Have u seen XXL magazine? Be warned, there's the pic of 2Pac sliced up. Been a while since I seen him chopped like that. The best thing about listening to old 2Pac is him ripping Puffy, Big, Nas, Jay, Mobb Deep, etc. No one could battle like him. He's HILARIOUS.
All eyez on 2PacA decade ago today, hip-hop superstar Tupac Shakur was murdered in Vegas. But his legacy of art and violence still keeps us riveted.
By CARY DARLING
"A fast life ain't everything they told ya
Never get much older
Following the tracks of a soulja"
- 2Pac, Soulja's Story
Ten years ago today, rapper and actor Tupac Amaru Shakur passed away after being ambushed six days earlier on the crowded, neon-lit boulevards of Las Vegas. In town for the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon fight, he was gunned down while part of a 15-car caravan snaking its way down the strip. He had reached the ripe old age of 25.
Much of America heaved a sigh of relief. To them, the man with "thug life" emblazoned across his stomach, the man who in 1993 was charged with, but not convicted, shooting two off-duty Atlanta cops and the next year was put away for sexual assault, the man who seemed to make a career out of wallowing in the spilled blood of senseless violence, deserved what he got. Live by the gat, die by the gat, and all that.
A decade later, his murder remains unsolved, and this is one stone-cold case that's not likely to make it to prime time. Yet, for all his tough talk and sad end, Tupac was not just another inner-city kid with a troubled life and even more troubling death.
If his criminality was despicable, his ability to turn his life and struggles into brutal, bitter sweet poetry make Shakur a complex and fascinating figure. When he was at his best, there was an intelligence and sensitivity beneath the braggadocio that made him stand head, shoulder and tattoo above his rap contemporaries. At his worst, he was just another gangsta, allying himself with Death Row Records head Suge Knight, contributing to the wasteful East Coast/West Coast rap feud and making bank peddling the image of black-on-black violence. As an African-American man myself, this may have been the most disturbing element to me.
Yet even his most ardent admirers admit to straying onto this field of warring emotions. "Tupac Shakur finally died on Sept. 13, 1996, but death had been twitching in his ear for a long time," writes Danyel Smith in the bestselling Vibe magazine compilation of essays about the rapper, Tupac Shakur. "Shakur was rushed through boyhood only to enter a longish, violent adolescence that ended with bullets dancing through his body ..... Shakur was a self-proclaimed thug. A macho tantrum thrower embarrassed by the limp of his thoughtfulness. He loved to act but was ashamed of his talent. Back when I knew him, conversations with Tupac often ended with the other person convincing him of his own humanity."
It's this duality, and Shakur's often artful way of expressing it, that make him one of the most magnetic and tragic pop-culture personalities. Even though it's been a decade since his death, the number of books - with titles such as Jesus and the Hip-Hop Prophets: Spiritual Insights From Lauryn Hill and Tupac Shakur; Tough Love: Cultural Criticism & Familial Observations on the Life and Death of Tupac Shakur; and the recent Notorious C.O.P: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations From the NYPD's First "Hip-Hop Cop" (see review) - continue to roll off the presses. His poetry has even found its way between hard covers in The Rose That Grew From Concrete.
Meanwhile, documentaries such as Tupac Resurrection and Biggie and Tupac have been made about him, and more albums have come out after his death than before. Colleges from the University of Washington to Harvard have offered courses on his lyrics and impact. Some even claim that, as in the legend of writer Niccolo Machiavelli, whom the rapper supposedly admired, Shakur faked his own death, partly because he wanted to transcend hip-hop's expectations.
One theory holds that he is alive and well in Cuba. Watch out, Fidel.
In the latest issue of the culture magazine Urb, an alternative universe is envisioned where Shakur has moved into politics and become the mayor of Oakland.
Elliot Wilson, editor of the music magazine XXL, was quoted on 2Pac2K.de, a comprehensive German site devoted to all things Tupac, as saying, "If Tupac had a Graceland, there would be people camping outside his house right now."
What makes Shakur so important is not that he had a lot of hits, though, with the likes of California Love and How Do U Want It, he certainly did. In 2002, Forbes listed him as the eighth-richest deceased celebrity, having raked in $7 million in 2001. But it was his ability to put on disc the conflicted feelings of many young, poor, alienated black men in America that gave him his strength.
