This past March I made my way to the warehouse district of Los Angeles on a warm Sunday afternoon in hopes of talking to Snoop Dogg about his late friend and sometime collaborator Tupac Shakur. The famed rapper and his cohorts Warren G and Nate Dogg were set to perform at a small, private promotional concert arranged by the recreational footwear company for whom he endorses shoes. I climbed the stairs of the converted warehouse that serves as the company's headquarters and found the third-floor makeshift "green room" where the artists and media would gather before the show. I mingled with the other writers and made small talk with the few celebrities and artists who streamed through, awaiting Snoop's arrival. I caught a few minutes with Big Boy, the L.A. radio personality who spent time with Tupac on the road when Big Boy was a bodyguard for the West Coast hip-hop group The Pharcyde.

"You know, what I liked about the dude," Big Boy told me as we huddled in a corner as an intimate crowd of over fifty people milled about the room. "He loved everyone, but he always knew that he was a strong black man. And he wasn't afraid to say a lot of stuff that other people wouldn't say. Others would say, `I can't say that.' Not Pac. If I want to get everybody's attention, I can't just sit here and say,`Hey....'"

Without warning, Big Boy finished his sentence by cupping his hands around his mouth and screaming at the top of his lungs, startling me and the other folk in the room.

"You've got to say, `HEY!'"

After I recovered from his unanticipated sonic blast, my brow furrowed and my eyes slightly bucked, he continued, laughing at my response and the way the crowd momentarily froze.

"Sometimes you've got to scream. You've got to snatch their attention. And that's why his music lives on, that's why people care—because he made such an impact. It wasn't that Pac became a star after he passed. Pac was a star from my first handshake with him; he was a star from the get-go. He always commanded attention."

Our impromptu session over, I scanned the room for other folk that might have known the rapper. I chanced upon Ray J, a star, with his sister Brandy, of the television series Moesha and a recording artist as well.

"I just recorded a new song with Tupac," the young artist told me.

Uh-oh, I thought to myself. Although he's talented, this is obviously a young brother who believes that Tupac is still alive. But then I remembered that Tupac's posthumous recordings are already legendary and that many artists have gone into the studio to supply music and vocals for the hundreds of tracks he laid down. I'm relieved.

"It's called `Unborn Child,' and it's coming out on the second release of his double CD. Nobody has heard it before."

Ray J was excited about recording with Tupac. I remembered as I spoke to him that the new technologies ensure that very few living artists even record together in the same place at the same time. So in a way the method of recording was nothing new. But his enthused expression made it apparent that the opportunity to partner with Tupac was still thrilling.

"Tupac is one of the greatest poets out there right now," Ray J told me. I took note of his present tense, since Tupac's continually unfolding artistry, in books, in movies, and in compact discs, makes it difficult to speak of him in the past.

"The brother just went into the studio and did songs that a lot of people can relate to and learn from before he went out. Like he said, he's just a thug who has a lot of money. But on the other hand, he's a thug that is giving positive messages to kids so they can be like him."

Besides noting the persistent present tense in his speech, which was slightly jarring—done without irony and fully passionate to boot—I was curious about how a thug, even a poetic one, came off as positive to a young man noted for his clean lyrics and wholesome demeanor. So I asked him.

"He taught us that we can make a living for ourselves and become rich and become entrepreneurs in the game."

His press person whisked him away to his next appointment, and I was left to ponder just how many young people like Ray J were affected by Tupac's message and music, how many generations would continue to admire him and keep his memory alive. Just then I spotted the ferociously gifted actor Larenz Tate, known for his agile, adept, and brooding performances in the Hughes brothers' films Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. But it was clear that he was, as the hip-hop phrase states it, "on the down-low," very low-key and unassuming and hence unnoticeable, or at least he hoped. After we exchanged pleasantries and mutual admiration, he led me out of the room and down the hallway for maximum privacy—and to relieve other scribes of the hope of pressing him for his thoughts. He was studied, altogether genial and affable, and quietly reflective.

"For most of his core fans and people who knew him, he was a prophet," Tate calmly expounded in a near whisper. "It's really weird how a person can predict things the way he did. When he passed away, everything he had talked about before he died actually happened."

Tate gets a bit of a spark with his next comment, his intense eyes brightening as he states a parallel that's been made time and again but whose repetition is no hindrance to the truth it means to convey.

"I think he is the hip-hop version of Elvis Presley," Tate declared. "People are claiming Tupac sightings everywhere." I couldn't help but think to myself, as he spoke of Tupac and Elvis, that it's about time. White folk are always spotting Elvis or JFK or Marilyn Monroe, which is a great thing if your icons and heroes were only apparently gone but in truth were hanging out on a deserted island, living beyond their legend in the solitude of old age. I've asked myself through the years why nobody has ever spotted, say, Sam Cooke or Otis Redding or Billie Holiday or even Donny Hathaway, cooling out in the shade of a palm tree, content that their tragic, storied pasts are a world away. Black mythologies and legends are hard to create, even harder to sustain.

