In the aftermath of his breakout performance as Bishop in the film Juice, a young Tupac Shakur was plucked by director John Singleton to star as a postman named Lucky in Poetic Justice. The movie shot over a three-month span in California, and co-starred Janet Jackson, at the time one of the world’s biggest pop stars. The experience was, politely stated, a rocky one.
The following is an advanced excerpt from Jeff Pearlman’s Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur (Oct. 21, 2025 — Mariner).
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Prior to John Singleton’s focusing on Tupac, the young director’s first choice for leading man had been Ice Cube, the former N.W.A rapper who starred as Doughboy in Boyz n the Hood. It was a brief pursuit—Cube read the script, liked it, but took issue with some elements of the character that Singleton refused to change. Ice Cube was out.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.imdb.com ’
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