Tupac Shakur Biography Essay -- essays research papers

Tupac Shakur 1971-1996Born June 16, 1971 in youthful York, unfermented York, United States Died September 13, 1996 in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States Ethnicity African AmericanOccupation Rap Musician, Musician, Actor"Dont shed a tear for me ... / I aint happy here / I hope they bury me and send me to my reliever / Headlines readin murdered to death."--from "If I Die Tonight" on Me against the World (1995) biographical ESSAYWith his tattoo-splattered physique, piercing deep-set eyes, and shaved head, Tupac Amaru Shakur came across as warmness Americas worst nightm ar, the darkest strain of hip-hop. To fans, Shakur was only "thuggin against society, thuggin against the system that made me," as he once rapped. Like some other rappers, Shakur was criticized for his sexist lyrics He keep his mother, Afeni, but was equally capable of debasing women in his music. The contradictions hardly cease there. In his last video, "I Aint Mad at Cha," Shakur-- o verboldly arrived in Heaven--saluted an honest-to-god friend for quitting the "thug life." In "Only God Can judge Me," Shakur foresaw death bearing down on him, yet seemed unable to go his rival, The Notorious B.I.G. and B.I.G.s mentor, Sean "Puffy" Combs. Shakurs "Hit Em Up," the last single issued during his twenty-five-year lifetime, set new highs of profane rage against B.I.G., who was later gunned down after Shakurs own ill-timed death. Yet millions of fans found something meaningful in Shakurs troubled life and lyrics, like a thirty- ii-year-old Detroit accountant buying her first Shakur album. "Ive never supported that gracious of music," she told the Detroit News, "but there was something so tragic about the way he died ... Its almost like Im looking for answers." Politician Jesse Jackson also tried and true to explain Shakurs downfall and apparent appeal, coition the Los Angeles Times "Sometimes the stimulate of v iolent culture is so magnetic that even when one overcomes it with veridical success, it continues to call." Acting bug bit earlyFrom his June 16, 1971, birth in New York City, Shakurs life read much like an epic melodrama. His mother, Afeni, and father, Billy Garland, belonged to the fateful Panthers, a militant group dedicated to achieving racial equality. Just two years earlier, in 1969, Afeni and then... ...s murder, "just a sad, ugly feeling, genuinely creepy, very hollow," he said. "No art, no life, just ashes." Larger-than-lifeVibe main(prenominal) executive Kevin Clinkscales, however, advised fans against anymore "rumor-mongering," which he found disrespectful to Shakurs family. "These are not comic-book heroes," he told USA Today. "These are real people." That said, however, most stand for that Tupac Shakur has won the larger-than-life immortality he craved so much. The sightings and resurrection theories place him in a sele ct club that includes the late Kurt Cobain, Doors singer-poet Jim Morrison, and Elvis Presley. On that score, fans subscribe not fear, as poet Nikki Giovanni acknowledged in her own tribute, "All Eyez on You" "dont tell me he got what he deserved he deserved a chariot and / the accolades of a grateful people / he deserved his life." Nor did Giovanni disclose there, getting her own "Thug Life" tattoo to honor Shakurs memory, telling the Chicago Tribune "Young black men are in a holocaustic situation." So long as that persists, fans insist, Tupac Shakurs musical legacy will be hard to deny.