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A Tupac Shakur Biographer Goes Looking For Brenda's Baby
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.”
By Jeff Pearlman
October 14, 2025



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.”

On the morning of April 21, 1991, a nineteen-year-old rapper-actor named Tupac Amaru Shakur was in New York City, working on his debut film, Juice. The project was low-budget in every sense of the word—a mere $5 million to play with, a cast of inexpensive newcomers, a director (Ernest Dickerson) trying to break free from the shadow of his mentor, Spike Lee. Shakur, who captured one of the four starring roles with an out-of-the-blue audition that, decades later, Dickerson refers to as “at a different level,” had been kicking back in his trailer, likely smoking one of that day’s fifty (or so) Newports or twenty (or so) blunts, when a production assistant knocked on the door and handed him the latest edition of the New York Daily News. A voracious news junkie who grew up devouring The New York Times, Tupac sat down to read. The stories were mostly standard Big Apple fare—a Bronx National Guard unit being called up for active duty, an infant’s arm torn off by a dog, Brian Quinnett starting at forward for the Knicks.

Then Shakur’s eyes turned to the headline atop page 7, “Cries In The Night.”
The piece, penned by staff writer Linda Yglesias, told the story of a twelve-year-old Brooklyn girl who had been raped by a cousin, hid her pregnancy from her family, delivered a baby on the bathroom floor of an apartment in the Noble Drew Ali public housing project in Brownsville, wrapped the infant in a Job Lot bag, and threw it down the garbage chute.

A few hours later McArthur Williams, the building’s maintenance man, pushed a button to activate the trash compactor when he heard a high-pitched cry—“Like somebody fighting for life,” he said. The police were called, and a Sergeant Philip Insardi stepped to the compactor, flicked on his flashlight, and knelt down.

“I saw two toes pointing at 2 o’clock, the bottom of its feet facing me, under a double-page newspaper,” he told Yglesias. “The baby was dry and sticky. It felt dehydrated. The cord looked ripped. It was cold. There was a little dried blood on the left shoulder, in the armpit.

“Its hair was matted to its head. Little pieces of leaves were in its eyes. It didn’t look like it had been washed. It didn’t make a sound. I thought it was dead.”

When Insardi touched the baby’s stomach, he felt it squirm. He removed his jacket, wrapped the infant in a sleeve, and carried him to an ambulance.

Shakur couldn’t believe what he was reading. Actually, scratch that—as the son of a crack addict, who knew what it was to be homeless with rats burrowing through his mattress, Shakur could believe what he was reading. He sought out pen and paper and returned to his trailer.

“I need a half hour,” he said to a PA. “Alone.”

Upon emerging, Shakur handed a piece of notebook paper to Omar Epps, his seventeen-year-old costar. In blue ballpoint pen, with his trademark neat handwriting, the words soared from the page:

She didn’t know what to throw away and what to keep

She wrapped the baby up and threw him in the trash heap

I guess she thought she’d get away, wouldn’t hear the cries

She didn’t realize

How much the little baby had her eyes

He named the song “Brenda’s Got a Baby.”

Seven months later, Tupac Shakur’s debut album, 2Pacalypse Now, hit stores and received a fairly muted reception from the hip-hop universe. There are thirteen tracks, twelve of which failed to resonate on a national level.

Yet something about “Brenda’s Got a Baby” stuck. To this day, the opening line—“I hear Brenda’s got a baby. But Brenda’s barely got a brain”—is widely recognized. It is not merely a song, but Shakur screaming, Fucking pay attention!


With the exception of hip-hop diehards, however, few were ever made aware of the story behind the story. To most listeners, Brenda is a fictional character. And as the years passed, and Tupac Shakur rose from star to superstar to—in the aftermath of his 1996 murder—icon, curiosity about the song largely faded. With so much to discuss, why bother with a thirty-something-year-old tune?

