If you've seen the Tupac Shakur biopic—titled All Eyez on Me—it's probably hard to imagine anyone but Demetrius Shipp Jr., who bares an incredibly striking resemblance to the late rapper, playing the leading role. G-Unit's Young Buck feels the same way, even if he claims he was actually in talks to play 'Pac himself. He said as much in a recent interview with DJ Smallz.

Praising the heavily criticized film, Buck commented on just how closely Shipp resembled the West Coast icon before saying he was, at one point, lined up to play the role himself.

"I think the guy who played Pac, we need to check his birth certificate," Buck told Smallz. "People don't know this, but I was supposed to play 'Pac. I was supposed to play Tupac Shakur. I didn't get as far as going and reading the scripts and things of that nature, but I actually was lined up as one of those guys that was considered to play Tupac. I was almost told I was already given the role without the audition, until 'Pac himself came around."

Playing 'Pac would likely be the role of a lifetime for any actor or rapper, but Buck isn't bitter about apparently getting passed on. He genuinely seems more interested in heaping praise Shipp's way than lamenting his missing out on the role.

"That guy to me, we have a lot of people who look just like people, but c'mon let's just be real," he says. "The guy who played 2Pac, you couldn't find a better person to play 2Pac. The man looked just exactly like 2Pac, and I felt like he'd done his homework enough to play that role, and he'd done a great job."

Critics of All Eyez on Me criticized it for everything from sequencing and unimaginative direction to its perceived flat-footed dialogue and historical inaccuracies.  For his part, Buck thinks people have been too harsh on the film, which grossed $27 million at the box office during its first weekend of release.

"I feel like anything that we get that's based off of the story of a legend, that was able to be given to us from the people that were actually there, that's still their version," Buck tells Smallz. "Your version may be different of what your experience was being amongst 'Pac, but this film was actually a film that was given to us by the guys who were amongst 'Pac, the version of what they felt."

Buck's homie 50 Cent didn't share his sentiments. In a lengthy Instagram post, Fif went as far as to say All Eyez on Me was trash.

Peep what Buck has to say about All Eyez on Me in the video below. At the 4:08 mark Buck says All Eyez on Me is almost as good as the N.W.A. biopic, Straight Outta Compton.

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