On a September night in Las Vegas in 1996, a black BMW pulled alongside a white BMW at a red light on Flamingo Road, and the world of music changed in a burst of gunfire. Tupac Amaru Shakur, twenty-five years old and at the violent apex of his fame, was shot four times. He died six days later, leaving behind a catalogue of recordings so vast and contradictory — tender and furious, political and hedonistic — that scholars and fans are still arguing about what it all means. Now, with opening statements beginning in the long-awaited murder trial of Duane "Keffe D" Davis, the wound has been reopened in the most formal and public way possible.

Mopreme Shakur, Tupac's stepbrother and a fellow rapper who shared stages, studios, and household tables with him, sat down with BBC journalist Shaimaa Khalil ahead of the trial's first day. Speaking with the quiet weight of someone who has carried grief for three decades, Mopreme recalled the night of the shooting in vivid and painful detail, describing what it felt like to watch a brother — both a sibling and a cultural phenomenon — slip away. He reflected, too, on what it meant to grow up beside someone who seemed destined, from an early age, to be larger than ordinary life. What emerged from the conversation was not simply a story about crime and justice, but about the strange burden of proximity to genius.

Mopreme spoke of a Tupac the public rarely saw: quieter, more searching, capable of deep loyalty.