Tupac Biography
“A moment of silence, and then it was on!” – 2Pac (Resurrection DVD)
An embryo in Prison. Cultivated behind bars. Then on the 16th June 1971, ‘Lesane Parish Crooks’ was entered into this world. The world will later know this man as ‘Tupac Amaru Shakur’; but little did they know the impact that this man would have on this world.
Tupac was the son of one of the famous ‘Black Panther’ members, Afeni Shakur. This was a movement fighting for the prejudice against African Americans. He was from a single parent family as many at the time were and he would from a very early age ask about his father but the reply from Afeni was vague, "She just told me, 'I don't know who your daddy is.' It wasn't like she was a slut or nothin'. It was just some rough times.”
His step father, Mutulu Shakur was sentenced to sixty years for a fatal armored car robbery. This had a big impact on Tupac’s life, he had no father figure that he could look up to; “How can I be a man if there's no role model? Strivin to save my soul I stay cold drinkin a forty bottle”, the only role models that he had were pimps and hustlers, and this is where he adopted the thug image.
Tupac moved to Baltimore at an early age. He describes these “as the best days of my life”. He was truly in to the arts, whether it was music, film or poetry. He enrolled in the Baltimore school for the arts. Even at a young age, Tupac was outspoken on the subject of racial equality. His teachers remembered him as being a very gifted student. He was an avid reader, delving into books on eastern religions, and even entire encyclopedia sets. Hiding his love of literature from his peers, he gained the respect of his peers by acting like a tough guy. Tupac composed his first rap in Baltimore under the name "MC New York". The song was about gun control and was inspired by the fatal shooting of one of his close friends.
From Baltimore, drug-addicted Afeni moved the whole family to Marin City, California; the WESTside. Tupac quickly moved from the family home and moved in with a friend and began hustling drugs. This didn’t go to plan by the end of the week Tupac had nearly the same amount of when he started; the pimps and dealers took the drugs back and told Tupac that this wasn’t the game for him and he should pursue his music interests and that if he needed any money they would supply it; “they were like my sponsors”. He quickly gained interest from the ears on the streets, one of these was Ray Luv, and with a mutual friend named DJ Dize (Dizz-ee), they started a rap group called Strictly Dope. Their recordings were later released in 2001 under the name “Tupac Shakur: The Lost Tapes”. Their neighborhood performances brought Tupac enough acclaim to land an audition with Shock G of Digital Underground.
In 1990, Shakur joined as a roadie and dancer for Digital Underground. His early lyrics were remarkable, and he was viewed ambivalently for his tendency to act like a diva and for his occasionally violent personality. On a song for the “Nothing But Trouble” movie soundtrack, “Same Song”, Tupac was given his first opportunity to rap on a big-time record. “Get some fame, people change, wanna live they life high same song, can't go wrong, if I play the nice guy”.
In 1991, Tupac had trouble shopping his solo-debut, “2Pacalypse Now”. Eventually, Interscope records agreed to distribute the record; one can credit executives Ted Field and Tom Whalley for giving Tupac the chance. Although produced with the help of his Digital Underground crew, the intent of the album was to showcase his individual talent. While Tupac claimed his album was aimed at the problems facing young black males, it was also filled with images of violence by and against police. 2Pacalypse Now quickly attracted public criticism, especially after a young man who killed a Texas Trooper claimed he was inspired by the album, the case against Tupac was later thrown out of court for Tupac’s right of freedom of expression; unfortunately he had passed before the decision had been made.
Former Vice President Dan Quayle publicly denounced the album as having "no place in our society". The album did not do as well as Tupac had hoped on the charts, sparking no number one hits.
His second album, “Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.”, was heavily produced by Stretch and the Live Squad, and spurred two number one hits: the emotional Keep Ya Head Up and the playful I Get Around.
Along with Tupac’s rise to fame came a series of altercations with the law that further complicated his public image. Before he started his recording career, Tupac had no criminal record. “I had to make a record to get a police record”. In Oakland in October of 1991, Tupac was stopped by two officers for allegedly jaywalking. When he asked the police why he was being pulled up on such a petty crime, he was choked, beaten, and had his head smashed on the pavement. He subsequently raised a ten million dollar lawsuit against the Oakland police department, which was eventually settled for $42,000. He commented “I could have got more but I was tired of going to court, and thought any money from the police department was good, I got $42,000 for jaywalking!”
