ESPN’s 30 for 30 “One Night in Vegas” Features Unreleased Music from Tupac (Hear it)
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
Last night, I watched ESPN’s 30 for 30 doc “One Night in Vegas”, it’s really, really good. The documentary by Reggie Rock Bythewood, director of Notorious, chronicles the oddly similar trajectory of the careers of Tupac Shakur and Mike Tyson, who were close friends going back to the late 80′s, early 90′s. Fittingly, ESPN premiered it on the anniversary of Tupac’s fatal shooting in Las Vegas following Iron Mike’s first round knockout of Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand on Sep. 7, 1996.
The documentary features a couple of unreleased Tupac tracks. One I’m still looking for; the song he recorded a few days before the Seldon fight. In what was the most interesting part of the documentary, a Death Row Records engineer talks about the smash and dash production of that song (according to him, all Tupac needed was 20 minutes, a blunt and some Hennessey). This dude definitely told this story before – probably to every rapper, mixer, keyboard player and production intern he’s encountered in the industry since 1996.
The other unreleased song in “One Night in Vegas” is “Road 2 Glory,” another track that Tupac did for his friend Iron Mike before his WBC Heavyweight title fight against Frank Bruno – his first title fight after being released from prison in 1996. Check it out below – audio’s not great, overlay of boxing announcers doesn’t help much. Also included the video of Tyson walking out to it before the Bruno fight in March of ’96.
If anyone comes across the Seldon track, pass it my way.
