FX Sets Premiere Date for 2Pac & Afeni Shakur Docuseries 'Dear Mama'

Upcoming FX docuseries Dear Mama will premiere on April 21, diving into the personal relationship of 2Pac and his mother, Afeni Shakur.

Long-awaited FX docuseries Dear Mama has officially set its release date. On Thursday (January 12), the network announced that the special event, centering influential emcee 2Pac and his mother, former Black Panther Afeni Shakur, premiere on April 21 at 10 PM ET/PT, becoming available to stream the following day via Hulu.

“Told through the eyes of the people who knew them best, Dear Mama is an intimate wide-angle portrait of the most inspiring and dangerous mother-son duo in American history, whose unified message of freedom, equality, persecution and justice are more relevant today than ever,” FX explains on the series' page.

The show is also titled after Tupac’s 1995 classic “Dear Mama" from his third album, Me Against the World. The rapper was killed at 25-years-old during a still-unsolved September 1996 shooting in Las Vegas, 20 years before Afeni Shakur died after going into cardiac arrest in May 2016 at 69.

Directed by Allen Hughes (Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, The Book of Eli), Dear Mama premiere will include the first two episodes of the 5-part series. Hughes formerly had a rift with 2Pac in the early '90s, as the rapper was originally cast in Menace II Society.

“Wherever possible, we tried to find archival footage that hadn’t been seen so there’s a lot that we have in the five parts,” said Hughes during FX’s TCA presentation on Thursday. “There’s also audio that’s never been heard. And not just some of his acapellas and vocals, there is a lot of stuff of Tupac from his baby years that had never been seen. For Tupac superfans, I believe that two of the most important things in the project is the never seen before. But most importantly, you get to understand why he made certain decisions.