TODAY IN HIP HOP HISTORY: PARAMOUNT PICTURES RELEASED ‘JUICE’ IN THEATERS 31 YEARS AGO

On this date in 1992, Paramount Pictures presented the highly anticipated hood flick Juice, which stars a still rising rap star by the name of Tupac Shakur, who plays a crooked crimie from Uptown by the name of “Bishop”.

His co-star, Omar Epps(Higher Learning, In Too Deep), plays a local DJ with industry potential named “GQ”, alongside Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins(Lean On Me) and Khalil Kain, who all form a loosely knit crew of truants who are headed in the wrong direction.

This movie was very instrumental in bringing Hip Hop artists onto the silver screen, with cameo appearances from Treach of Naughty By Nature, Queen Latifah, EPMD’s DJ Scratch and Special Ed. Juice also helped to introduce the soundtrack as a way to market movies for larger budgets.

For those who never took notice, it wasn’t until after ‘Pac made everyone love to hate his character Bishop that Shakur’s run-ins with the law became more frequent and his “Thug Life” persona became more noticeable and for its own intent, purposeful. Many will say that it was life imitating art. Some will say that this was the real Tupac; he was just being filmed.