2pac

On September 13, 1996, 7 days after being shot while leaving a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas, Tupac Amaru Shakur became hip-hop’s first martyr. At 25, 2pac and his music had frequently focused on his own death, but after cheating it once, he was not so lucky the second time, and rap’s own Malcolm X was silenced.

By the time Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, his mother, Afeni Shakur, a member of the Black Panthers, had already defended herself in court and been acquitted on 156 counts. Living in the Bronx, she found steady work as a paralegal and tried to raise her son to respect the value of an education. Tupac’s biological father, Billy Garland, was a truck driver who left before he was born. Afeni soon had another child with another member of the Black Panther Party, Mutulu Shakur. However, a few months before the birth of the girl, Mutulu was sentenced to 60 years in prison for a fatal armored car robbery.

With Mutulu away, the family experienced hard times. No matter where they moved-the Bronx, Harlem, homeless shelters-Tupac was troubled. As time passed, the issue of his father tormented him. The loneliness began to wear on him. He retreated into writing love songs and poetry. His mother enrolled him in the 127th St

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

In 1993, he recorded and released Strictly 4 My N. This came at the same time as Strictly…’s first single was gaining airplay, an ode to single mothers titled “Keep Ya Head Up. He had the charisma of a political speaker and the intellect of a college graduate in a gang member’s body. It was number one on both of the Billboard charts and set the record for the first and only time an incarcerated man had the number one album in the country. On top of that, a few days before he was to be sentenced, he was robbed and shot five times at gunpoint in a New York recording studio. ” He paid respect to the old school rappers on “Old School,” and gave props to his home on “To Live And Die In L.

In Baltimore, at age fifteen, he fell into rap; he started writing lyrics, walking with a swagger, and milking his background in New York for all it was worth.

One particular song that I love is “Life Goes On. His career stopped as he was then charged with sexual assault. He has been publicly humiliated by 2pac, and was considered a gangster style rapper. He enrolled in the illustrious Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied acting and ballet with white kids and finally felt "in touch" with himself.

Approximate Word count = 1558
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.