"He has definitely etched a mark in hip-hop culture." Tate's words brought me back from my momentary reverie. "But he was also able to transcend the hip-hop culture into the pop world, to film and television and all kinds of media. For him to still be just as big now as he was when he was alive is amazing." Since Tate is such a talented thespian, I asked him about Tupac's cinematic aura.

"Your goal as a performer is to give something that's the truth or something that is real. In the context of real-life stories—and he was usually in films that reflected real street life—he was able to draw from his experience with the streets." The notion of truth, of authenticity, of the real, is a recurring theme in the narratives that swirl around Tupac and that he spun for himself. "Keeping it real," is the mantra that Tupac lived to its devastating, perhaps even lethal, limits. Tate reflected on his brief encounters with Tupac, the promise they held, and the promise they left unfulfilled.

"I didn't spend as much time with Tupac as I wish I would have," Tate lamented. "A lot of people who knew Tupac and who knew me said it would be great if we really sat down and had a meeting of the minds, because he needed to hear more positive things. Unfortunately, that didn't happen." Unfortunate indeed, since too often the love and inspiration black men need to stay alive is only a brother away. The thought that Tate might have made a real difference in Tupac's life is a missed opportunity that bathes us in a moment of silent musing. We break by giving each other a black male hug—right hands entwined in a friendship clasp as our right arms clench and draw us forward to better grasp each other on the back with our left arms. Tupac is the bridge that brought us this close, but we don't need to acknowledge it with anything more than an implicit recognition we glimpse in each other's eyes.

Just as we parted, I heard the long-awaited caravan of buses pulling up in front of the warehouse. They were only a couple of hours late, not bad in CP time—no, not colored people's time but chillin' posse's time. Since Snoop took his name from the canine, I suppose it was only right that we had all aged in dog years awaiting his arrival. As I emerged into the sunlight from the building's cavernous spaces, I was greeted by a gaggle of camera crews and reporters seeking to get a piece of Snoop as he made his way from the bus to the private room reserved for him—and it wasn't the green room in which many of us had waited. The shoe company executives were there, of course, as well as a slew of handlers and other personnel intent on escorting Snoop to his temporary digs. I grew more uncomfortable by the minute. I knew this was no way to get a serious interview with Snoop, even though I'd tried to reach him through more traditional—and less dicey—channels. But when all else failed, I embraced serendipity when a behind-the-scenes executive working with the concert recognized me in the hotel from television and my books and offered me a backstage and green-room pass when I told him about my desire to speak to Snoop for my book on Tupac. Hugging corners and waiting on celebrity entertainers while beating back crowds was not my métier. I simply wanted to grab some time with a man I thought would be helpful to my cause.

Moreover, I had done enough reading and writing about hip-hop, enough attending concerts and shows and club promotions to know that nothing offends the machismo of the rapper more than male groupies. There is a distinct genre of the dis in hip-hop that pours venom and disdain on the heads of guys who outwardly display their love of hip-hop or its stars by showing up backstage to seek an autograph or give praise. In the misogynist lingo of the culture, that was the job of the "ho," or the "bitch," and I wasn't about to subject myself to the hateful stare or acerbic rebuff of youth no older than the students I teach at the university. That is, not until I realized that I would have little time to get to Snoop if I waited for the crush around him to collapse upstairs as he entered his secluded domain. So there I was, in the line of reporters and hangers-on who were granted fleeting access by the heavy security to the area where the bus had lodged to deposit the rap stars. I managed to perch right at the bus's door as it opened and a cloud of smoke greeted the small clutch of onlookers. I recognized the face of Warren G, like Snoop a southern-cadenced rapper whose melodies were often enhanced by the dulcet tones of gangsta crooner and preacher's kid Nate Dogg. I figured I had better press my case immediately, since the competition was almost as thick as the weed smoke that filled the air around us.

"Brother Warren G, I'm writing a book on Tupac, and I'd love to get your opinion about him." I felt silly in saying it so quickly, so publicly, and, yes, so desperately. My pride was aching something awful, and my resentment at having to go this route was sweeping fast. I suppose I was the hip-hop equivalent of the anxious white liberal—I didn't mind giving all kinds of support to the culture, but when it came time to put my body and ego on the line, well, that was another matter. Plus, my self-aware status was rubbing against the unfolding drama: "I am a figure, an intellectual, a person who writes books and appears on television and has a following of people who think I'm important. This is no place for me to be, no way for me to behave. I should just leave." But since I'd come this far, I figured it might not hurt to stay a little longer. That's when Warren G opened his mouth.

"Damn, you gon' hit me right here, huh?" he said in amusement, gently laughing and ambushed by a tape-recorder-wielding, geriatric (by hip-hop standards) scribe wanting to know about a fallen comrade. But he was a good sport, a far better one, I was soon to find out, than his speechifying peers.

"Well, I've got to be ready, man," I shot back.

"What do you want to know?" he asked.

"I want to know why, five years after his death, Tupac is still a significant figure."

Warren leaned back on the stairs and took hold of the door handles to steady himself as he spoke.