Tupac Amaru Shakur
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The site is devoted to the Tupac Amaru Shakur
Biography
Tupac Amaru Shakur was born in this world as Lesane Parish Crooks on June 16, 1971. His mother Afeni Shakur (originally named Alice Faye Williams) changed his name sometime after he was born, with Tupac Amaru meaning "shining serpent" and Shakur meaning "thankful to god". Afeni was also a Black Panther and a member of the Panther 21 trial in 1971. They were on trial for an alleged bomb attempt but were acquitted just one month before the birth of her son. Tupac comes from a family of "straight souljahs", as he puts it. He is the god son of now released Political Prisoner; Geronimo Pratt (now known as Geronimo Ji Jagas), the step son of Mutulu Shakur, the nephew of Assata Shakur who is now in exile in Cuba, Mumia Abu Jamal a former member of the Black Panther Party who helped raise 2Pac, and it was later revealed through genetic testing that his biological father is Billy Garland (Political Activist) who in a shameless act, attempted to retrieve half of Tupac's estate in a lawsuit shortly after his unfortunate death. The judge ruled that he deserved nothing after it was evident that in 2Pac's 25 year life, he provided him with a little over $800.00 and a movie ticket. Tupac was born in the Bronx New York. He grew up in a poor and unstable household moving from place to place.
While living in New York, in 1983 Tupac made his acting debut as Travis in a production of Raisin in the Sun, at The Apollo Theater no less. They stayed there until 1986 when the family moved to Baltimore where he met long time friend Jada Pinkett. Tupac wrote his first rap there and became MC New York while attending the Baltimore School for the Arts- "That school was saving me, you know what I'm saying? I was writing poetry and shit and I became known as MC New York, because I was rapping and then I was doing the acting thing."- Tupac once said in an interview.
In the summer of '88 the Shakurs moved to Marin City, a suburb of Oakland. Tupac lived in the ghetto or "The Jungle" which was an area surrounded by posh White neighborhoods. Now in his adolescence, Tupac began hanging out in the streets and was eventually thrown out of his home.
Living with friends and now in actuality homeless, he began selling drugs for money. According to soon to be mentioned friends, Tupac was always into his rapping and determined to get out of the ghetto. He quickly bonded with fellow rappers in the area and was a part of several groups. Tupac met Marku Reynolds who introduced him to his cousin Klark Gable and Darron Page. Dimitrius Striplin and Gable were the two local DJ's and they all got together and became TC (The Crew).
Later Tupac met Terry Agust; he and Terry had a rap battle while they were waiting at a bus stop and when the bus came they called it a tie. They became the One Nation Emcees. While at a park one day, Tupac overheard Leila Steinberg reading a poem by Winnie Mandela. Tupac told her he liked it and they talked for a while. Later Leila offered him a room in her Sonoma County house and Tupac made her the manager of his group with Ray Luv and one of Digital Underground's DJ's, Strictly Dope.
Leila introduced Tupac to Atron Gregory (the manager of Digital Underground) and Atron introduced him to Shock G. He gave Tupac a live audition, liked what he heard, and invited him on tour as a roadie/background dancer. Tupac became a member of Digital Underground in 1990. The first song he rapped on was "Same Song" from the LP "This is an EP Release" and appeared on the LP "Sons of the P". In his movie debut, Tupac played a Rap singer in the movie Nothing But Trouble along with the rest of the Digital Underground members.
On August 15, 1991 Tupac signed a solo deal with Interscope and later that year released his first album "2PACALYPSE Now". This was a solid release which spawned the hit singles "Trapped" and "Brenda's Got A Baby". Just as things couldn't get better for him, Tupac, on advise from his road manager, went along with Money B (D.U. member) who had an audition for a movie. Confident with acting experience behind him, Tupac read cold turkey after seeing a couple of poor auditions by others and got the co-starring role of Roland Bishop in Ernest Dickerson's "Juice" where he plays a respect hungry teenager gone crazy. Tupac and the movie won critical acclaim and people on the street start to associate 2Pac with the character Bishop he played. Along with his new found fame came controversy over some of his more hardcore songs "Souljah Story" and "Violent".
In Texas, a defense lawyer blames the death of a state trooper on 2Pac's album, claiming that 2Pac's songs had induced a teenager to kill him (cause it in his fuckin' tape deck?).
On August 22, 1992 2Pac was to perform at a gathering in Marin City where a 6-year old was shot in the middle of an altercation 2Pac had with someone who didn't like what he said about the town and it's occupants in a recent interview. Tupac was said to have brought a backpack with a gun in it which was evidently used in the shooting resulting in the 6-year olds death. The case was dropped due to lack of evidence.
The next month, then Vice president Dan Quayle denounced the album 2Pacalypse Now, saying it had no place in our society.
Just as the years before, the next couple of years had it's ups and downs for Tupac.
In February 1993 he dropped his second solo CD "Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z." where he fires back at Dan Quayle- "Boom Bang Boom, it's a stick-up, Vice president Dan Quayle eat a dick up!", and featured the singles "Keep Ya Head Up", "Papa's Song", and the classic "I Get Around".
On July 23rd, Tupac appeared in John Singletons "Poetic Justice" along with Janet Jackson. Tupac was nominated for an American Music Award as best new rap or hip hop artist.
