Hulu and FX’s new docu-series Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni & Tupac Shakur has already released three of its first season’s five episodes. Debuting on April 21, the show has been putting out new parts every Friday at 11:59 p.m. PT.
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Dear Mama revolves around the late, great rapper Tupac Shakur and his relationship with his mother Afeni Shakur. Throughout the series, Afeni and many more people close to Tupac give testimonies about Pac’s life before he passed away in 1996.
When episode 1 came out, titled Panther Power, it set the record for being the most-watched premiere episode for an unscripted FX series. FX has been in business for 28 years and has put out unscripted shows like Hip Hop Uncovered, The New York Times Presents, and The Choe Show. So, a record like this is nothing to scoff at.
After more episodes came out and critics were able to get a pre-release of the rest of the season, Rotten Tomatoes gave Dear Mama a 100% score on their Tomatometer. The Tomatometer calculates the scores given by each of the professional critics cited by RT. In one review on RT, Time Magazine’s Judy Berman explained why Dear Mama is worth the watch.
“One of the most thorough, sensitive portraits I’ve seen of an artist who has by now been eulogized for longer than he was alive—and of the remarkable woman who created him,” she wrote.
Additionally, in an interview with SiriusXM before the series was released, Tupac’s former manager Leila Steinburg praised the director Alan Hughes for his efforts on Dear Mama.
“Last year, Alan Hughes reached out to me and said he was doing the five-part series on FX that’s coming out,” she said, “Part of [Hughes] wanting to really do this piece was about healing, was about honesty, was about all of us looking at what happened. And, so I’m just saying this to say, he’s done an incredible piece.”
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