Wednesday 15 June 2016

The Last Don of Hiphop - Tupac Shakur

By Wagar

20 April 2005 (updated 21 April 2005).


“When a normal man questions his existence, it begins with childhood, teenager, adult. However, when most black males examine their lives, especially those of us from a ghetto upbringing, we realize these are not our development stages. Ours begin with a young dustkicker, a thug nigga, then, finally a boss playa. Each stage has many obstacles and pleasures but they are lethal if not played properly.” - Tupac Shakur.

Tupac Shakur wrote his first rap inspired by the death of a close friend, son of a black panther, Afeni Shakur. Tupac moved from place to place due to the FBI always on his mother's back. Afeni was pregnant in jail and won the write to an egg and a glass of milk every day for herself and her unborn child. 
"Meetings, meetings, meetings, and more meetings and Pac would be present at all of them. He would listen intently and sometimes he would fall asleep and when he would awake I'd ask, ‘are you ready to leave?’ And he'd always say, ‘No, I want to stay.’ Years ago, we used to do concerts for political prisoners in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and all around the country, and Pac would always be on the stage, talking and meeting everyone and everyone liked to talk to Tupac, because his eyes always indicated that he wanted to hear what you had to say. His attentiveness as a young child was extremely powerful. He would just sit there and they just loved to talk to him. At an early age, he was of the people." – Mutulu Shakur.

Tupac attended Baltimore school of Arts where he studied acting and ballet, but he was forced to move because of his mother’s choices. Tupac calls this the point he fell off track.

Through Leila Steinberg, Tupac's first manager, he got to work with Digital Underground and first became a roadie then dancer and rapped his first song for them 'same song.’ In 1991 Tupac finished his first album '2pacalypse Now' and also completed his first movie 'Juice' starring alongside actors like Omar Epps. The film received positive reviews especially concerning Tupac’s acting. This landed Tupac roles such as John Singleton's poetic justice with Janet Jackson this was the highlight of Tupac's career. While his Acting career was going fine his rapping career weren't going too smoothly as the vice president of America at the time Dan Qual claimed that the record had no place in this society. A state trooper was shot dead and the murderer claimed Tupac's music was inside the player inciting him to kill. The record achieved a gold status which was good for a rap album in them days.

In Halloween of '93 Tupac shot two off-duty cops who were drunk and assaulting a black motorist, one in the buttocks and the other in the abdomen. Tupac cleared of the assault charge because it was found that the cops initiated the attack by pulling out a gun first and the guns the cops used was stolen from an evidence locker room. Yet again another cop was shot and was blamed on Tupac's influencial music. Tupac Shakur was dropped from two movies, John Singleton's 'Higher learning' and 'Menace to Society' due to his constant run-ins with the law. Tupac was dropped. The Hughes brothers were beaten up. Tupac said 'two of you niggaz against me sounds like a fair fight.’ He beat one of them up and the other ran off. He formed a group called Thug Life with his half brother Mopreme, Rated R and Big Syke. Unfortunately, the album didn't go as successful as hoped for. This was blamed on the fact that some of the songs were too hardcore. Originally Tupac also made the album with Warren G, Nate Dogg and Spice One appearing as part of Thug Life but these artists were not seen on the album because of the dropping of a lot of songs. Not many people know this but Thug Life was not just a rap group but a movement. Thug Life stood for The-Hate-U-Gave-Little-Infants-Fucks-Everyone.

Tupac had plans to make volume 2 of Thug Life with Big Syke but like many of his dreams he didn't live to see it. He was also bringing out his own restaurant, wanted to be mayor of L.A. (loved the community), sponsoring athletes, helping kids (loved kids), starting Death Row east, Makaveli Records and finished One Nation. He also had plans for hardcore gangsta films with Snoop Dogg. He was also going to be the first rapper to release 3 albums in 1 year but unfortunately he passed away before he could fulfil his plans.

It seemed as though Tupac had two sides to him. One of them showed his struggle and relentlessness. This showed, when he was angry, not giving a fuck because of all the pain he’d been through. While the other side was him moving on and wanting others to succeed just like him. Contrary to popular belief, Tupac was one of the most kind and caring people you could have ever met. The media portrayed him as a gangsta but a lot of the good deeds the media was ignorant about or didn't care because Tupac didn't do a good deed just to make sure the papers record it, he did it out of his heart unlike these days where you see artists give millions to charities and they’re all over the news talking about it. They just want to sell more records. Tupac was different. He didn't even class his music as gangsta rap. He said it was spiritual music. Because everything he said came from his heart and was full of emotion so you can get through the day and know that somebody else is going through what you’re going through so you can make it strong. Regardless of this fact, haters like C. Delores Tucker accused him of downgrading women, etc. Tupac explained that when he used ‘Bitch’ he wasn't calling all women bitches. He was talking about the individuals in the song. Tupac loved women and grew up with strong women such as his mother and sister. He also made positive songs for women such as 'Dear Mama' and 'Keep Ya Head up.' ‘I wonder why we take from our women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think it's time to care for our women, be real to our women.' Tupac also said he used the word nigga not nigger. N.I.G.G.A stood for never-ignorant-getting-goals-accomplished. He thought he would use the evil word and turn around the meaning to mean the opposite, to get rid of the negativity of the word surrounding black people.


