Albert Hughes: Tupac Shaved His Head Bald Over ”Jealous Rage”

Albert Hughes of the Hughes brothers appeared on Indie Film Hustle as he spoke about the first time he met Tupac and also the first time Shakur shaved his head bald.

The Hughes brothers met Shakur while he was carrying crates for Digital Underground, way before Juice or even his debut album 2Pacalypse Now was released. For the Hughes brothers, their start into Hip Hop began with Digital Underground and Raw Fusion. In fact after meeting Tupac, they invited Shakur to appear for a cameo spot on Raw Fusion’s music video “Throw Your Hands In The Air“, which was the very first music video in which the Hughes brothers directed.

Since that moment on Shakur linked up with the Hughes Brothers asking them to direct his upcoming single with Interscope Records. “We’re on a break from the video and he says, ‘Hey Hughes brothers come over here’. He’s hanging in front of this car and he says, ‘Listen to this track’, and he starts playing this track. He goes, ‘That’s on my album, it’s coming out on Interscope in a few months. I would like ya’ll to do the music video’,” Albert recalls. The Hughes brothers would go on to shoot Tupac’s next three music videos.

Albert also recalled the very first time Tupac shaved his head. Prior to shaving his head bald, Tupac rocked a haircut which he said represented “360 degrees of knowledge”. It’s the same one as seen on Juice in case you’re wondering. According to Albert, he and his brother Allen invited Tupac to an earlier screening of the movie Juice. This would be the first time Tupac saw his own movie. After the movie and at the hotel is when Tupac shaved his head bald.

“We go back to the hotel and he goes into this jealous rage. Some other famous girl he was messing with and he found out that some other famous guy was messing with her. And, he called us to his room and we go to his room and it was the first time that we’ve seen he shaved his hair in a drunken rage,” Albert explains. “That was also the very first time we saw his dark side, the jealous, the rage, the pettiness kind of stuff.”

Albert also says this is when Tupac started to transform into his Bishop character from the movie Juice. This contradicts what has been said previously by those who were closer to Tupac and knew him better than the Hughes brothers.

Appearing on Hip Hop XXIV, Money B had his own take on the Tupac-Bishop dynamic. “I’ll say this, when I first read the script I kinda thought the Bishop character kind of reminded me of ‘Pac. So a lot of people believe that ‘Pac got the role and started acting like Bishop, but in reality he already had a lot of those qualities.” Watch the clip here.

The Hughes brothers along with FX, are set to release a five part docuseries titled ’Dear Mama’ focusing on the life of Tupac and Afeni.