Powell, K. (1996, October 31). "Bury me like a G." Rolling Stone, pp. 38-46, 80. Gilmore, M. (1996, October 31). "Easy target." Rolling Stone, pp. 49-51, 81.

OVERVIEW

The death of Tupac Shakur, victim of a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, shocked the music world. These two articles discuss Shakur and the implications of his life and death.

The first article is by a writer who had befriended Shakur through interviewing him; it accounts the events leading to his death, and provides a short biography of the rapper and actor.

On September 7, 1996, Shakur attended the Mike Tyson/Bruce Seldon fight in Las Vegas with "Suge" Knight, the CEO of Death Row Records, the label Shakur recorded for. After the fight, Shakur and Knight went to an anti-gang youth event. The event was held at the Knight-owned Club 662 (662 spells out "MOB"—reputed to stand for "Members of Bloods" on a telephone keypad); it was organized by a Las Vegas Police officer. At about 11:15 p.m. (after the event) Shakur and Knight were driving in downtown Las Vegas when a Cadillac with four people inside pulled alongside Knight’s BMW. Someone in the Cadillac fired thirteen shots into the BMW, and Shakur was hit four times. He had two surgeries, but died on September 13.

The crime remains unsolved, but there are several theories. One is that a man who Shakur had argued with after the boxing match shot him. Another is that the crime was gang related in some way, as Knight is associated with the Los Angeles-based gang, the Bloods. The third theory, which seems least likely, is that the death was related to the ongoing feud between East Coast and West Coast rappers. Although Shakur grew up on the East Coast, Death Row is a West Coast label.

After Shakur’s death, a throng of mourners gathered outside of the trauma center where Shakur had been hospitalized. According to the article, "…One young woman with thick braids and a flowered dress said, ‘I hope you tell the truth about Tupac. He was a hero to me, and he kept it real for the hood.’ "

Shakur was born to two members of the Black Panther party in 1971. His mother spent part of her pregnancy in jail on charges of conspiracy to bomb public areas in New York. The author explains, "…By the time his son was born, Garland [Shakur’s father], who had two other children from previous relationships, was, as he puts it, ‘doing [his] own thing, and Afeni [Shakur’s mother] was doing hers.’ Garland would see Tupac off and on until he was 5 years old. After that, Garland didn’t have any contact with his son until 1992, when Garland saw Tupac in a poster for the film ‘Juice’."

Shakur, his mother, and his half-sister lived in New York, in homeless shelters, and with relatives or friends. In his adulthood, Shakur spoke of how the Black Panther Party’s political idealism did not mesh with the realities of his family’s life: "Here we was kickin’ all this s--- about the revolution—and we starvin’. That didn’t make no sense to me."

Afeni Shakur tried to encourage her son to be creative. At age twelve, she enrolled him in a Harlem theater group, where he appeared in "A Raisin in the Sun". He considered this pivotal, as he found something which he loved to do: "I remember thinking, ‘This is something that none of them kids can do.’ I didn’t like my life, but through acting, I could become somebody else."

In the mid-1980s, Shakur’s family moved to Baltimore to try to get away from their troubles in New York, particularly Afeni’s crack addiction. After the move, a long-time boyfriend of Afeni’s died of a crack-induced heart attack. Tupac was hit hard by this, as he had come to see the man as a father figure.

In Baltimore, Shakur was accepted to the prestigious Baltimore School for the Arts. Of this time in his life, Shakur said, "It was a whole other experience for me to be able to express myself—not just around black people but also around white people and other kinds of people. It was the freest I ever felt in my life."

However, two years later, when Shakur was 17 years old, the family had to move. Shakur dropped out of high school and started selling drugs. His relationship with his mother completely deteriorated.

In 1989, Shakur met the leader of the rap group Digital Underground, he and began to work for the group. He began as a roadie and dancer. In 1991, he struck out on his own as a solo artist. His third album, 1995’s Me Against the World, became a multi-million seller, and his 1996 double album, All Eyez on Me, debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 200.

The second article predicts Shakur’s legacy, and it looks at his importance to the audience which favored him:

he embodied just as much for his audience as Kurt Cobain did for his. That is, Tupac Shakur spoke to, and for, many who had grown up within hard realities-realities that mainstream culture and media are loath to understand or respect. His death has left his fans feeling a doubly sharp pain: the loss of a much-esteemed signifier and the loss of a future volume of work that, no doubt, would have proved both brilliant and provocative.

Perhaps most gripping about Shakur’s music was his ability to communicate uncommon tenderness and compassion in some songs, and fierce black-against-black anger and brutality in others:

Does that make him sound like a confused man? Yes—to say the least. But Shakur was also a man willing to own up to and examine his many contradictory inclinations, and I suspect that quality, more than any other, is what made him such a vital and empathetic voice for so many of his fans.

His final two albums in particular, Me Against the World and All Eyez on Me, clearly show his contradictions. Me Against the World was "the eloquent moment when Shakur paused to examine all the trouble and violence in his life and measured not only his own complicity in that trouble but how such actions spilled into, and poisoned, the world around him."

However, on All Eyez on Me, Shakur seems to give in to all of the darkness which he has faced. While the album is brilliantly inventive and melodious, it is also furious, filled with brooding tracks. One song which was recorded for the album, but was instead released as a b-side for one of the singles, was particularly hard-hitting. "Hit ‘Em Up" was reportedly an attack on Bad Boy Records, an East Coast label, and one of its artists, the Notorious B.I.G.:

It contains a truly remarkable amount of rage and aggression—enough to make anything in punk seem flaccid by comparison. Indeed, ‘Hit ‘Em Up’ crosses the line from art and metaphor to real-life jeopardy. On one level, you might think Shakur was telling his enemies: We will kill you competitively, commercially. But listen to the stunning last 30 seconds of the track. It’s as if Shakur were saying: ‘Here I am—your enemy and your target. Come and get me, or watch me get you first.’

It seems possible that this event may signal the death of gangsta rap. Indeed, the genre accounted for only 6.7% of all album sales in 1995, down from 10% in 1991. It is also very possible that a new uprising for censorship of music will flow from this murder. However, the author urges us to be aware that gangsta rap has not been created in a vacuum: "[Topics of gangsta songs, such as anti-police attitudes, gang warfare and drive-by shootings] existed long before rap won popular appeal, and if hardcore rap were to disappear tomorrow, these conditions would still exist."

The author concludes that we must be aware that hardcore rap is not creating a culture, but reporting on a culture. There is indeed a necessary reaction to hardcore rap, but it is not censorship. Instead, we need to be aware of what is happening in America to bring about such music, and then advocate for those who are suffering.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What have you learned about Tupac Shakur from these articles?
2. Do any of your students listen to Tupac or to other Death Row artists? Do they belong to a demographic group to which hardcore rap usually appeals?
3. How does Tupac’s upbringing seem to relate to his music and lifestyle?
4. How do you think that Shakur’s murder affects your students’ music choices?

IMPLICATIONS

• The decline of hardcore rap indicates that its fans will shift their musical tastes to some other genre of music.
• Tragic acts centered around a type of music tend to increase negative sentiments toward that music, sometimes in ways unrelated to the tragedy.
• Shakur is a good example of a musician whose music is clearly not the product of a persona, but reflects the life he has lived. This makes him a good artist to look at in terms of evaluating the effects of the music he produced.

Brandon Woosley cCYS