In late 1993, he formed the group “Thug Life” with a few of his friends, including Big Syke, Macadoshis, his step-brother Mopreme, and Rated R. The group released their first album “Thug Life: Volume 1” on Interscope in 1994 which, despite its hardcore content, still managed to go Gold. The group subsequently disbanded after Tupac’s release from prison.
In December 1993, Tupac was charged with sexually abusing a woman in his hotel room. According to his account, he met a female fan at a club, Nell's, who was described to him as wanting to "more than meet [him]". She allegedly gave him oral sex on the dance floor before Tupac took her back to his hotel room. The next night, she visited him before he was set to do a show and was giving him a massage in a hotel room. Some people who were hanging with him interrupted the couple, wanting to enjoy the woman's attentions themselves.
On February 7, 1995, Tupac was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for sexual assault, though he vehemently denied any wrongdoing. When asked what he would have done differently that night he said, “I would have never closed my eyes until the girl had left the room”.
Shortly before his verdict was announced, Tupac was shot five times in an apparent robbery attempt outside the New York Quad music studio. Tupac recalled the circumstances shortly afterwards in an interview with Vibe magazine. He was with his close friend, manager, and another friend on the night of November 30, 1994. (You can read the info in the 94 shooting section)
Tupac began serving his prison sentence at Clinton Correctional Facility later that February. Soon after, his multi-platinum album, “Me Against the World”, was released. Tupac has the distinction of being the only artist with an album at number one on the charts while serving a prison sentence. “For me that will always be my favourite album” Tupac commented in an interview.
The guards would taunt Tupac and say that your not the big man anymore, Tupac just laughed, “actually my album is no 1 in the whole country and has just beat Bruce Springsteen to the top of the the buildboard!” From jail, he married his long-time girlfriend, Keisha Morris. This marriage was later annulled.
In September, after almost eleven months in prison, Tupac was released on parole largely due to the help of Suge Knight, the head of “Death Row Records”. Suge helped get the $1.4 million bail fposted for Tupac, and in exchange Tupac was obliged to release three albums under Death Row.
Upon his release from prison, Tupac began work on his next album. In February 1996, he released his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me”. It subsequently went on to sell more than nine million copies and is considered by many to be among the best albums in the genre.
As his career arc began a steep rise toward fame and fortune, Tupac was shot and killed after watching a Mike Tyson fight with Suge.
Though his death was a jolt to his fans and the music community, Tupac himself said that, “I know what it’s going to be like when I die, there will not be any noise or bright lights, I’m just going to fade away”. The case remains unsolved to this day.
Following his passing, Death Row released, “The Don Killuminati”, under the pseudonym "Makaveli". The cover depicted Shakur nailed to a cross under a crown of thorns, with a map of the country's major gang areas superimposed on it. In January of 1997, Gramercy pictures released “Gridlock'd”, a film in which Tupac played the role of a drug addict to mostly good reviews. His final film, “Gang Related”, was released in 1997.
At the time that Tupac died, there were hundreds of unreleased Death-Row Era tracks. Most of these have been released on posthumous albums such as “Better Dayz” and “Until the End of Time”, and the newly realeased “Loyal to the game”, produced by Eminem.
A rapper. An actor. A revolutionary. A martyr. A son. A brother. A friend. But most of all this man was a legacy, “so keep you head up, do what you gotta do, and through you I will be reborn”.
“To Date Tupac is the biggest selling rapper of all time.”
2Pac Biography – written by John MacDonald
.Death Row Tupac Bio
Tupac was born on June 16, 1971. From childhood, everyone called him the "Black Prince." For misbehaving, he had to read an entire edition of The New York Times. But his mother Afeni had no answer when he asked about his daddy. "She just told me, 'I don't know who your daddy is.' It wasn't like she was a slut or nothin'. It was just some rough times.” When he was two, his sister, Sekyiwa, was born. This child's father, Mutulu, was a Black Panther who, a few months before her birth, had been sentenced to sixty years for a fatal armored car robbery. With Mutulu (Stepfather) away, the family experienced hard times. No matter where they moved-the Bronx, Harlem, homeless shelters-Tupac was distressed. "I remember crying all the time. My major thing growing up was I couldn't fit in. Because I was from everywhere. I didn't have no buddies that I grew up with."