And yet…

The mind of a biographer is overwhelmed by obsessiveness. In tackling a subject, one doesn’t merely observe. He dives in. He chases. He craves. He crawls. He seeks. It is never enough to know that Martin Luther King smoked cigarettes. No. The biographer needs to know he smoked Kents and L&Ms, as Jonathan Eig wrote in King: A Life. When Mark Kriegel wrote Namath: A Biography, it wasn’t sufficient to report that Broadway Joe enjoyed nights on the town. No—the clubs he hit were The Pussycat and Bachelors III.

So as I worked on this book, I found myself returning to “Brenda’s Got a Baby.” Via a lightly viewed Epps YouTube interview from nine years ago, I learned the skeletal basics of the song’s origins, and then I tracked down Yglesias’s article. What continued to gnaw at me, though, was the fate of the baby—and of Brenda. Over the three decades that have passed, the identity of neither child nor mother had ever been revealed.

Were they alive?

Were they dead?

Hell, had they ever actually existed?

Thanks to the good fortune of having attended Mahopac (New York) High School in the late 1980s, I knew Michele Soulli, a former classmate and one of America’s outstanding researchers. I reached out to her, and we discussed the complications of trying to locate a nameless baby and a nameless mother.

“Lemme see what I can do,” Michele told me.

A few weeks later, Michele texted me the phone number of someone named Davonn Hodge.

“Who the hell is Davonn Hodge?” I asked Michele.

“I can’t guarantee,” she replied. “But I think it’s Brenda’s baby.”

I didn’t believe it. Yet, according to Michele, the birthdays seemed to match, as did the geography. So on March 21, 2023, I fired off what must go down as some of the crudest out-of-the-blue texts in the history of modern telecommunication. First, I asked whether this was, in fact, the Davonn Hodge who had been born in New York City in 1991.

It was.

Then I asked (glub) whether he’d been thrown down a trash chute.

“I will call you tomorrow,” he replied.

He called the next day.

That is how, less than two weeks later, I found myself at the Las Vegas Starbucks, sitting across from the ghost of “Brenda’s Got a Baby.”

“This is crazy,” Hodge muttered.

A pause.

“This is crazy.”

A Tupac Shakur Biographer Goes Looking For Brenda's Baby
Davonn had been raised in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn until age thirteen, when his adoptive parents, Robert and Marsha Hodge, relocated to Las Vegas to retire in the desert. Davonn’s mother told him he had been adopted out of a traumatic circumstance, but they never provided details. Then, within a short span of time, his mother and father died—Robert of cardiovascular pulmonary disease, Marsha of a heart attack.

That’s why, on March 26, 2022, Davonn Hodge paid a hundred dollars to spit into an Ancestry.com tube and take a DNA test. “I was all alone,” he said. “I wanted to find out who I really was.”

When the results arrived via email, Hodge was confounded. There, before him, was a listing of names—all first cousins, all pinpointed in Brooklyn. He reached out to one, a woman named Lotitha Govan. “As soon as I told her my age, and being adopted, she knew exactly who I was,” Davonn said. Within a few days, he was on video call with a handful of relatives. They laughed and sighed and bemoaned the weirdness of life. They told him about his old home.

Then one asked the question that changed everything.

“So, Davonn,” he said, “how do you feel about Tupac?”

Davonn Hodge loved Tupac. He could run off all the songs, from “Hit ’Em Up” and “I Get Around” to “Dear Mama” and “Keep Ya Head Up.” Had seen plenty of the movies. Knew of his relationship with Madonna, of his work with Snoop and Dr. Dre. Of Thug Life and Death Row and…

“Tupac,” he said, “speaks to a lot of people.”

So when his newfound cousin mentioned “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” Davonn nodded.

“Well,” the cousin said, “supposedly that song is you.”

Silence.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“That song—‘Brenda’s Got a Baby,’” the cousin said. “We’re pretty sure you’re the baby.”

With that, Davonn was filled in on the details of his infant odyssey.

