How important are men like Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace to our modern culture?
MACKIE: They are monumental. Tupac has had more posthumous albums than everybody except Elvis, so that has a lot to say about his artistic creativity, his expression. He changed the world. No matter where you go, hip-hop is the biggest art form in the world and it was created in the United States. We can hold jazz, rock and roll and hip-hop as our gifts to the world. It’s like Germans have the sports car, we have hip-hop. I was just in South Africa; they’re wearing Tupac T-shirts. You go to China; they’re wearing Tupac T-shirts. Everybody has tattoos all of a sudden. They didn’t get that from Regis Philbin! They got that from Tupac. CARREON: You have played key roles in bringing different aspects of the African-American experience to the screen. What were the challenges of “Notorious” for you? MACKIE: It was work. Part of my greatest fear was just the judgment that would come along with playing Pac because Pac lived in so many different realities. There are so many different ideas of w