In 1995 Tupac stated he stopped being a 'thug nigga' and elevated his status to a 'boss playa.'

Tupac, however, kept his thug mentality when Puffy, in Vibe magazine, was talkin shit about him. When Pac was saying Thug Life is dead, Puffy was saying shit like 'once you’re a thug you’re always a thug.' This made Tupac even more relentless, and he also believed that Puffy, along with Biggie, was behind the New York shooting in ‘94. Tupac was shot five times on his way to the recording studio. I at least believe that Puffy and Biggie knew what happened as they had ties with the black mafia. If you read the Vibe interview notice how everybody’s report is different. Only Tupac was there for the whole incident, so theoretically there should be no variation with his chain of events especially as Tupac is known to speak nothing but the truth.

Tupac recovered from the gunshot wounds and even checked himself out against doctors’ orders in less than 24 hours. He was moved to another hospital because the phone kept ringing. He was getting death threats. He also says he felt like an experiment. He was referring to the way the doctors were treating him. The next day Tupac had to go to court for a sexual abuse charge everybody knew he didn’t do. The papers were getting really ugly and some reports even stated that Tupac himself had planned the shooting to miss court the next day, so Tupac proved them wrong by turning up in court in a wheelchair.

Tupac always believed he was set up as his 'friend' at the time was a government informant and even though he was highly involved in the case he was let off free. Tupac also researched this character and found out he had never had any criminal record history in his life. Tupac apologized by saying his sorry for not saving her and being a more responsible man as Tupac says at the time he was out of the room having a rest and that he shouldn't have left them alone with them men.

Tupac was sentenced to a maximum of 4 years in a maximum security penitentiary. He was the first music artist to have a #1 album while incarcerated. The album was titled 'Me Against the World' and spawned hit singles such as 'Dear Mama' and 'So Many Tears.’ Death Row CEO Marion 'Suge' Knight bailed Tupac in return for some albums. As soon as Tupac was free he wasted no time and hit the studio to start recording raps first double CD 'All Eyez on me.' This was a huge success and, although the most expensive album in the charts, it reached the #1 spot.

Tupac also released a song titled 'Hit Em Up' from the B-side of the single 'How Do U Want It.’ This is probably the biggest diss song you will ever hear in which Tupac claims to have had sex with Biggie’s wife Faith Evans and tells his enemies to die slow. This song also has Tupac blaming the Badboy camp for the shooting: '5 shots couldn't drop me I took and smiled.’ Tupac was a workaholic. He used to shoot from movie scenes in the day to rap songs later. He hardly slept. This was also due to the fact he had shellshock (post traumatic stress). Each time he tried to sleep he kept getting flashbacks. The ‘7 Day Theory’ album released under the alias of Makaveli was finished in 7 days and reached number 1. It was Tupac's first posthumous album following a shooting at Las Vegas which resulted sadly in his death.

Unfortunately, the second shooting resulted in Tupac being rap’s martyr. He was gunned down on the 7th September 1996 after a Mike Tyson fight. The West Coast/East Coast rivalry was getting out of control. It is believed that the Pirus bloods were on the west coast with Death Row while the Bad Boy camp had the cribs for security. This led to dozens of homicides in retalliation for the Pac killing and gang wars were raging out. While in hospital Pac was put in an induced coma because, every time he woke up, he thought he had just been shot so he kept trying to take all the wires and equipment and get out of the bed. He died 6 days later. The murder still remains a mystery. Crucid cops were on the case and the Vegas police have little experience of gang murders and failed to realise that perhaps it was due to the scuffle at the MGM. Orlando Anderson had previously stolen a Death Row medallion from Tupac's bodyguard in a shopping mall. Someone pointed out Orlando to Tupac. Tupac rhetorically asks 'u from the south' (southside cribs) and knocks him out in seconds. A public beating is considered an extremely humiliating act in gangwarfare so they planned to kill Tupac after a charity event at a club in 662. However, the gang couldn't believe their luck after they saw Pac and thought ‘we'll kill him now.’ To make a little extra money, the cribs decided to ask Biggie for a million. Biggie agreed and said ‘on one condition, you kill him with my gun.’ Pac got shot on Flamingo Road and Suge had to do a U-turn but the cops stopped them and told Suge to lay on the ground. This made further complications. Tupac Amaru Shakur passed away Friday 13th September 1996 at 4:03.

Pac’s homeboy and fellow rapper of the Outlawz was the only one willing to help the police but he was tragically murdered at the tender age of 19 just weeks later. The incident was unrelated.

Both Biggie and Orlando Anderson have been murdered. Orlando got shot at a carwash in an unrelated drug incident. Biggie’s murder is also unsolved.

At the time of his murder Tupac still had two movies to be released and over 200 songs of unreleased material.

The Legacy lives on....

R.I.P Tupac Amaru Shakur - You will not be forgotten

Soulja
Pantha
Reporter
Teacher
Poet

Rapper
Actor
Writer
Son
Revolutionary

www.ciao.co.uk/Tupak_Shakur__Review_5424101

2pac Shakur died broke says Afeni Shakur Interview

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