Seven months later, he took a trip to Brooklyn and the Noble Drew Ali public housing project in Brownsville, where many of his relatives still lived. He was greeted, Antwone Fisher-like, by scores of aunts and uncles, cousins and nieces and nephews. They hugged him, kissed him, and fed him. “Just the excitement on their faces,” he said. “These are people who never thought I’d be back. They couldn’t believe it. They looked at me as a miracle.”

At one point, a cousin’s friend guided him into a hallway and pointed to a trash chute.

“That’s where she put you,” he said.

Davonn opened it and looked down.

“It was tiny and dark,” he said. “To think I was thrown away like that . . .”

The mom went missing. That’s what Davonn’s newfound relatives told him. She was a twelve-year-old mother who had nearly killed her baby, and she needed to escape. So, one way or another, she vanished, never to be heard from again.

“No one has seen her in years and years,” Davonn told me at Starbucks. “I’d obviously love to find her, because she is my mother. But I dunno if that’s possible.”

Reenter Michele Soulli. Cobbling together bits of information from Davonn combined with bits of information from some old newspaper articles combined with a genealogist’s intuition, Michele found what she thought might well be a phone number for the woman who birthed Davonn. This was a few weeks after the Starbucks meeting, and Michele was fairly certain she had the right person. But how do you approach someone who was raped as a child, then deposited her child into the garbage?

“I thought about it and I finally said, ‘Screw it,’ and called,” Michele said. “I actually called twice, and then I just texted.”

Without much of a plan, Michele wrote, Hey, Jeanette. How are you? It’s Michele. How’s it going? It’s been so long.

Seconds later, her phone rang.

JEANETTE: “Who is this?”

MICHELE: “It’s Michele.”

JEANETTE: “Michele who?”

MICHELE: “I’m a researcher, and I was hired to find you.”

JEANETTE: “Why?”

MICHELE: “You have a son named Davonn?”

This is where the screaming began. Then, the tears. Lots of tears. Some sobs, too.

JEANETTE: “You know where my son is?”

More screaming.

MICHELE: “Yes.”

JEANETTE: “Oh my God! Oh my God! I have to get home to Newark. Oh my God! I need to get home! Oh my God!”

MICHELE: “Hold on. Please.”

JEANETTE: “Oh my God!”

MICHELE: “Where are you?”

JEANETTE: “I live in New Jersey, but I’m away from home for a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert.”

MICHELE: “Oh. Where are they playing?”

JEANETTE: “In Las Vegas.”

They met that night in the lobby of Caesars Palace. For Davonn, the kisses felt like home. So did the hugs and the hours of conversation that went deep into the night. On her right forearm, Jeanette had a tattoo, in blue script, that read DAVONN, with a crown atop the D. It looked old and a bit faded, as if it had been inked long ago.

“After they found you in the garbage, they found me,” she explained.

“They took me to the hospital and let me hold you. I was able to name you, so I chose Davonn.” Jeanette told her son she had spent decades searching for him, but with no luck. She had all but given up. So, way back when, she had his name affixed in ink.

That the reunion took place a mere eight-tenths of a mile from where, on September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur was gunned down, on the corner of Flamingo and Koval, was lost on mother and son. They were basking in the moment.

A couple of days later, I called Yaasmyn Fula, Tupac’s former business manager, longtime family friend, and the mother of Yaki Kadafi from the Outlawz (Tupac’s hip-hop group), to share the news. She listened quietly, and when I was done she told me the chills running up and down her arm were a sign from Tupac.

“He would have loved that one song brought those people together,” she told me. “He would have really loved that.”

https://www.gq.com/story/a-tupac-shakur-biographer-goes-looking-for-brendas-baby

Be conscious of the name you bear

CommentatorPro:
Nigeria is a country blessed with talent, resources, and resilience — yet it continues to struggle under the weight of bad leadership, corruption, and poor governance. From unreliable electricity to the rising cost of living, it sometimes feels like every sector is crying out for help.

Now imagine this: you suddenly become the President of Nigeria — but only for one week. You have full control to make key decisions, sign executive orders, and implement reforms. No bureaucracy, no political godfathers — just seven days to make a difference.

What would you fix first?

