(AllHipHop News) In 1992, few people knew that Tupac Shakur was going to be the superstar multi-hyphenate that he had become four years later at the time of his demise.
One of those people to recognize Pac’s greatness early on was videographer and director, Stephen Blake.
In 1993, Interscope Records hired Blake to produce a video for Pac’s “Holler If You Hear Me.”
Though an experienced director, Blake took particular interest in Tupac as an artist and a personality.
He is now alleging that Universal Music Group, the distribution company that now owns the masters and properties associated with Tupac’s art, will not honor a handshake agreement that gave ownership of parts of the footage that bears the images and likeness of the now-deceased rapper.
Blake filed a lawsuit on September 1 with the Van Nuys Superior Courts. In his suit, he claims that UMG has ignored all of his attempts to retrieve what he believes is his property.
According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the footage in question is of high value to Blake as Tupac is prophetically speaking on issues that still go on today, expressing his anger about “wrongful deaths that he had witnessed.”
The produced video was edited to about 4 ½ minutes, the suit alleges, but he actually filmed a total of three hours of exclusive unseen footage of the former Death Row artist in his mother, the late Afeni Shakur’s home.
He wants the footage to put up for auction, hoping to grab a hefty bag.
Here is the rub: while Blake claims that the former Interscope executive, Tom Whalley, verbally agreed to let Blake have the raw footage and recorded audio interview footage in 1993.
Under the written contract, he was hired to produce, direct, edit, and compose the music and all three hours of the video by Interscope. No matter how attached he was, the contract is clear.
Thus, no one from UMC’s business affairs and the legal department has even gotten back to him.
He is suing for the right to possess and sell the footage.
Tupac Shakur was shot on September 7th in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. He died on September 13th, 1996.
September 13th will be the 24th anniversary of his death. He would have been 49 had he survived — and surely he would have had something to say about the nation’s current space of civil unrest.
