.A hip-hop gamechanger, a revolutionary’s son, an actor, an ex-convict, a platinum-selling artist, a sensitive truth-teller, a “Thug Life” tattoo-sporting tough guy, a black man, a martyr – Tupac Shakur was all these things and more. It was never a matter of whether or not the 25-year-old musician deserved a biopic so much as why it took so damned long to make it happen. (Would that it were so simple: You can read a detailed history of the project’s long, winding and incredibly bumpy road to becoming a reality.) There was just one anxiety-inducing question that kept buzzing in the back of our skulls: Was this eventual big-screen take on Shakur going to be an epic look at a complicated legend’s life and times – a Gandhi of gangsta rap iconography – or merely a slightly larger Lifetime TV movie filled with hysterics and greatest-hits moments. We now have an answer. It was not the one we wanted.

Read Rolling Stone’s complete review of Tupac’s biopic here.

Photo Credits: Rolling Stone