Would you focus on the economy, to bring down the price of food and fuel?
Would you tackle security, ensuring that citizens can travel freely without fear of bandits or kidnappers?
Or maybe you’d go straight to education, reviving schools, paying teachers well, and making universities work again?

Some Nigerians say they would start by cutting government salaries and reducing the cost of governance. Others believe the first step should be arresting corrupt politicians and recovering looted funds. A few even argue that constitutional reform is the only real solution to Nigeria’s endless cycle of problems.

Whatever your opinion, one thing is clear — most Nigerians know exactly what they want fixed; they just haven’t had the power to do it.

So, let’s hear from you
If you had just one week as Nigeria’s President, with total authority to act, what’s the first thing you’d change and why?

Just one week the solution is eazy, cut the cancer so that when i leave it'll not keep spreading, if you park into a dirty house you'll clean it to be habitable. Then I'll look for a man like Nehemiah in the bible to continue with cleansing and reform's.i know you thought theirs no good men and women in Nigeria but they are out there both in Islam and Christianity and in all tribes they are not been giving opportunity and they'll not be given. The problem of Nigeria is right leadership, Nigeria citizens are most obedient and flexible

419 419 419 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
If you can decode..

Though I'm not DL, but why is the church desperate is he older than the Pope that was called to glory recently? More so is it wrong to die a GO

mrvitalis:
Bros anything can work well if u pump money into it... Can it be profitable? Nope

If eleme is profitable what will hinder the refineries,dangote is not profitable yet he's running it,we have been deceived for long and yet in the same soil dangote may be richer than the entire nation running same business that that we said is not viable

mrvitalis:
OBJ want to dash the refineries no one wanted to buy it

You should have facts OBJ sold but but Yar'adua revoked it back and eleme that was sold same time is working perfectly.when government do the right thing the refineries will work too

mrvitalis:
And how much gas would it take
Man power it would take?

Bro if warri refinery would have been viable banks would have bought it years ago

Let the workers agree to buy it na

You consum gas base on power demand if it's 2MW your machine take gas base on that load

mrvitalis:
And how much gas would it take
Man power it would take?

Bro if warri refinery would have been viable banks would have bought it years ago

Let the workers agree to buy it na

Is there any time government put it on sale without buyer?

mrvitalis:
Warri refinery can never work

If I'm president I would scrap it 100% if the staffs won't agree I sell it to them the staffs let them take it for free and run it them pay themselves if they so much believe in it...

Warri refinery, port Harcourt and Kaduna refinery are not viable... Just like ajokuta can never be viable

My brother i assure you WRPC is very viable and visible but the powers that be will not allow it work I'm telling you truth not hear say, the power generation is 60MW almost new machine because of recent overhaul and max consumption is around 20MW.So power generation alone is underutilized and WRPC has maximum 80MW generation capacity,do you know how much you make just 1MW Hrs? that's just power generation alone

Carazon:
What are they producing there?

After the quick fix, management intended starting operation May first but the plant can not come up without the support staff the only experience work forced that's available now

Artscollection:
Cyber warfare unleashed, I said it last that all those crashes can't just normal. Possibly some oops are jamming n interfering.

👍 Sometimes it's good to think out of the box

History555:
Buhari borrowed 77 trillion
Printed 30 trillion
Yet did not add a single mw of electricity
Under buhari nnpc did not remit a dime in 5 years. Above all nigga did not even know the meaning of inflation

