I Spent Six Days Protecting Tupac on His Deathbed

 In the months leading up to his death, then 30-year-old Rahimi worked on or directed most of Tupac's videos, including "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted," "How Do U Want It," and the rapper's final video "Made Niggaz." Today, he's working on a film called 7 Dayz about the final week of Tupac's life.

I remember Nate Dogg was walking through the crowd up to every group of people he recognized, and he finally walked up to us and said, "Pac and Suge have been shot."We found out that he had been taken to University Medical Center. We went there and I remember one of the first things I saw was Kidada Jones and his cousin Jamala crying on the pay phones. Everyone else that was in the ER waiting room was Suge's people. It was his mom and dad, it was his lawyer, it was Reggie Wright—and there was no one there for Tupac. It was just us. Within an hour, the nurse came out and walked up to Suge's mom. Suge's mom said, "How's my baby, how's my baby?" And the nurse said, 'Ma'am, your son's fine. He got hit with a piece of shrapnel. Probably a piece of glass. We're going to give him a couple of stitches and he's going to be taken to a private room within an hour." Then she turned to us and said, "Unfortunately, for Tupac, it's not the same situation. His right lung was shot, so we had to remove it. There will be a series of reparative operations and it will probably take 12 hours."

I went back to LA, and the next day, I remember hearing Theo on The Beat say that Pac had passed. We were on our way to set, and everyone in the van started crying.

I've heard all the rumors from it could be Suge, it could be P. Diddy who paid for it, it could be the fight with Orlando Anderson. You know, at the end of the day, Tupac had a voice. The one thing he didn't have was subtlety. If he had continued on the same path he had been on, someone would have taken him out. He was disruptive, and he was a threat. He was a threat to the establishment. I don't know who took him out. But whoever took him out took out someone very important who could have done a lot for African Americans and humanity as a whole. At 25, he had accomplished more than some people do in a lifetime. One of the last meetings I had with him, he said, "People aren't going to recognize me in six months. I'm going to act like such an adult." He was ready for a transformation, he wanted to be more than a stereotype.

(An excerpt from Matt Miller  interview with 2Pac's videographer)