Tracing Brenda’s Baby: Jeff Pearlman’s Deep Dive Into the Legend and Loss of Tupac Shakur

Original Article by Jeff Pearman for GQ Magazine

Jeff Pearlman's forthcoming book Only God Can Judge Me, the product of “obsessive” reporting and over 650 interviews, sheds new light on the life and death of rapper Tupac Shakur, who remains one of the most iconic hip-hop artists of all time, even thirty years after his still-unsolved murder. In this exclusive excerpt, Pearlman recounts his search for a key figure in Shakur's arc—a child thrown down the garbage chute of a Brownsville, New York housing project in 1991, whose story would inspire Pac's breakthrough solo single “Brenda's Got a Baby.”

We are sitting outside a Starbucks in Las Vegas. The sky is light blue, pocked by cloudy streaks of white. It is a Saturday morning in early April of 2023, and here, two miles off the Strip, the world feels tranquil and still.

Davonn Hodge is drinking a water.

I am sipping on a coffee.

He is a handsome thirty-three-year-old Black man with a faded goatee and brown eyes that peek out from beneath a Yankees cap. His voice is soft. Though this is our first time meeting, it feels familiar. We chat about LeBron, about Mahomes, about the weather and Wendy’s and marijuana. The reason we are here looms, of course, hanging above us like an oversized umbrella. But we talk enough to push back the awkwardness until silence overtakes us and it can be pushed back no longer.

“So,” I say. “Brenda.”

Davonn nods.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Brenda.”

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