Afeni Shakur Davis, the mother of one
of hip-hop's most seminal and iconic
figures, has died at age 69, the Marin
County, California, sheriff's office said
Tuesday. Though she is best known as Tupac
Shakur's mom, she was also a Black
Panther as a young adult and an
activist and philanthropist in her later
years. Deputies responded to a family
member's call reporting "a possible
cardiac arrest" at Shakur Davis'
Sausalito home around 9:34 p.m.
Monday, the Marin County Sheriff's
Office said. Shakur Davis was taken to Marin
General Hospital where she died at
10:28 p.m., the office said. There was
nothing suspicious about her death
and there's no evidence of foul play,
Lt. Doug Pittman said in a Tuesday afternoon news conference. "Sheriff's Coroners Office will lead
investigation to determine exact
cause & manner of Afeni Shakur's
death," the office said in a tweet. Shakur Davis was a "well-loved, well-
respected" member of the
community, Pittman said. "Miss Shakur has had an extensive
background not only in the
community but her involvement with
so many things," he said. "She's been
a leader, a person people followed.
All that said about who she's been and where's she's at now, this is a
tragic loss for this community." From drugs to arts In a 2005 interview ahead of the
opening of the now-shuttered Tupac
Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts in
Stone Mountain, Georgia, Shakur
Davis recalled how her life was almost
derailed by drugs and how her son got it back on track. Her drug use made her so oblivious to
what was happening in her life that
when someone told her in 1990 that
her son -- then on the precipice of
becoming the biggest name in hip-
hop -- was going to be on "The Arsenio Hall Show," she thought the
person was lying, she said. In the mid-1980s, she was homeless
in New York and "messing around
with cocaine," she said. Despite the
drug use, she was still coherent
enough to realize that Tupac would
become a product of the streets if she didn't make different choices. "I was running around with militants,
trying to be badder than I was, trying
to stay up later than I should," she
said in the 2005 interview. She decided to enroll Tupac in the
127th Street Ensemble, a Harlem
theater group, something she called
"the best thing I could've done in my
insanity." They later moved to
Maryland, where she enrolled him in the Baltimore School for the Arts, and
then to a small town outside Sausalito. It was there that Tupac confronted
her about her cocaine use. "He asked me if I could handle it, and
I said yeah because I'd been dipping
and dabbing all my life," she said
during the interview. "What pissed
him off is that I lied to him." 'Pac told the local drug dealers not to
sell to her, she said, and he told his
mother to get clean or to forget about
being involved in his life. 'Arts can save children' She got clean in 1991, she said, and
when her son was gunned down in
Las Vegas in 1996, she resisted the
urges to delve back into her old bad
habits. She instead founded Amaru
Entertainment to keep her son's music alive. Later, she realized that her life --
mistake-ridden as it may have been --
might serve as a lesson to others. "Arts can save children, no matter
what's going on in their homes," she
said. "I wasn't available to do the
right things for my son. If not for the
arts, my child would've been lost." She provided the majority of the
money to begin the $4 million first
phase of the arts center, while her
Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation
hosted poetry and theater camps for
youngsters in the Atlanta area. "I learned that I can't save the world,
but I can help a child at a time," she
said, pointing out that her new life of
philanthropy wouldn't have been
possible without the influence of her
legendary son. "God created a miracle with his spirit. I'm all right with that." And as much as she credited Tupac
with inspiring her to help others, the
tribulations she endured in raising
him weren't lost on the multiplatinum
artist. He regularly invoked her in his
music, perhaps never as directly as in his chart-topping song, "Dear Mama." In it, he rapped, "And even as a crack
fiend, mama, you always was a black
queen, mama/I finally understand, for
a woman it ain't easy trying to raise a
man/You always was committed, a
poor single mother on welfare, tell me how you did it/There's no way I can
pay you back, but the plan is to show
you that I understand." Shakur Davis is survived by a
daughter, Sekyiwa Shakur.

Afeni, we love you but love 2pac more.