When Thugz Cry

John Cole, Shakur's Close Friend

                    John Cole, Friend of Tupac.

            Tupac and I have been friend's way back when we attended Baltimore School of the Arts. We were always together; no one knew how to break us apart. We were like two peas in a pod. We acted together, we fooled around like the bad boys we were, and we even have similar backgrounds. Tupac Shakur and I were inseparable.

        We were of kindred souls, both of us being raised by single mothers, which made our connection grow stronger. We were brothers-one black, one white-a tight connection filled with wild dreams and youthful energy, which channeled into our activities.

          He wore a lot of my clothes," I remember telling him, which I was a painter at the time. "At times we dressed wearing clothes that we made."

           When I moved out of my mother's house to stay with my older brother in Reservoir Hill, I left the door open for Shakur, who had had a falling out with his mother. We slept on separate couches in the living room while my older brother and another friend took the bedrooms.

            I remember for fun we rode around town in a Volkswagen Beetle, once making a trip to New York with Jada Pinkett, another of the stars to come out of the School for the Arts. To earn money, Shakur worked as a bus boy at the Market Restaurant downtown.

           I also remember him telling me that he enjoyed boxing and saw Mike Tyson, as a hero, like many others have. Tupac was not an athlete, clearly you know that. Instead, he was an actor, an dancer, an rapper, an incredible ball of talent and energy.

            My man, Tupac.

          You could be watching a movie on television, and he would pick a character and start spinning narratives out of the air. He could be an old drunk, or Tony Montana, Al Pacino's over-the-top gangster from "Scarface."

       "With Tupac, you never quite knew what you were going to get," I said one time. "Tupac had his 'off' switch, but it was a while before he got to that, maybe when he lay down."

          And he was sensitive. When me and my brother moved out of the place in Reservoir Hill, there wasn't enough room in the new place for Shakur. Our friendship was never the same after that, though we did spend time together later in Los Angeles.

          Shakur left Baltimore in the spring of 1988, his junior year. Hicken, the theater instructor, never had the chance to put him in a show. Pilcher says Shakur was "heartbroken" about leaving.

          And that's when the switch began.

          From Thespian to Thug.

        "He wanted nothing more than to stay at the School for the Arts," says Pilcher, an acting teacher at the school of the arts in Baltimore. "There was respect, and acting wasn't looked upon as a sissy thing to do."

         Shakur moved to Northern California, found his way into the West Coast rap scene and got his break with Digital Underground. By the time he was 22, he had starred in two films and his two albums had each sold a half-million copies. Tupac was now 2Pac, a walking symbol of the thug life.

         He also made several return visits to Baltimore, usually as part of record promotions. He arrived in limousines, but still presented himself as the Shakur of old.

         "We knew him before he adopted the gangster persona," says Hicken, another acting teacher at school of the arts. "It wouldn't make any sense for him to talk to us that way."

        I made a visit to see him in Los Angeles during the filming of "Poetic Justice," released in 1992. But Shakur cut me off when his Oakland friends arrived at the hotel where we were staying.

           "I'm rather white, and I didn't fit the image of what his thug life friends wanted and I don't think he knew how to deal with it," I said honestly. I didn't think he knew how to deal with his friends and myself when were all together. In all honesty, I kind of gave him credit for that because he saved something that would later, probably blows up.

          Til this day, I honestly miss my friend, my companion, my acting partner....my brother, Tupac Amaru Shakur.

            Stay Blessed, not Stressed.

             Xx :)

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          Fun Fact about Tupac: Appeared on Forbes' "Top Earning Dead Celebrities" list in 2002, 2003 and 2004 with earnings of $7 million, $12 million and $5 million in each respective year