THE MIDDLE BELT FORUM (MBF), KADUNA STATE CHAPTER.Press Statement For Immediate Release (9th January, 2025)Punch Newspaper is one of the top most national dailies which has created enormous integrity for itself over the decades. It has attained this rare fit through its courageous, uncompromising and very professional reportage for which the Middle Belt and especially Southern Kaduna (SK) have greatly benefited from over the years.
The Middle Belt Forum, Kaduna State Branch, is therefore taken aback by Punch’s rather acerbic criticism of news of the approval of the establishment of a Federal University of Applied Sciences in Kachia, Kachia LGA, in Southern Kaduna, which falls under the Middle Belt
.In its Editorial of 7th January, 2025, the Editorial Board of Punch threw a heavy punch at the Government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for assenting to create the first university ever in Southern Kaduna, dismissing it as “political” and a “greek gift
Well, we have no issues whatsoever with the observations and facts churned out by the Editorial Board of Punch regarding thepoor fundings Federal Universities and other associated matters raised in the Editorial, we feel that had the Editors of Punch been armed with the shocking marginalization that SK has suffered in allocation of federal institutions in Kaduna state, they would.have written its Editorial from a rather sympathetic perspective. They would not have set out in that Editorial to discourage the Federal Government from concluding a development that has stirred so much joy and emotions among the people of SK and indeed all residents members of the Middle Belt in Kaduna State.
We say this for the following reasons:
A. Reps Speaker, Hon Tajudeen Abbas, who represents Zaria Federal Constituency of Kaduna state, secured the approval and funds for the establishment and immediate construction of FOUR! (4) new tertiary institutions in Zaria town, including a UNIVERSITY!


B. At the flag off of the construction of one of the schools in Zaria, on the 15th December, 2024, Abbas announced to the media that the sum of N80 billion had been approved for the construction of the schools.The brand new Federal tertiary institutions for Zaria town alone area. Federal College of Nursing and Midwiferyb. Federal College of Educationc. Federal Open Universityd. Federal College of Legal Studies.
C. The Editors of the Punch ought to be aware that Zaria town is unarguably the only town in the entire Nigeria that has the highest numbers of federal institutions as listed below:
1) Ahmadu Bello University (ABU)2) Federal College of Education (FCoE)3) Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology4) Nigerian Leather Research Institute5) Nigeria College of Aviation Technology6) Division of Agricultural Colleges (DAC)7)Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR). National Research Institute for Chemical Technology9)National Animal Production Research Institute10) National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services.11) Nigerian Army School of Military Police1
2) Nigeria Army School of Legal Services, Basawa Zaria.That invariably means that there are now 16 Federal tertiary schools in just one town – Zaria which straddles two LGAs North of Kaduna state.
D. For the information of the Editorial Board of Punch, the term “Southern Kaduna (SK)” is a Geo-socio/cultural zone made up of no less than 60 ethnic nationalities. It is not a Geo-political zone like “Kaduna South Senatorial Zone” that is subsumed under SK.SK is made up of 12 LGAs out of the 23 LGAs of Kaduna state. Kaduna South Senatorial Zone is made up of 8 LGAs.
E. Kaduna state has an approximate land mass of 46,000 sq.km. Out of this, Southern Kaduna has an estimated 26,000 sq.km. In fact, SK is bigger than Kano State (20,000 sq.km) which has 44 LGAs. Yet SK has no single University.
F. Going by the National Population Commission (NPC) 2006 Census figures, Kaduna state had a population of 6,113,503 of which 51.2% came from the 12 LGAs of Southern Kaduna. Today, SK is estimated to have a population of about 5.2 million people of the 10.2 million population of Kaduna state in 2024.
G. It may also interest Punch to note that most of the indigenous skilled and educated workforce of Kaduna state comes from SK.
H. Will it then not be shocking to the Editors of the Punch that the only Federal Institution of Higher Learning in Southern Kaduna is a decrepit Federal School of Statistics, Manchok, Kaura LGA in Southern Kaduna. The highest certificate issued there is a Higher National Diploma (HND).
Our Query to the Punch Editorial
1) Why didn’t the Editors of Punch write its Editorial condemning the creation of new Federal universities when Zaria town, which is already saturated with 11 Federal Tertiary Schools, got additional Four new ones at a go?
2) As aptly pointed out by the Editors of Punch: “During his tenure (2010-2015), Jonathan established 12 universities. His successor (Buhari) established about 10 tertiary schools. Each arm of the military and the police now have a university.” Shouldn’t it have bothered the Editors of the Punch that Southern Kaduna, with its landmass and population didn’t get any of these universities at that time? Should we not therefore be happy with President Ahmed Bola Tinubu over this gesture?
3) Again, unlike Speaker Abbas who has secured N80 billion funding for Zaria’s new schools, the Federal University of Applied Sciences, Kachia already has a well-developed physical structure. It was a privately built institution called Nok University, complete faculties, departments, Admin blocks and every basic needed infrastructure in a university. It had in place a school administration and a Board. Nok University, owned by a son of the Middle Belt, was on the verge of taking off after admitting its first batch of students in 2022, when the EFCC closed it down. The EFCC later declared its forfeiture to the Federal Government, claiming it was built from proceeds of corruption. Whatever the reason, we are grateful that there was a structure on ground. Therefore, the only University in Southern Kaduna, unlike the other new ones, is not costing the Federal Government any much to build. Why then should the Editorial Board of the Punch pick on it?
Our Fears
We are at pains to say that we suspect that the motive behind the Punch Editorial is to discourage the Federal Government from seeing the takeoff of the Federal University of Applied Sciences, Kachia. The Middle Belt and indeed, SK has powerful foes that can go to any extent to ensure that we that we are tied to one place.
If not so, is the Editorial Board of the Punch not aware that a university is not merely a place of learning? That a university is an economy and a development hub of its own with accompanied value chains that could dramatically spark unprecedented prosperity to its area of location and environs?
This suspicion can only be lifted by another Editorial given the hindsight that we have provided. And if that is done, we shall be very appreciative.
Signed:
Luka BinniyatChairman, Middle Belt Forum, Kaduna State Chapter. 9th December, 2025.
https://thenewsicon.com/2025/01/09/middle-belt-forum-condemns-punch-newspapers-criticism-of-new-federal-varsity-in-southern-kaduna/

