| Anthony Mackie Tackles Tupac Role in Notorious Film |
| By Hip Hop News | |
| 12/29/08 | |
December 29 2008
Hip Hop News: At a press junket for the upcoming Biggie biopic, Notorious, Anthony Mackie, who plays Tupac in the film, talked about the impact that Pac's lyrics had on him as a teen.
Anthony
Mackie once played Tupac Shakur in an off Broadway play back in 2001.
He reprised the role of the slain West Coast emcee for Notorious, the biographical movie based on the life of the Notorious B.I.G.
Mackie said that he is a huge fan of Tupac, "My first CD that I ever got was Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.,"
he revealed. "In the 90's LA was a scary place. When I started
listening to Tupac's lyrics I was like that's a completely different
world and a world that I never want to see and I never want to
experience but I now know."
"Pac's music just
fueled the fire for me," he continued. "I love Big. I love his Brooklyn
swagger I love everything he gave to the music industry but I feel like
Pac fed him a lot of food so I was all about Pac, everything he put
out, everything he wrote."
In order to prepare for his role as Tupac, Mackie says he re-read books by Eldridge Cleaver, a civil rights leader who Pac referenced in his song, "Ghetto Gospel" and Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former black panther activist who wrote a memoir titled, Live From Death Row.
He
also listened to a lot of Tupac's music. "I got so much Pac on my iPod.
It was really just tapping into what he was saying and the things that
he was trying to get across as opposed to shaving my head and going to
the gym," he said.
Notorious hits theaters on January 16, 2008.
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