the World, soared through the roof. After being
released from prison, Tupac once again made
hip-hop history when he released hip-hop’s first
double-CD album, All Eyez on Me.
Tupac’s meteoric career and his life in a dog-
eat-dog world that views killing as necessary for
survival inevitably crashed when, on September
13, 1996, he died from multiple gunshot wounds.
He was 25 years old. He had been the victim of a
drive-by shooting, in which Suge Knight, chief ex-
ecutive officer of Death Row Record Company was
also shot. They were riding in a car after watching
a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas, Nevada, when the
incident took place. Tupac was the violent shoot-
ing’s only fatality. Although many believe his death
was the result of a brutal battle between East Coast
and West Coast rappers, his killer was never appre-
hended. After his death, Tupac’s work in progress
Makaveli: The Don Killuminati, named after Nic-
colo Machiavelli, was released.
Tupac’s influence continues to be felt not only
in the numerous tribute songs, DVDs, and mov-
ies that give insight into his life but also through
the lyrics of his songs, which, for many social and
literary critics, resonate with the language and ob-
jectives of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT and many of
its poets: LeRoi Jones (AMIRI BARAKA), HAKI MA-
DHUBUTI, and NIKKI GIOVANNI. Some critics even
argue that Tupac and hip-hop culture ushered in
yet another black renaissance movement, despite
the misogyny that is endemic in rap lyrics. Tupac’s
posthumously published collection of poetry and
lyrics, appropriately titled X (published with the
help of his mother), made him the first and only
hip-hop artist to date to publish his work in book
form. Courses in which his poetry is studied are
offered on campuses from University of Califor-
nia at Berkeley to State University of New York at
Binghamton.
Tupac’s rap lyrics and poems are raw, personal,
and autobiographical. Their themes run the gamut
from life, death, hatred, sex, women, relationships,
and single parents to politics and religion. True to
the contradictions in his own life and in hip-hop
culture, Tupac’s lyrics and poems are often also
filled with love. Tupac had an uncanny desire to
give the world an all-inclusive picture into his life.
“Dear Mama,” an ode to his mother, is exemplary.
He writes; “But even as CRACK FIEND, mama /
You always was a BLACK QUEEN, mama.” Here,
the son embraces and elevates his drug-addicted
mother to status of royalty while indirectly cri-
tiquing a postmodern world that made her a
crack fiend.
His political awareness and critical voice are
found in most of his lyrics. He is not afraid to in-
dict the white world while celebrating his black
identity and critiquing the black community, as
he does in “White Man’s World”: “Proud to be
black, but why we act like we don’t love ourselves /
Don’t look around, check yourselves. Know what it
means to be black, whether man or GIRL / We still
strugglin’, in this white man’s world.”
Many critics could not understand how the
same person who, at times, glorified a promiscu-
ous and thuggish lifestyle could also write lyrics
with such strong political insight and raw cyni-
cism, apparent in the following lines: “Should
we cry, when the Pope die, my REQUEST / We
should cry if they cried when we buried Malcolm”
or “You know it’s funny when it rains it POORS
/ They got money for WARS, but can’t feed the
POOR.” However, many people, especially those
of the hip-hop generation, identified with, ad-
mired, and understood Tupac’s mentality, pain,
suffering, internal struggle, and seemingly contra-
dictory lifestyle in his public battle to define him-
self in a world that had mislabeled him. Tupac was
his own yin and yang who never sought to justify
his nature to the public. Much of who he was can
be summed up by his words in Life of an Outlaw;
he is known to “Make TRACKS burst whenever I
RAP / ATTACK / Words bein’ known to explode
on CONTACT / Extreme at times, blinded by my
passion and fury.”BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ardis, Angela. Inside a Thug’s Heart, with Original
Poems and Letters by Tupac Shakur. New York: Da-
fina Books, 2004.
hooks, bell. Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations.
New York: Routledge, 1994.Shakur, Tupac 457