Dear Mama on FX: Release date, air time, trailer, what to expect, and more 

Fx has signed a contract with Allen Hughes to bring us the legendary story of Tupac and Afeni Shakur in its upcoming five-part docu-series, titled Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni & Tupac Shakur. In what is perhaps long overdue, the network will attempt to serialize the legacy of Tupac, who is ranked high among the most legendary rappers the world has ever seen.

The docu-series will is expected to give viewers an emotional and reflective perspective on the complicated bond between the rapper and his mother Afeni.

Dear Mama will arrive on FX with its first two episodes on April 21, 2023, at 10 pm ET. It will be made available for streaming the following day via Hulu. New episodes for the docu-series will be released subsequently every week.

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FX reveals a never-seen-before side of Tupac and his relationship with his mother in Dear Mama

Created in the format of a documentary by piecing together archival interviews to trace the relationship between Tupac Shakur and his activist mother, the official synopsis of the upcoming release is as follows:

"From Allen Hughes, the award-winning director of critically acclaimed The Defiant Ones, comes FX’s Dear Mama, a deeply personal five-part series that defies the conventions of traditional documentary storytelling to share an illuminating saga of mother and son, Afeni and Tupac Shakur."

Here's the trailer for the new documentary from FX:

As Tupac notes in an archival interview in the trailer, his mother Afeni was a "Black Panther" and political activist who instilled in him the values of freedom, power, and revolution. Tupac was born to Afeni in 1971, when she was only 24. Because of her political career, she was often absent from her son's life.

17-year-old Tupac notes in an interview in the series that he and his mom had a complicated relationship. While he cherished many of the lessons she taught him, her absence also affected him in many ways.

In his song titled Dear Mama, from which the FX series takes its name, the legendary rapper voices his emotions towards his mother who eventually became addicted to crack cocaine, straining the relationship between them further.

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More about the docu-series

Piecing together archival interviews, the FX docu-series promises to give viewers a deeper insight into the political and personal lives of the mother-son duo of Tupac and Afeni Shakur to see how "their story chronicles the possibilities and contradictions of the U.S. from a time of revolutionary fervor to Hip Hop culture's most ostentatious decade."

Commenting on the making of the docu-series, director Allen Hughes said:

“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. 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.”

Tupac passed away in 1996 when he was only 25. Afeni died in 2016 at the age of 69.

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Catch Dear Mama on FX on Friday, April 21, 2023.