On June 16, 1971, one of hip hop’s most celebrated, documented and influential talents, Tupac Amaru Shakur, is born in East Harlem, NYC. The late rapper, actor, and author, who also went by the MC name 2Pac, was the son of Black Panther Party members Billy Garland and Afeni Shakur. While in jail for withholding information connected to a bombing conspiracy that could have led to the incarceration of a fellow Panther member, a pregnant Afeni was acquitted on all counts. The woman who would forever be immortalized in Tupac’s heartfelt 1995 tribute “Dear Mama,” raised her son in a disciplined yet artistic household. By age 12, Tupac enrolled in Harlem’s world-renowned 127th Street Ensemble where he later played Travis in the play A Raisin in the Sun. By the time his family moved to Baltimore in 1984 and four years later to Marin City, Calif., ‘Pac had already become a serious hip hop fan and starting writing his own raps. But soon the nurturing life he enjoyed at home started to break down under the strain of his mother’s crack cocaine addiction. He tried his hand at hustling on the streets, yet the pull of hip hop was too strong to ignore.
After forming the Public Enemy–inspired group Strictly Dope in 1989, Tupac met up with Oakland, Calif., hip hop crew Digital Underground and became the group’s roadie and dancer. His standout rhyming appearance on D.U.’s 1990 hit “Same Song” laid the groundwork for 2Pac’s politically minded 1991 debut, 2Pacalypse Now, and its incendiary 1993 street-fueled follow-up, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. (Interscope)—a platinum album that spawned the hits “Keep Ya Head Up” and “I Get Around.” Thug Life became his battle cry (an acronym for “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody”).
Soon Hollywood came calling as Tupac garnered critical acclaim for his role as the psychotic villain Bishop in the 1992 film Juice (Paramount). It was during this time that the rapper/actor started to make headlines beyond entertainment. He gained a level of infamy in 1991 when he filed a $10 million civil suit against the Oakland Police Department after Tupac was allegedly beaten by cops for jaywalking. He also beat fraudulent charges of shooting a cop during an October 1993 incident (one of the off-duty police officers involved was charged with lying to police during the investigation).
In December of 1993, Tupac and two others were charged with sexually abusing a woman at a New York luxury hotel. By the end of the year, the controversial rapper was found guilty of the sexual assault (Many critics viewed the verdict as controversial due to testimony that Tupac was asleep when the assaults took place). Shortly before the verdict, Tupac was the victim of an apparent robbery at Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan where he was shot five times. He would later accuse his former friend Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace and Bad Boy Records head Sean Combs as being behind the shooting—sparking the so-called East Coast/West Coast rap feud. In Kevin Powell’s groundbreaking VIBE cover story, Shakur also dismissed his past actions: “This Thug Life stuff, it was just ignorance…let somebody else represent it, because I’m tired of it.”
Ironically, 2Pac was at that moment having his biggest success on the music charts yet. His March 1995 release Me Against The World (Interscope) debuted on the Billboard charts and sold more than 2 million copies. Shakur was released after serving just eight months of his sentence after a parole arrangement and a $1.4 million bond paid by Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight, who promptly signed 2Pac to a recording deal. The volatile rapper continued his lyrical assault on Bad Boy on the 10 million-selling double album All Eyez on Me (Death Row/Interscope 1996), claiming that he slept with Biggie’s wife, the R&B singer Faith Evans, on the incendiary dis track “Hit ’Em Up.”
2Pac had become a polarizing figure—beloved by some, reviled by others—whose work increasingly alluded to his own impending death. On September 7, 1996 life imitate art as Shakur was shot four times in a drive by attack near the Las Vegas Strip following a fight in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel. Six days later, Tupac died from his injuries. His murder, like The Notorious B.I.G.’s murder six months later, remains unsolved.
Through his death 2Pac became larger-than-life figure on par with such giants as John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Bob Marley. Some of his more passionate followers even claimed that ’Pac was still alive. Recent years have seen a string of posthumous albums, starting with the classic The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (Death Row, 1996), released under the pseudonym Makaveli. Tupac’s mother, Afeni, has also devoted herself to protecting and upholding her son’s legacy through the foundation she founded in his name.
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