As time passed, the issue of his father tormented him. He felt "unmanly," he said. Then his cousins started saying he had an effeminate face. "I don't know. I just didn't feel hard. I could do all the things my mother could give me, but she couldn't give me nothing else.” The loneliness began to wear on him. He retreated into writing love songs and poetry. "I remember I had a book like a diary. And in that book I said I was going to be famous." He wanted to be an actor. Acting was an escape from his dismal life. He was good at it, eager to leave his crummy family behind. "The reason why I could get into acting was because it takes nothin' to get out of who I am and go into somebody else."
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. People in small towns feared the Big Apple's reputation; he called himself MC New York and made people think he was a tough guy. 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. "Them white kids had things we never seen," he said. "That was the first time I saw there was white people who you could get along with. Before that, I just believed what everyone else said: They was devils. But I loved it. I loved going to school. It taught me a lot. I was starting to feel like I really wanted to be an artist.
By the time he was twenty, Shakur had been arrested eight times, even serving eight months in prison after being convicted of sexual abuse. In addition, he was the subject of two wrongful-death lawsuits, one involving a six-year-old boy who was killed after getting caught in gang-war crossfire between Shakur's gang and a rival group. In the late eighties, Shakur teamed up with Humpty-Hump (a.k.a. Eddie Humphrey, a.k.a. Gregory "Shock-G" Jacobs) and other Oakland-based rappers to create Digital Underground, a band intent on massive bass beats and frenetic, Parliament-Funkadelic-style rhythms. In 1990, the group released its debut and best album, Sex Packets, a pulsating testament to the boogie power of hip-hop, featuring two classic tracks, "Humpty Dance" and "Doowutchyalike." After an EP of re-mixes in 1991, D.U. released Sons of the P and, the following year, The Body-Hat Syndrome, all on Tommy Boy Records.
In 1992, Shakur entered a most fruitful five-year period. He broke free of D.U. and made his solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now, a gangsta rap document that put him in the notorious, high-speed lane to stardom. That same year he starred in Juice, an acclaimed low-budget film about gangs which saw some Hollywood success. In 1993, he recorded and released Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., an album that found Shakur crossing over to the pop charts. Unfortunately, he also found himself on police blotters, when allegations of a violent attack on an off-duty police officer and sexual misconduct arose. The same year, Shakur played a single father and Janet Jackson's love interest in the John Singleton film Poetic Justice.
In November of 1994, he was shot five times during a robbery in which thieves made off with $40,000 worth of his jewelry and later sentenced to Jail for an alleged rape. Shakur miraculously recovered from the shooting to produce his most impressive artistic accomplishments, including 1995's Me Against the World, which sold two million copies, and the double-CD All Eyez on Me, which sold 10 Million copies! By then he had been bailed out of jail by Suge Knight, owner of Death Row Records and signed to that very label, which would make rap history. As his career arc began a steep rise toward fame and fortune, Shakur was shot and killed after watching a Mike Tyson fight with Suge. Though his death was a jolt to his fans and the music community, Shakur himself often said that he expected he'd die by the sword before he reached thirty.
Following his passing, Shakur's label released an album, The Don Killuminati, under the pseudonym "Makaveli." The cover depicted Shakur nailed to a cross under a crown of thorns, with a map of the country's major gang areas superimposed on it. In January of 1997, Gramercy pictures released Gridlock'd, a film in which Shakur played the role of a drug addict to mostly good reviews. His final film, Gang Related, was released in 1997, and Death Row is said to have several unreleased recordings in the vaults for potential future release which is now in the hands of Afeni and Suge. Makaveli Tha Don and his vision of Killuminati still stands in the hearts of fans, and will be there for Eternity.
We also suggest that you view and purchase the Tupac: Resurrection DVD. It is a great movie and deals well with this subject and is narrated by Tupac himself.
Wed May 02, 2007 3:34 pm
