Two artists that the world lost far too soon are Tupac Shakur and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes. Tupac was taken in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996 and six years later, Left Eye lost her life in a car crash. Famed producer Delray Richardson has worked with several chart-topping artists including Dr. Dre, Eminem, The Game, and Tupac, and he sat down with The Art of Dialogue to share a few gems from yesteryear.
In a clip from his interview, Richardson revisited an evening decades ago when he visited Bar One, a nightclub in West Hollywood. Left Eye was at the table next to him and Tupac was also there enjoying a night out. Things seemed well for everyone and Richardson said he even saw Tupac chatting up a woman, but he claimed things went left in the blink of an eye.
"As I'm standing over there, here comes Left Eye," said Richardson. "Left Eye jumps in-between the girl and Tupac kinda like, nudging the girl out of the way. And the girl, she like, one of them petty taps, tap somebody not the shoulder like, you know, like 'scuse me, you're in my way... When she touched Left Eye on the shoulder, Left Eye went off." According to Richardson, the TLC icon made it clear that she didn't want the woman to "put her motherf*ckin' hands on" her.
The unnamed woman's friends saw the commotion and attempted to remove her from the fray. "Tupac, he jumps in-between them and kinda like, having Left Eye by her shoulders, escorting her back a little bit, kinda pushing her back from the situation." The other women left the club and Tupac tried calming Left Eye down, but instead, she took off toward the door.
Tupac followed, but he was upset. "'A n*gga can't even have a good time,' he said, 'I ain't come in here for this drama,'" recalled Richardson. They went outside and found Left Eye standing by herself, crying. "Tupac, he walk up to her, he hug her, and he asked her, 'Yo, are you alright?' And she was like, 'Yeah, other than that b*tch all up in your face.' I was like, whoa, 'cause I didn't know at that particular time that she felt that way about Tupac or what their relationship was."
Richardson said that he was friends with both artists and never had an inkling that there was anything going on between them until that moment. Listen to him relay his story in detail below.