‘Dear Mama’ Explores Close, Complex Relationship Between Tupac Shakur And His Mother Afeni

The executive producer/director of the documentary series Dear Mama, Allen Hughes, says he used a mantra he learned from his editor to guide his team in creating the show.

“He said to me, ‘There’s a difference between walking in someone’s shoes and being in someone’s head.’”

Incorporating this idea, Hughes says that he really worked to get into the heads of his subjects.

Those subjects are Tupac Shakur, and his mother, Afeni Shakur.

“We discovered that all the emotional alchemy that was there, with her and with him,” says Hughes.

The deeply personal five‑part docu-series tells the story of mother and son — she, a revolutionary who became a feminist darling of the ’70s as a female leader in the Black Panther Party; and he, a rapper and poet, a political visionary and philosopher who became known as one of the greatest rap artists of all time.

This is the story of a global superstar and the woman who shaped him.

Their story chronicles the possibilities and the contradictions of the United States from the time of revolutionary fervor to hip‑hop culture’s most ostentatious decade.

Executive producer Jamal Joseph says that what excited him most about the project was that, “when you talk about pure love, I don’t think there was any man that Afeni loved the way she loved Tupac or any woman that Tupac loved the way he loved his mother.”

He adds that Afeni was so aware that Tupac was ‘a child of purpose.’

Hughes says that for anyone who is a super fan of Tupac, “there’s a lot throughout the [series] that have never been seen. There’s also audio that’s never been heard, and not just some of his a cappella [pieces] and his vocals.”

While Hughes says that there is ‘bunch of stuff that you haven’t seen from [Tupac],’ more importantly, the film will help viewers, “understand why he made certain decisions and why he did this and did that.”

Hughes, not wanting to spoil anything in the series, does give some inside information, saying, “There’s a whole big thing with [Tupac’s] father that goes on this piece that we couldn’t write into the story because I thought I knew, but it turns out it wasn’t what I thought I knew and it wasn’t what [Tupac] thought he knew, up until two years before he passed. So, it was a revelation to Tupac in ’94.”

It’s then that Hughes points out that when you think about Tupac’s music, with song like Dear Mama, Brenda’s Got a Baby, and Keep Ya Head, “25 years after his passing, there still isn’t a hip-hop artist that writes songs like that. He was in touch with his feminine side and his softer side, and he was unafraid to express that. I think that’s what makes him singular as a rock star.“

Hughes believes that Tupac would approve of the actualities laid out in the series, explaining, “he was a guy that didn’t run away from the truth. He would get big at times, he would get grand, but then in the next hour, you would see the very sober, compassionate individual. So, I don’t think he would have disapproved of [telling] these stories. That’s the one thing about this kid, is he was not quiet.”

Joseph says Afeni was much like her son in this way. “Afeni was unapologetically truthful. She never sugarcoated anything. [She] was that person who could be cussing you out one minute and in tears the next moment in the same conversation about the same person. [Tupac] was raised in that environment of unapologetic truth. So, I agree with Allen. I think he would look at [this] and say, ‘You know, this feels right. This feels truthful to me.’”

To this end, Joseph says that he feels like, “the thing I think that [people] will come away from the docuseries with is that this is going to make you wish that you had a chance to hang with [Tupac] and Afeni.

‘Dear Mama’ begins airing Friday, April 21^st at 10e/p on FX with the first two episodes. Episodes will then release weekly until Friday, May 12^th.