definitely a case of life imitating art,"
Death Row's George Pryce told the Post. "It's almost as if Tupac
had a sense of foreboding."
Metro Police are investigating the shooting, but they have few leads. The
shots came from a white Cadillac that pulled up next to the vehicle in which
Shakur was riding. Witnesses, including Knight, have refused to cooperate.
Sources have told the Los Angeles Times that a double killing in Compton,
Calif., last week was in retaliation for the Shakur shooting.
September 19, 1996
Tupac's final music video eerily
foreshadowed death of rapper
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS