We Just Saw 2Pac Live On Broadway

Director and playwright Todd Kriedler’s 2Pac-scored musical, Holler If Ya Hear Me, is running a rough launch on Broadway. The show’s first-week ticket sales were a modest six-figures, with sales only declining in subsequent weeks. Critics have lauded Holler with all the good-for-you encouragement befitting a steamed broccoli entree.

It’s thankless work trying to honor hip-hop via musical theater. New York has hosted several blockbuster rock operas but nothing quite like Holler If Ya Hear Me, Kriedler’s tribute to a relatively controversial savant. While rapper activist Saul Williams, the lead, isn’t portraying 2Pac, his muscle, grit, and energy are true to Shakur’s spirit. But is thug passion enough to carry a three-hour show?

After reading a few early reviews of Holler, Complex Music staffers Insanul Ahmed and Justin Charity figured the spectacle potential of a West Coast rap musical was too fascinating to pass up. They attended together. They toasted double Hennessey in sippie cups. They watched.

Afterward, they argued.

Written by Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin) & Justin Charity (@BrotherNumpsa)

RELATED: The 100 Best 2Pac Songs
RELATED: The 10 Best 2Pac Rants

Insanul: Wait, so this isn’t a play about 2Pac’s short but extraordinary life? That might explain why, as we walked in, I noticed none of the memorabilia they were selling in the lobby featured Pac’s face or resemblance in any way. But fine, it’s a bunch of people in Any Ghetto, USA. But I mean, couldn’t they have at least had one character wearing an oversized Red Wings jersey like Pac walking out the courtroom?

Charity: I knew going in that it’s not a musical about 2Pac. But no, I hadn’t quite braced that this was going to be an ensemble drama set in an anonymously non-West Coast metropolis and filled with characters born of Todd Kriedler’s imagination rather than Shakur’s. 2Pac’s music is the show’s soundtrack but not its center of gravity.

I expected The Gospel at Colonus. Holler is certainly more lively and dexterous than that. Yet there's slow singing and flower-bringing here, too.

Insanul: I’ve never seen The Gospel at Colonus so I can’t speak on that. But I was really expecting the play to take place in the ‘90s, mostly because as time passes, Pac’s music and legacy seem so rooted in the ‘90s—even more so than his ‘90s counterparts. Parts of the music played awkwardly in the play, like when they do “Changes” and spit one of most memorable lines ever, “And although it seems heaven sent, we ain't ready to see a black President,” it’s like, ahh...you know there’s this guy, named Barack and...But whatever, I’m into the idea of someone doing something to honor Pac’s legacy. Taking hip-hop to legitimate theater on Broadway is cool because I like whenever people take hip-hop seriously as an artistic endeavor.

Charity: Plot aside, the orchestral arrangements carry the show. The most impressive being the sidewalk dance-off mash-up of “I Get Around” and “Keep Ya Head Up,” pitting playas vs. around-the-way girls. The title track, “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” is also the showstopper, and I think Saul Williams channels all due energy (and spit) at that point.

For me, the low moments were mostly in the second half. “California Love” and, worst of all, “Hail Mary,” the latter suffering from Dyllon Burnside’s scrappy, quivering vocals. Watching this, I realized just how essential 2Pac’s charisma and rage are to any given classic dude ever wrote. It’s why so many rappers of the 2000s could try to write with similar vantage and rhyme over similar beats and yet fail to approximate 2Pac whatsoever. I’m looking at you, Silkk.

Insanul: You’re definitely right that watching other people try and fail so miserably at rapping like 2Pac just goes to show how great a voice he really had. (Also, were the actors occasionally halfway singing during their verses? Seemed like a side effect from always singing on Broadway) Rap nerds these days love to bring up how Pac wasn’t a technically proficient rapper (he wasn’t) to diminish him, but it’s just a reminder that rap nerds sometimes can’t see the forest for the trees and miss the point of Pac’s appeal; the emotional impact of his delivery. Few other rappers could convincingly project as many authentic emotions on the mic that Pac could. It turns out, the actors in the plays really couldn’t either, though Saul Williams made a valiant effort.

I, for one, really disliked the orchestral arrangements, as I often do when anyone tries to put an orchestra with rap. The exception being Kanye and Jay Z because they took the time to figure out how to make that shit still knock. Otherwise, it just makes me miss a microphone and two turntables.The arrangement of the beats in the play sounded like when you click the wrong version of a song on Spotify and end up listening to a 2Pac cover band instead of the actual 2Pac song. But I’ll agree that the dance-off mash-up of “I Get Around”/“Keep Ya Head Up” was the highlight, though it didn’t really fit with the larger plotline and came rather early in the play. None of the other songs came nearly as close to playing proper homage while still being their own thing.

Insanul: Ugh. It hurts my heart to say it, but it feels like it doesn’t hold up all that well. Some of this might be a personal thing for me; when I was in high school I probably listened to 2Pac as much as any other artist outside of 50 Cent, Eminem, and Jay Z. So some of it might be overkill on my part. And of course, there’s the East Coast bias of being from New York, so I go out and hear Biggie much more often than Pac (I feel like I hear someone play “California Love” and/or “I Get Around” fairly often). Still, Pac’s catalog surely holds up in this sense: If a young kid who was just getting into hip-hop asked me for some rap recommendations, I’d suggest the rap classic trifecta of Me Against The World, All Eyez On Me, and The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. So there’s that.

Charity: I disliked 2Pac when I was in middle school, disliked 2Pac when I was in high school, and only warmed to his catalogue when I was in college. What people think about Lupe Fiasco now, I thought about 2Pac then: that his political sentiment was wild corny and theatrical and irreconcilable. (I was an overread brat, fam.) All his tough talk and drama aside, though, 2Pac dropped hits in 1996 that have preserved way better than hits 50 Cent dropped in 2005. "Ambitionz Az A Ridah" is still that jam. Nearly twenty years later, "California Love" is still wrecking dancefloor tectonics. On just one hand—only one hand—you can count the rappers with such wondrous breadth and depth to their discographies. Ebro from Hot 97 summarized as much the other day:

You'll never be like Pac!! Stop! U not doing social commentary + in clubs + having women + real beef + freestyles + great melodies! Shaddup

— Ebro el Viejo (@oldmanebro) July 1, 2014

Insanul: I hate to say it, but I think Pac has lost a ton of relevance in the past few years. One, the 2Pac Industrial Complex stopped producing Pac albums because they genuinely ran out of material but also because what they were putting out was just embarrassingly bad.

Two, it’s funny to watch the horse race between Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. over the years. Pac had his debut album out in 1991 so he had a head start, but Biggie’s Ready To Die shot him to superstardom by 1995. Pac got out of jail that year and unleashed All Eyez On Me by '96. They were both dead by ‘97 but Puff Daddy and Bad Boy kept taking over the world as Death Row fell apart. But Pac’s posthumous relevance hit an all time high in the 50 Cent era, but since then it’s been lights out for Pac.

His legacy has grown outward—with him getting Broadway plays and documentaries that help him gain recognition outside of hip-hop—but within rap, Biggie is now touted as the clear lyrical superior to Pac with a fervor that didn’t seem imaginable before. Really, the biggest blow to Pac’s legacy was that seven years passed and 2Pac didn’t actually come back from the dead. What a letdown.

Charity: Around the office, and all throughout music journalism, we’ve had authenticity arguments about several artists. With 2Pac, it’s tough to figure how he’d hold up if he were an artists making waves in 2014. Would everyone be like, “SMH @ this boho art schoolboy repping Thug Life”? Seems likely.

Insanul: Yeah, though it’s possible that Pac would have found a way to flip his image on its head and not gone the Thug Life route. He’d lose most of his mythology, but none of his star power.

Charity: Saul Williams talked to Noisey last week. He argued that “2Pac wasn’t a great rapper” is a conventional wisdom that’s gotten out of hand and fails to account for 2Pac’s rare strengths. He never had the most complex rhyme style, sure, but that’s rather beside the point. It's like calling Hemingway or Saunders literary simpletons because their sentences aren't super complex. In his own signature way, 2Pac was a terrific rapper.

Williams suggests that even to this day, no rapper other than 2Pac has written a hit that amends to a woman’s perspective. Even if that’s not quite true—Nas and Cam’ron, for instance, have occaisionally rapped as women, about men—the point stands that few artists have full catalogues with the emotional breadth of, well, a Broadway ensemble musical. Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted and Death Certificate together could score an original stage production with themes and conflict similar to Holler If Ya Hear Me; and like 2Pac’s catalogue, those two Cube albums could deserve such a treatment. Plus there’s Geto Boys, Lauryn Hill, and maybe Kanye. The Yeezus show is blockbuster theater, all right. 

Jay Z, in contrast—with certain exceptions, there’s little tenderness in Jay’s music. Whereas 2Pac was a fighter and a lover. He was a showman, for sure.

Insanul: 2Pac is certainly the most deserving of a Broadway play. I mean, he was an actor and a hell of a showman. However, watching the play I kept thinking of Wu-Tang, namely Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. I kept thinking about “Striving For Perfection” where Ghostface Killah and Rae talk about how they're leaving the drug game behind. That skit set the tone for the album and carried an emotional weight no scene in Holler actually had.