The son of Black Panther parents Billy Garland and Afeni Shakur, he was born in 1971 as Lesane Parish Crooks, but was soon given the name with which he would become famous. Tupac Amaru was an Incan leader killed by the Spanish whose name meant "shining serpent." "Shakur" is Arabic for "thankful to God."
He grew up in New York City somewhat poor and politically radicalized. But he found joy in Harlem's 127th Street Ensemble acting troupe and later at the Baltimore School of Arts, where he discovered a whole new world of violin and van Gogh.
"That was the first time I saw there was white people who you could get along with," he told Vibe in 1994. "Before that, I just believed what everybody else said: They was devils. But I loved it ..... I was starting to feel like I really wanted to be an artist."
When his family moved to Marin City, Calif., outside San Francisco, things changed. "Leaving that school affected me so much," he continues in his Vibe interview. "Even now, I see that as the point where I got off track."
It was in California that he really started living the street life - selling dope and running with a rough crowd. But it's also where he eventually became a minor player with Digital Underground, the good-time Bay Area hip-hop crew who hit with Doowutchyalike and Kiss You Back, in the early '90s. Their success soon faded, but he used it as a launch pad for his solo career.
Unlike Digital Underground, Tupac - who recorded under the name 2Pac - had heavier things in mind. While his first two albums, 2Pacalypse Now (1991) and Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. (1993), are rather muddled, tentative and indebted to the sound of New York outfit Public Enemy and L.A. rapper Ice Cube, it's clear where he wants to go. Tracks such as Soulja's Story, Keep Ya Head Up and the poignant Brenda's Got a Baby - a portrait of a 12-year-old single mom, and 2Pac's first hit - showed off a gift for heartfelt storytelling.
His life cascaded into a personal hell in the mid-'90s, when he was charged with the Atlanta shootings, convicted of sexual assault and shot five times in an attack at a New York City recording studio. The album that emerged from those experiences, 1995's bestselling Me Against the World, is arguably his best. Listening to it is like paging through the diary of a man gripped by his own contradictions. The songs If I Die 2Nite, So Many Tears, Dear Mama, Death Around the Corner and Lord Knows - in which he intones "I'm hopeless, they should've killed me as a baby, now they got me trapped in a storm, I'm goin' crazy, forgive me" - explode with doubts and fears not generally associated with someone labeled a gangsta rapper.
Throughout his music career, he was also screen acting, but unlike other rappers who ventured to Hollywood, Shakur wasn't just content to play a version of himself. Although he portrayed a violent high-school student in his first movie, the urban drama Juice (1991), he played opposite Tim Roth and Thandie Newton, as a guy who spends a very tough day trying to get into a drug rehab program, in the smartly written and underrated dark comedy Gridlock'd (1997).
If Shakur had lived, it would have been exciting to see how far he could have pushed himself. But as his final album, the two-disc All Eyez on Me (1996) proves, he never could or maybe never wanted to shake the extreme elements of street life. While some consider Eyez his strongest work - it certainly has some of his best beats and he's at the top of his game in terms of his vocal flow - it nevertheless bears the unmistakable imprint of executive producer Suge Knight. Like the chorus to 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted proclaims, "ain't nothin' but a gangster party."
And that was where Tupac left us when he expired in that Vegas hospital a decade ago. No one knows exactly where he might have gone next. The barrage of posthumous albums, including 1996's The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory released under the name Makaveli, doesn't really offer a clue.
The saddest part of his death is the demise of what might have been. Tupac killed off his future because he couldn't shake his connection to the past. Gangster party, indeed.
HEY MOCHA! Get ur mix in to Raekwon:© The Wu-Tang Corp.- 2006-09-11
Thats right, Raekwon is looking for new talent. If you think you have beats that Raekwon might be interested in, send your work on a CD to the address below. Please write your name and phone number directly on the CD, so if Raekwon is interested in your beats, he can contact you. Send your CD(s) to:
Ice Water Inc
P.O Box 671733
Marietta, GA 30006
Only Built For Cuban Linx II coming soon!
@ Masa for changing the thread title. Punk bitch! reminds me when the Oilers lost the cup FOOL!
Topic: The Official Rap Thread (Read 839291 times)