Tupac Shakur

Rapper, actor, and entertainer

• Born: June 16, 1971
• Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: September 13, 1996
• Place of Death: Las Vegas, Nevada

Shakur was an icon of hip-hop culture in the 1990s. Although he often expressed ambivalence about the gangster mentality, he cultivated a tough, streetwise image that extended beyond his music and film roles to permeate his life.

Early Life

Tupac Amaru Shakur was born June 16, 1971, to Black Panther Party members Alice Faye Williams (Afeni Shakur) and Billy Garland. Shakur’s mother and biological father never married. As a young child he regularly attended activist events and gatherings, but he never experienced a stable home life. His mother’s boyfriends (he always considered the gangster Kenneth “Legs” Sanders his father), her drug abuse, and a life surrounded by violence and poverty took an early toll. A sensitive boy in a world that expected toughness, Shakur found refuge in playacting, poetry, and music.

When Shakur was thirteen, he and his mother and sister moved to Baltimore from New York. He attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, which offered free tuition, a rigorous academic program, and instruction in an array of arts. There, he found numerous outlets for his creativity. He gave his first rap performance at the school, worked on an antigun campaign, became involved with the Young Communist League, and organized a rally to support Baltimore’s first Black American mayoral candidate. In 1988, Shakur’s mother moved the family to Marin City, California, a community known as “the Jungle.”

Life’s Work

Poetry teacher Leila Steinberg came into Shakur’s life at a critical juncture. She befriended and nurtured him; professionally, both benefited from their long friendship. Under her influence, Shakur began reading extensively and writing poetry. He formed a rap group and filmed his first video. By the early 1990s, he was working for hip-hop group Digital Underground, first as a roadie and background dancer, then as a rapper.

In 1991, Shakur’s first album, 2Pacalypse Now, was released. He also won a lead role in the film Juice (1992), playing a young criminal in Harlem. The film helped solidify his gangster image, and he tattooed the words “Thug Life” across his abdomen. His second album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. (1993), went platinum, and the success of Juice led to roles in Poetic Justice (1993) with Janet Jackson and Above the Rim (1994), in which he played another gangster character.

Shakur’s violent lifestyle was not limited to the screen, however; in 1993, he stood trial for sexual abuse. On November 30, 1994, just before the verdict was announced, Shakur was shot and robbed as he entered a New York recording studio. He was convicted and served eleven months at Clinton Correctional Facility near Dannemora, New York. Shakur’s third album, Me Against the World (1995), was released to huge sales during his incarceration.

In October 1995, Death Row Records president Marion “Suge” Knight helped Shakur gain his release in return for signing with the record label. The 1996 Death Row double album All Eyez on Me, written mostly while Shakur was in prison, was his biggest success. Although his songs were sometimes introspective and critical of social conditions that bred poverty and crime, he also embraced the confrontational nature of hip-hop, taunting rivals and seeking revenge on the people who had tried to kill him. Shakur believed his former friend, New York rapper the Notorious B.I.G., was involved in the attack. The resulting tension between the two biggest stars of the rap world ignited a heated rivalry between East Coast and West Coast hip-hop acts. The rivalry, and the vitriolic lyrics it inspired, led to speculation that this feud contributed to the deaths of both rappers.

On September 7, 1996, while Shakur and Knight were leaving the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon heavyweight fight in Las Vegas, Shakur was shot by assailants in another vehicle. He died in a Las Vegas hospital days later. Six months later, B.I.G. was shot and killed under similar circumstances in Los Angeles.

In the decades after Shakur's murder, his death spawned much speculation and numerous conspiracy theories. This changed in September 2023 when Las Vegas police arrested Duane Keith Davis, whom they accused of planning the shooting that killed Shakur. Police had increasingly focused on Davis since 2018 and had seized evidence from Davis's wife's home in July 2023. Police also said that Davis had spoken publicly for years about his actions on the night of Shakur's death and revealed enough information to accidentally incriminate himself, including by claiming in a 2019 memoir that he had provided the gun used in the fatal shooting of Shakur. While police had identified other suspects in the case, Davis was the only one still alive by that point.

Shakur himself, who received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023, also remained a legendary figure in popular culture. In 2024, his voice became part of a growing issue involving artificial intelligence (AI) technology in which people were using the images or voices of famous figures to create altered but convincing likenesses known as deepfakes. That year, Shakur's family threatened to take legal actions against Drake after the rapper included Shakur's AI-generated voice in a new song without first gaining any permission. Ultimately, Drake removed the track from online platforms amid ongoing debates over such use of AI technology and artist rights.

Significance

Shakur was a singular voice in hip-hop, a gangsta rapper who reveled in violent imagery yet also revealed remorse, angst, social consciousness, and hope. His lyrics seemed to be a form of activism for a young man steeped in Black Panther lore. 2Pacalypse Now expressed frustration that a Black American, no matter how successful, would still be seen as unworthy. The introspective Me Against the World featured hit singles, such as “Dear Mama,” described as one of the best rap songs ever produced. He had recorded so prolifically that his family released several albums after his death. Successful and critically acclaimed for both his music and his acting, provocative and controversial throughout his brief career, Shakur had an undeniable influence on American culture in the 1990s and remained a major influence in rap music in the decades after his death.

Shakur received various posthumous honors in the music world. He was inducted into the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame in 2002, and appeared on various publications' lists of best artists of all time. His hit song "Dear Mama" was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2010, making Shakur the third rapper to be added to the registry. The Library of Congress said the song was "a moving and eloquent homage to both the murdered rapper's own mother and all mothers struggling to maintain a family in the face of addiction, poverty and societal indifference." His double album All Eyez on Me, already one of the best-selling rap albums of all time at his death, was certified 10x platinum in 2014. In 2016, he was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; though some objected to the nomination of an artist from outside of the rock genre, he garnered enough votes to become one of six 2017 inductees.

Bibliography

Bastfield, Darrin Keith. Back in the Day: My Life and Times with Tupac Shakur. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2002.

Dyson, Michael Eric. Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2001.

Keveney, Bill. "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Taps Tupac, Journey, Pearl Jam." USA Today, 20 Dec. 2016, www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2016/12/20/rock-and-roll-hall-fame-taps-tupac-journey-pearl-jam/95616556. Accessed 9 Jan. 2017.

McQuillar, Tayannah Lee, and Fred Johnson. Tupac Shakur: The Life and Times of an American Icon. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2010.

Ritter, Ken, and Rio Yamat. "Last Living Suspect in 1996 Drive-by Shooting of Tupac Shakur Indicted in Las Vegas on Murder Charge." AP News, 29 Sep. 2023, apnews.com/article/tupac-shakur-killing-duane-keefe-davis-vegas-3f7050c2a68813d86a96b96fbb3f1d1a. Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.

Rosalsky, Greg. "It Was a Classic Rap Beef. Then Drake Revived Tupac with AI and Congress Got Involved." Planet Money, NPR, 14 May 2024, www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/05/14/1250578295/it-was-a-classic-rap-beef-then-drake-revived-tupac-with-ai-and-congress-got-invo. Accessed 26 June 2024.

Shakur, Tupac. The Rose That Grew from Concrete. Foreword by Nikki Giovanni. Introduction by Leila Steinberg. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.