Why is it that 27 years after 2Pac was fatally shot in Las Vegas, all these new revelations are coming out about the legendary rapper?
First, someone was finally arrested in connection with his 1996 murder. Now, a New York City bus driver is filing a lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) and Interscope Records claiming that he hasn’t been properly compensated for his work on Pac’s 1995 classic, “Dear Mama.”
Yes, you read that correctly: a bus driver.
But that’s not his only source of income. According to Rolling Stone, Terrance Thomas is also a DJ and producer who goes by the name Master Tee. He says that he met the MC in 1993, while he was working as a DJ for MC Lyte. He claims that the two recorded the “OG Demo Version” of “Dear Mama” in October 1993, while Pac was working on his third studio album, Me Against the World, which was originally going to be titled, Stay True.
In his lawsuit, he cites that a group led by Tony Pizarro, the lead producer on the track, worked together to exclude Thomas and take as much credit for the song as possible while Pac was in prison and well after his death.
While these are strong claims, he also uses 2Pac himself as a witness, referencing his 1996 interview with MTV, where he states, “Master Tee gave me the beat, you know, Lyte’s DJ. He gave me the beat and I wrote it in the bathroom on the toilet, like on one of them early morning sit down sessions. I just wrote it down and it came out like, like tears, you know, right?”
More from Rolling Stone:
According to Thomas, the original master recording of “Dear Mama” was left at the New York City studio where it was made. When Tupac was sent to jail in 1995, following his conviction on two counts of sexual abuse, Pizarro was allegedly able to take the master recording and make “unilateral changes” to it. The suit claims this was done “at the bequest of Interscope Records, which Pizarro intended would eliminate Master Tee’s legitimate ownership of copyright.”
Pizarro allegedly “erased or muted” Master Tee’s producer tag at the start of the song, and added an interpolation of the Spinners’ song “Sadie,” on top of the original sample Thomas used, “In All My Wildest Dreams” by Joe Sample. Thomas claims Pizarro would’ve had to use the original master recording of “Dear Mama” because Tupac’s “original lyrics that he voiced” are used on Pizarro’s version; and, at the time, the “technology did not exist to separate the original tracks (i.e., the lyrics from the music, or ‘stems’) without using the original Master Recording.”
So why did Thomas wait 26 years to file a lawsuit?
He claims that he was duped by Pizarro and others at UMG and that the release of the Hulu docuseries, Dear Mama, made him realize he should’ve been paid more for his contributions to the song.