Trevor Witta

Trevor Witta

Tupac Amaru Shakur If only one rap artist could be considered influential, it would be 2pac. He is the highest selling rap artist of all time, even though he died in 1996. MTV, VH1, and Vibe, among others, voted him the best rapper of all time. Tupac may have died 13 years ago, but the music continues to be released. Even though Shakur only released four albums while he was alive, he has a total of seven platinum albums so far, the highest being 9x platinum. His last platinum album, Loyal to the Game, was released in 2004. He is known for having around 800 tracks released in the public, and still more not yet released. There is still controversy and rumors about him. Tupac was born June 16, 1971, in a New York prison. His mother, Afeni Shakur, was in prison in the Bronx along with a few other Black Panther members at the time. It is unknown who his real father is, but his stepfather, Mutulu, died at the age of 41. He had a heart attack, brought on by drugs. After this, the family moved to Baltimore. When Tupac started schooling at the Baltimore City for the Arts, he realized he liked white people and that they weren’t like what people in his old city had said they would be. Around this time, Shakur decided he would try to break down racial boundaries, and he spoke about this in a lot of his songs. Tupac released his first rap album on the record label Death Row, 2pacalypse Now, in 1991. This album became famous quickly, because not long after it was released someone killed a police officer while listening to this album. This album talks about killing police officers, so the President of America at the time, Dan Quayle, said it must be withdrawn from stores. Death Row refused, and his debut album went gold. All others were much less violent than the first, and they all went platinum. Later that year, he sued a police department for ten million dollars because they brutally beat him for jaywalking. He became famous for his disagreements with authority. Over the next five

years, he was launched into a successful career as an actor and rapper. Unfortunately though, a rap feud had been going on for a while. 2pac was shot on September 6, 1996, in Las Vegas, Nevada. He died a week later. Tupac used to say, “It always happens. All the men who change the world don’t get to die like regular people, they die violently.” Some people may not believe that Tupac changed America, but I think he did in countless ways. You won’t find many rappers who can say they were never inspired by 2pac. There have been countless rappers who talk about a sad life of a teenage girl, like in “Lil Girl Gone”, or “Runaway Love”. The first song like that was “Brenda’s Got a Baby”, by 2pac. Every rapper respects him for his rapping abilities, and he was respected for that his whole life, even before he made a career off of it. Ever since he discovered in Baltimore that white people weren’t different than blacks, he had been speaking out against racism or sexism. Many incredible lines of his had people thinking, such as his line from Changes, “I see no changes, all I see is racist faces. Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races.” Contrary to popular belief, all popular rap isn’t about a hood lifestyle. 2pac sold more records than any other rappers out there, and he had spoke against the hood lifestyle, against violence, and for complete equality. Not only does this man inspire rappers and those who listen to rap, but also kids who want to improve at any kind of creativity. His mother, Afeni Shakur, created TASF (Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation) to help kids with aspiring creativity. They offer exchange student programs along with programs to help children become better artists or performers. They probably chose this mission because Shakur had a dream of putting poor children in schools, because he put great value upon education. When he got in trouble at home, the punishment was that he had to read the whole newspaper. Studies show that he was more intellectually rounded when he died than the average first-year Harvard or Yale student. The foundation also created the Tupac Amaru

Shakur Center for the Arts, which includes plenty of artwork, books, and music inspired by Tupac plus a Peace Garden. In my opinion, the biggest way 2pac changed America is by making peace among rappers. In the early 1990’s when rap was starting to gain more popularity in the West, a feud started. Rap musicians started insulting other rappers, and soon fans started getting in on it. Eastern and Western gangs started also getting involved, and committing violent acts. Before this elevated too far, a few unfortunate deaths happened that ended it. 2pac was shot the night of a performance and a Mike Tyson fight in Vegas, and Notorious B.I.G. was shot 6 months later. They are known as some of the best rappers of all time, and it was a big loss to the hip-hop community. That was pretty much the end of East versus West, as no one else wanted to lose someone like that. It isn’t a proven fact that Tupac Shakur is dead. He wrote a poem about how his untimely death will occur at a young age, and he claims to have died at 25. Some people still believe he is in hiding, under the name Jamal Millwood. After his death, a lot more albums have been released. For the first album after his death, 2pac’s rap name had been changed to Makaveli. Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher who faked his own death to get his name known to the public, then published two books. The rest of Tupac’s record label claim that he was going to try to make his own label called Makaveli, which is why he changed the name. Why would he pick Makaveli though? He was cremated within a day of when he supposedly died, and there was no autopsy. There is still a five million dollar life insurance of him that has not been collected. He was shot in Las Vegas, which is a place where doctor, lawyers, and a lot of other people accept payoffs. They could’ve been paid off to say that he died. The people who supposedly caught him were never found, and neither was their car. Nobody else around was injured, and there were no witnesses other than those who work with Tupac, even though it was a shooting in the early night at a red light.

Tupac talked about the rose that grew from concrete. You wouldn’t say, “Dang, look at all the scratches on the rose that grew from the concrete.” You would say, “Dang! A rose grew from concrete!” Coming out of a tough life, Tupac Shakur is that rose that grew from the concrete, and everyone needs to stop looking at the scratches. He really was something special, and we just have to hope that he really is Jamal Millwood. If we’re lucky, someday he will come back and rap again.