{"id":176686,"date":"2025-12-10T05:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T05:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/176686\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T05:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T05:26:07","slug":"34-years-later-the-mom-and-baby-that-inspired-tupacs-brendas-got-a-baby-were-finally-reunited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/176686\/","title":{"rendered":"34 Years Later, the Mom and Baby That Inspired Tupac\u2019s &#8216;Brenda\u2019s Got a Baby&#8217; Were Finally Reunited"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tupac\u2019s \u201cBrenda\u2019s Got a Baby\u201d is the kind of rap song that sticks with you for a lifetime. It\u2019s conceptually devastating and the kind of empathetic writing that the disenfranchised rarely receive. Sadly, that kind of writing stemmed from a real place. <\/p>\n<p>Recently, Author Jeff Pearlman appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JPk1B9dQwWY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">The Rich Eisen Show<\/a> to promote his Tupac biography, Only God Can Judge Me. Eisen inquired if there was anyone who didn\u2019t want to talk for the book. While he noted Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg as particularly elusive, he revealed that he found the man who discovered the baby crying in the garbage, like in the song.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, through a ton of digging, Pearlman connected the dots on which Tupac based his song, with the help of genealogist Michele Soulli. He connected with Las Vegas resident Davonn Hodge, who revealed that he had found old relatives through Ancestry.com. With that information, the author found the mom (the \u2018Brenda\u2019 in question). Come to find out, she was based in New Jersey but was in Hodge\u2019s area of Las Vegas for a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. From there, they finally reunited after 34 long years.<\/p>\n<p>Author Jeff Pearlman Found The Mom and Son Based on The Tupac Classic \u201cBrenda\u2019s Got a Baby\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Davonn Hodge got to tell <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/_UMGtIfqpv4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">his side of the story<\/a>, speaking alongside Pearlman and Matt Barnes. \u201cI found out a little bit before Jeff,\u201d Hodge says. \u201cAs soon as I did the ancestry test, I reached out to the closest family members on there. When you do an ancestry test, you never know what\u2019s going to pop up. I wasn\u2019t really doing it for the family side, it was more of the diaspora side.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hodge\u2019s adopted mom worked overtime to protect him from the publicity surrounding the Tupac classic. \u201cIt would have been hard for them to find me, to be honest with you. My last name changed. My mom did a good job sheltering me from that exposure,\u201d Hodge says. But through discovering his relatives and talking it over, he was eventually able to connect the dots. Currently, the mom doesn\u2019t care to be identified, a decision Hodge and Jeff Pearlman have upheld over the years.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Hodge doesn\u2019t stick up for Tupac the same way he does for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/diddy-allegedly-charged-biggies-estate-for-his-funeral-in-new-documentary\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Biggie<\/a>, despite \u201cBrenda\u2019s Got a Baby\u201d. Ultimately, he cites their shared hometown as the factor that solidifies the connection. \u201cYou know, I\u2019m from Brooklyn, so Biggie will always be number one to me,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tupac\u2019s \u201cBrenda\u2019s Got a Baby\u201d is the kind of rap song that sticks with you for a lifetime.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,3554,69,64652],"class_list":{"0":"post-176686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-noisey","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-tupac"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}