In January of 1995, Kevin Powell, an original Real World cast member turned hip-hop scribe, went to Rikers Island for a Vibe cover story. There, Tupac Shakur had been locked up for a few months on a sexual abuse conviction and was feeling like he was at a breaking point. Nervously chain-smoking Newports and dismayed by loneliness, broken brotherhoods, and a narrative that he could no longer control, Pac gave one of the rawest interviews in rap history. Thirty years later, it’s still fascinating to read, as Pac is thrown into the fire, laying all of his unbridled emotions and contradictory morals out there. In detail, he discusses the night he was shot at Quad Recording Studios in Times Square and he also tells of his interactions with the woman who accused him of sexual assault. It’s not a surprise that, in the midst of this, he dropped his incredibly fatalistic and paranoid third album, Me Against the World.

At times in Powell’s interview, Pac talks about himself like a God, like when he recalls meeting Pro Football Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott and former top NBA draft pick Derrick Coleman at the club and how their praise made him come to a realization: “They were people’s heroes and they saying I was their hero. I felt above and beyond, like I was glowing.” It’s hard to know what exactly is the truth, but he’s such an entertaining storyteller that you want to believe everything that comes out of his mouth. I think of the moment when he describes walking bloody and full of bullet wounds into the studio where Biggie, Diddy, and record exec Andre Harrell were the night of the shooting, like it was one of the surreal nightmares in The Manchurian Candidate. Deeply reverent of gangsters and the street code, Pac comes at it all from that perspective, admitting to the root of his strife being the betrayal of dudes he considered brothers and a shifting public perception. “The No. 1 thing that bothered me was that dude that wrote that shit that said I pretended to do it,” he confessed. “That I had set it up, it was an act. When I read that, I just started crying like a baby, like a bitch.” Wrapped inside of his fuck-the-world attitude was a man who didn’t just want to be loved but felt he had earned the right to be loved unquestionably.

You could say the same thing about Young Thug, who has spent the last few weeks spiraling via X, “leaked” songs, and an unhinged three-hour podcast interview with Atlanta OG Big Bank for The Big Facts Network. Yes, one of the greatest rappers of the 2010s, the once-enigma who, at his peak, took a strain of melodic Atlanta trap music to the brink, is in near tears on a show that’s like Dr. Phil for Atlanta street dudes.

What seems to have set Thug off is that he feels that he was made an example of while he was in jail fighting the RICO charges brought against him and his YSL crew by the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney, Fani T. Willis. The YSL case turned into one of the most high profile hip-hop trials of all time, a pure shitshow that felt misguided from the jump, with prosecutors who seemed to be on a mission to make names for themselves by dividing the premier rap city of the 21st century and taking down one of its faces. Adding to Thug’s dismay is that he seems to feel that he was stabbed in the back by his close friends, namely Gunna, his longtime little homie who became the co-face of YSL. Gunna took a plea deal, in 2022, and it was interpreted by the most salacious parts of the rap internet as “snitching”—all while having his authenticity cross-examined by randos in the Instagram comments section of stuff like Say Cheese TV pointing out Thug’s hypocrisies considering he also pleaded guilty.