Tupac Shakur was one of the most dynamic, influential and self-
destructive pop stars of the Nineties.
The rapper's husky voice described his
stark contradictions, setting misogyny
against praise of strong women, hard-
won wisdom against the violence of the "thug life" — words he had
tattooed across his torso. The critical
and commercial successes of his music
(as well as his modest achievements as
an actor) were continually
overshadowed by his legal and personal entanglements. In Tupac's
world, art and reality became tragically
blurred, culminating with his 1996
murder in Las Vegas. Shakur was the
son of Black Panther Party members
Billy Garland and Afeni Shakur (Shakur is Arabic for "thankful to God", who
was in jail (and later acquitted) on
bombing charges while pregnant with
him. Sometime after his birth, he was
named Tupac Amaru, for an Incan chief
whose name translates as "shining serpent." Shakur spent his earliest
years in the Bronx and Harlem, and at
age 13 made his acting debut in a
production of A Raisin in the Sun at an
Apollo Theatre benefit for Jesse
Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign. He spent the rest of his childhood
moving around the country with his
mother. He attended the Baltimore
School of the Arts before dropping out
and settling, at the age of 17, in Marin
County, California. The rapper then successfully auditioned to become a
dancer and roadie for the rap group
Digital Underground and
simultaneously worked relentlessly on
his own material. He appeared on that
group's This Is an E.P. Release EP (1990) and Sons of the P (1991). In
1991 he signed with Interscope and
released the album 2pacalypse Now
(Number 64 pop, Number 13 R&B,
1992), a musical mixture of inner-city
portraiture and messages of racial strength. An underground hit, the
album spawned the single "Brenda's
Got a Baby" (Number 23 R&B). Shakur
also became a successful actor in the
early 1990s, appearing in Ernest
Dickerson's Juice (1992) and Above the Rim (1994), and giving a critically
acclaimed performance opposite Janet
Jackson in John Singleton's Poetic
Justice (1993). Despite a promising
start and wide praise for his
performances, the rest of his film work was far less acclaimed; he ended his
acting career as James Belushi's
sidekick in the mostly ignored Gang
Related. Shakur's second album, Strictly
4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. (Number 24 pop,
Number 4 R&B, 1993), yielded the hits "I Get Around" (Number 11 pop,
Number 5 R&B, 1993) and "Keep Ya
Head Up" (Number 12 pop, Number 7
R&B, 1993). He also released an album
as part of the short-lived Thug Life
group in 1994. Even longer than Shakur's hit list, though, was his police
blotter. In 1992 the rapper was
arrested after a six-year-old California
boy was killed by a stray bullet
discharged during a scuffle between
Shakur and two others. (A lawsuit filed by the boy's family was later settled out
of court.) He was then charged in
Atlanta with shooting two off-duty
police officers in October 1993.
Charges in both cases were dismissed.
The following month Shakur and two members of his entourage were
charged with sexual abuse following
an incident in a New York luxury hotel.
In early 1994 he was found guilty of
assault on Menace II Society codirector
Allen Hughes and served 15 days in jail. By the end of the year, the rapper
was found guilty of the sexual assault
only a day after being shot by muggers
in the lobby of a New York recording
studio. He was later sentenced to one
and half to four and a half years in prison. While his 1995 album Me
Against the World (Number 1 pop,
Number 1 R&B) headed to the top of
the charts, Shakur headed for prison.
Shakur became the first artist to reach
Number 1 on the Billboard charts while serving a prison sentence. The hit
single "Dear Mama" (Number Nine pop,
Number Three R&B) suggested a depth
of feeling that led some critics to
reassess the rapper and his work. By
now Shakur was a lightning rod for a highly publicized West Coast vs. East
Coast hip-hop feud. Shakur was
released after serving just eight months
of his sentence, the result of a parole
arrangement and a $1.4 million bond
paid by Death Row label CEO Marion "Suge" Knight. The rapper signed with
Death Row in late 1995, soon releasing
the dark, two-disc All Eyez on Me
(Number 1 pop, Number 1 R&B, 1996).
On the album, Shakur attacked his
enemies with furious threats of violence, while speaking of his own
early death as inevitable. The album
also included "How Do You Want
It" (Number 1 pop, Number 1 R&B),
"California Love" (Number 6 pop) (with
Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman), and "Hit 'Em Up," on which Shakur claimed to
have slept with the Notorious B.I.G.'s
wife, singer Faith Evans. Then, on
September 7, Shakur was shot near the
Las Vegas Strip while riding in the
passenger seat of Knight's BMW. The shooting came about two hours after a
scuffle that involved Shakur and Knight
in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel (an
incident that ultimately led to Knight,
31, being handed a nine-year prison
sentence for violating his parole). Six days later Shakur died from his injuries.
He was 25. No arrests were ever made.
In addition, despite calls within the hip-
hop community to halt the violence, the
Notorious B.I.G. was killed in a similar
fashion six months later. No murder charges have been filed in either
murder. Like Elvis Presley and Jimi
Hendrix before him, Shakur was soon
the subject of a flood of posthumous
album releases (and rumors
suggesting that he faked his death). The first release was The Don
Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (Number
One pop, Number One R&B, 1996),
released under the pseudonym
Makaveli. It was followed by R U Still
Down? (Remember Me) (Number Two pop, Number 1 R&B, 1997), released
on Amaru/Jive, an imprint headed by
his mother. In 1997 his estate began a
war of lawsuits against Death Row,
complaining of $150 million in unpaid
royalties, demanding the return of more than 150 unreleased master
recordings, and a voiding of the
rapper's contract with the label. A 1998
settlement awarded the tapes to
Shakur's estate, which sanctioned the
release that year of Greatest Hits (Number Three pop, Number One R&B)
; it includes "Unconditional
Love" (Number 73 R&B, 1998) and
"Changes" (Number 32 pop, Number
12 R&B, 1999). "Do for Love" (Number
21 pop, Number 10 R&B, 1998) appears on R U Still Down? In 2001 the
fourth posthumous collection, Until the
End of Time, debuted at Number 1. With
2002 came another subpar collection,
Better Dayz, a guest-filled affair that
combined leftover verses and remixes from Shakur's "Makaveli" period. The
collection did spawn one hit single,
"Thugz Mansion" with Nas and J.
Phoenix, and fans' insatiable appetite
for unreleased Tupac material helped
Better Dayz reach double platinum status. The soundtrack to the
documentary Tupac Resurrection
followed in 2003, with producers like
Eminem and Johnny "J" remixing
tracks from throughout Tupac's career.
Eminem's production also served as the backbone for 2004's Loyal to the
Game, a collection of unreleased Tupac
verses combined with guest spots from
the likes of Elton John, G-Unit and Slim
Shady himself. Loyal to the Game
topped the Billboard Top 200 upon its release. To commemorate the 10th
anniversary of Shakur's death, 2006's
Pac's Life fused 13 more unreleased
Shakur recordings with top notch
production from Swizz Beatz and Sha
Money LX. T.I. and Ashanti contributed to the album's most notable single,
"Pac's Life," while Tupac admirers like
Snoop Dogg, Ludacris and
Chamillionaire also appear. The two-
part greatest hits collection Best of 2Pac
followed in 2007 with a minimal chart impact. In 2008, the rights Death Row's
master tapes were sold to new
ownership, and with it another batch
of unreleased Tupac recordings were
unearthed, all but ensuring more
posthumous releases in the new decade.