Tupac Shakur Biography Essay -- essays research papers

Tupac Shakur 1971-1996 Born: June 16, 1971 in New York, New York, United States Died: September 13, 1996 in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States Ethnicity: African American Occupation: Rap Musician, Musician, Actor "Don't shed a tear for me ... / I ain't happy here / I hope they bury me and send me to my rest / Headlines readin' murdered to death."--from "If I Die Tonight" on Me against the World (1995) BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY With his tattoo-splattered physique, piercing deep-set eyes, and shaved head, Tupac Amaru Shakur came across as middle America's worst nightmare, the darkest strain of hip-hop. To fans, Shakur was only "thuggin' against society, thuggin' against the system that made me," as he once rapped. Like some other rappers, Shakur was criticized for his sexist lyrics He celebrated his mother, Afeni, but was equally capable of debasing women in his music. The contradictions hardly ended there. In his last video, "I Ain't Mad at Cha," Shakur--newly arrived in Heaven--saluted an old friend for quitting the "thug life." In "Only God Can Judge Me," Shakur foresaw death bearing down on him, yet seemed unable to tolerate his rival, The Notorious B.I.G. and B.I.G.'s mentor, Sean "Puffy" Combs. Shakur's "Hit 'Em Up," the last single issued during his twenty-five-year lifetime, set new highs of profane rage against B.I.G., who was later gunned down after Shakur's own untimely death. Yet millions of fans found something meaningful in Shakur's troubled life and lyrics, like a thirty-two-year-old Detroit accountant buying her first Shakur album. "I've never supported that kind of music," she told the Detroit News, "but there was something so tragic about the way he died ... It's almost like I'm looking for answers." Politician Jesse Jackson also tried to explain Shakur's downfall and apparent appeal, telling the Los Angeles Times: "Sometimes the lure of violent culture is so magnetic that even when one overcomes it with material success, it continues to call." Acting bug bit early From his June 16, 1971, birth in New York City, Shakur's life read much like an epic melodrama. His mother, Afeni, and father, Billy Garland, belonged to the Black Panthers, a militant group dedicated to achieving racial equality. Just two years earlier, in 1969, Afeni and then... ...'s murder, "just a sad, ugly feeling, very creepy, very hollow," he said. "No art, no life, just ashes." Larger-than-life Vibe chief executive Kevin Clinkscales, however, advised fans against anymore "rumor-mongering," which he found disrespectful to Shakur's family. "These are not comic-book heroes," he told USA Today. "These are real people." That said, however, most agree that Tupac Shakur has won the larger-than-life immortality he craved so much. The sightings and resurrection theories place him in a select club that includes the late Kurt Cobain, Doors singer-poet Jim Morrison, and Elvis Presley. On that score, fans need not fear, as poet Nikki Giovanni acknowledged in her own tribute, "All Eyez on You": "don't tell me he got what he deserved he deserved a chariot and / the accolades of a grateful people / he deserved his life." Nor did Giovanni stop there, getting her own "Thug Life" tattoo to honor Shakur's memory, telling the Chicago Tribune: "Young black men are in a holocaustic situation." So long as that persists, fans insist, Tupac Shakur's musical legacy will be hard to deny.