With the all the posthumous Tupac Shakur releases on the streets, it's almost like the iconic rapper never left us. Yet his complex and contradictory life story gets the documentary treatment in a sort of companion piece to Nick Broomfield's 2002 Biggie and Tupac. Whereas that film was made by an outsider and focused on the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the feuding rappers, this was made with the cooperation of Tupac's mother, Afeni, and is an intimate, subjective memorial.
"Narrated" by Tupac (via the clever, chronological use of interview audio clips), the movie covers his odd-duck teen years, his start in rap group Digital Underground and his slow transformation into a loved, respected and simultaneously reviled gangsta rapper. It's a little too forgiving of his more serious character flaws, and it skirts some of the more unpleasant aspects of his life, but it's a moving tribute in the end.