EyeCumInPeace:
Oya let the Voting begin...

LIKE for a Goat 🐐
SHARE for Tinubu ♾️

🤣🤣🤣

overall90:
I just tire
The same guy that his father refused to see few days ago.

Even his father can not take his birth right from him, he's a prince by blood remember Meghan children are from prince hood.

Homosexual and lesbianism is most grievous sin and satanic because it's against the mind of God and his purpose concerning the earth (go ye and multiply and fill the earth) also it breed deadly diseases

I wish your lady know about it,she should run far from your family. Sorry if I'm too harsh my brother, who cares if Ned and Obasanjo is👹

sulakishop:
Religious dogmatism declining African sense every day....


Even if you barber gorimapa, your fate is sealed according to your belief...


Yeye people

🤣🤣🤣

Kobojunkie:
You said it yourself. You have them, and put your money into developing them so they could in turn cater to you when the time comes. No be slaves be that?

Check the meaning of slave 😂

ZIMDRILL:
did you understand what i said? who talked about overlooking the importance of man ?

Then you did not understand the the topic of this discuss

Kobojunkie:
Aren't these your own words....

How did one children become his slave

ZIMDRILL:
have you have heard the phrase money talks

it simply means money makes things happen, eg if parents have pension funds through different means it mean they can hire people to do things for them while their own child are also working to raise money that will help them in old age

Men make money not the opposite so you cannot over look the importance Man as a blessing instead sacrifice.

Kobojunkie:
So, indeed, children are personal slaves?

by your perception

Kobojunkie:
So, children are sort of your personal slaves?

No they are your's because you'll use your money to buy their service

ZIMDRILL:
yes thats true, but you know what i mean, in most african set up its not about emotional family support but money, so pliz stop trying to hide behind your finger

Any how you put it at that point it's not robots that will do the work for you but human so having children is not sacrifice but a necessity

ZIMDRILL:
a child is not an investment, money in bank, pension fund etc can make a better decision for me in future that relaying on child

Investment is not limited to money

Kobojunkie:
It is so beautiful that it can still abandon one when one is old and weak, right?

Depends on upbringing

Kobojunkie:
Tell that to the many old and grey who were abandoned by their family to live out their end in misery.

Abandoning their parents does not change the beauty of family