Tupac Shakur, Thug Poet
Tupac Amaru Shakur was born Lesane Parish Crooks, in Brooklyn, New York on June 16, 1971. As a child, Tupac lived an impoverished life and his family struggled when Tupac's step father, Mutula Shakur (who was a member of the Black Panthers) was sentenced to six years in prison, after taking part in a fatal armored car robbery. Tupac and his family moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx, to Harlem, and to different homeless shelters throughout the city. As a young teen, Tupac's family moved to Baltimore, and Tupac attended The Baltimore School for the Performing Arts. Tupac had started to show interest and excel in acting when his family packed up and moved once again, this time to Oakland, California (White, 13-30). Throughout Tupac Shakur's entire childhood, he always felt as if he didn't fit in because he never got the chance to settle in one area for an extended period of time. In Oakland, Tupac began to, as he called it, "hang with the wrong crowd" (TupacFans.com). Tupac became involved with hip-hop at the age of fifteen. Seven years later, Tupac released his solo album debut, 2Pacalypse Now. His first album, like the rest of his music and poetry which he would go on to write in the years that followed, addressed the soc
His messages at times run extremely deep, and there is much more to his words than what meets the eyes (or ears). Tupac's first single released off of 2Pacalypse Now is titled "Brenda's Got a Baby. Tupac writes: "Excuse me - but, Lady Liberty needs glasses / and so does Mrs. Another way that Tupac expressed his deepest feelings and beliefs on the troublesome ways of the urban lifestyle was through his poetry. Tupac's lyrics disect the problem of teenage pregnancies in "the ghetto" and explains what a young girl must go through, as well as the seemingly neverending cycle that teen pregnancies lead to. Before he released his second album, titled Strictly for my N. Living in Los Angeles, Tupac was familiar with the use of excessive force by the LAPD. On April 29, 1992, the jury acquitted the four police officers. The LAPD was notorious for their use of excessive force against blacks, and this can be seen in the Rodney King case of 1991. " In the years 1987 through 1991 (when 2Pacalypse Now was released), the birth rate in teens between the ages of fifteen and nineteen rose from approximately fifty births per 1,000 women to nearly sixty births per 1,000 women. Tupac's poetry was a powerful median that changed many peoples' perspective of social issues such as the flaws in the justice sytem. Aside from linking his lyrics to the statistical growth in teen pregnancies, Tupac was raised by a mother who had him at a young age. This could have been due to the fact that he was seemingly "out to get them. Events and times that Tupac personally experienced and historical events and times that were felt across the nation and around the world, combined together to create the songs and poems that were influenced by society and had a great influence on society. Tupac's lyrics describe the lack of care by Brenda's parents of her pregnancy.
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