On March 13th, Tupac got into an fight with a limo driver in Hollywood, who accused Tupac of using drugs in the car. Tupac got arrested but the charges were dropped. In April Tupac is arrested again in Detroit, this time for taking a swing with a baseball bat at a local rapper during a concert, Tupac got sentenced to 10 days in prison. October 31st Tupac got arrested again, this time for allegedly shooting 2 off-duty Atlanta police officers who were harassing a black motorist, but the charges were eventually dropped due to insufficient evidence.
On November 18, in one of the biggest blows to his career and life, Tupac is arrested and charged with sexual assault after a fan (19-year-old Ayanna Jackson) was raped in his hotel room.
March 10th, 1994 Tupac got arrested once again for punching out director Allen Hughes after he got dropped from the motion picture "Menace II Society" and was sentenced to 15 days in prison. September 7th Two Milwaukee teens murdered a police officer and cited Tupac's "Souljah Story" as their inspiration.
November 30th in a robbery/assassination attempt, Tupac got shot 5 times when he was robbed for about $40,000 of jewelry outside the Quad recording studio in midtown Manhattan, but survived the attack. Tupac checked himself out of the hospital less than 3 hours after surgery and receiving threatening phone calls. He stayed at his actress friend Jasmine Guy's house, the case still remains unsolved. The next day after being shot, Shakur is convicted of sexually abusing the woman in his hotel room. He is acquitted of sodomy and weapons charges. Tupac was sentenced to 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 years in prison. Tupac served 8 months of the sentence in New York's Rikers Island penitentiary. Tupac had permission to play in the basketball drama "Above The Rim" while he was doing time in prison and somehow in the midst of all this released another album with his group THUG LIFE.
Thug Life stemmed from a group and program Tupac had called Underground Railroad (UR). The concept behind it was the same concept as behind Harriet Tubman, "to get my brothers who might be into drug dealing or whatever it is that's illegal or who are disenfranchised by today's society, I want to get them back by turning them into music. Right now we're twenty strong. The people that are in the UR are coming from all over, Baltimore, Marin City, Oakland, New York, Richmond, all over." From UR grew the group Thug Life (2Pac, Syke (Tyruss Himes), Mopreme, The Rated R (Richie Rich) and Macadoshis). Thug Life is what Tupac called his mission for the black community; a support group, rap act and philosophy.
On September 20th 1994, "Thug Life Vol. 1" came out. The idea was that the cd would let gang members escape streetlight by becoming musicians. There were to be several volumes of it, with a new group of members each time. THUG LIFE (as 2Pac stated) stood for: "The Hate U Gave Lil' Infants Fuck Everybody". Tupac also acted in the thriller "Bullet" that year, but because of being "too hardcore" it never got to cinemas but was released on video in 1995.
While locked up in prison, Tupac worked on and released "Me Against The World" on April 1st, 1995, a multi-platinum album which debuted at number one on the charts and stayed there for 4 weeks. This album brought us the hits "Dear Mama", "Temptations" ,and "So Many Tears".
In May Tupac married longtime girlfriend, Keisha Morris and got an annulment soon after his release. He also began getting visits from Suge Knight who had lawyer David Kenner look over all of Tupac's cases. Out of nowhere, on an appeal, when no one else would, Suge Knight put up a $1.4 million bond to bail Tupac out of jail and sign him to a shady three album deal to then the industry's leading Rap label-Death Row Records. The money for Tupac's bail was really from Interscope, Tupac's record label before he signed with Death Row. My guess is that they threw him into Suge's lap, figuring he could better control him, keep him out of trouble, and relieve political pressure on them because of all the controversy.
On the night of After Tupac got signed to Death Row he started a group called Outlaw Immortalz (Makaveli (2Pac), Napoleon, Mussolini, Hussein Fatal, Kastro, E.D.I. Mean, and Kadafi). Tupac didn't let them sign to Death Row, because he "didn't want any of them to live in bondage". Now amongst the likes of super producer Dr. Dre, artists Snoop Doggy Dogg, and The Dogg Pound, 2Pac released an unheard of (for a Rap artist) double CD entitled "All Eyez On Me" on February 13th, 1996. This was probably his best and most controversial album (which sold 5 million albums in three months). He blamed former friend Notorious B.I.G. and his producer and Bad Boy Entertainment CEO, Sean "Puffy Combs for his attack back in '94 and publicly dissed them in interviews and songs which sparked a media hyped-up East Coast-West Coast feud.
2Pac now spoke about being a "ridah", being a Mob type figure, speaking about death as if he wasn't afraid or he was looking forward to it (as he did on "Me Against The World"), and always throwin' up his hands with his middle and ring finger crossed to resemble the letter W which stood for Westside or West Coast, while Biggie and Puffy were from the East Coast.
On March 29th Death Row employees and Bad Boy employees face off in the parking lot at the Soul Train awards in Los Angeles, words were exchanged and a gun was pulled. This from the same artist who brought us "Dear Mama" which should have won a Grammy for song of the year over Coolio's short lived hit "Gangster's Paradise". The East West war came closer to reality when 2Pac released the B-side single "Hit 'Em Up". In this song he dissed and threatened Biggie, Puffy, and many other artists who previously tried to discreetly (mostly in songs) diss him. Biggie blew up while Pac was locked up and released a B-side single "Who Shot Ya" (an obvious diss) not too long after Pac got shot. Biggie also eventually teamed up with rapper Jay-Z on the tacky, but close enough to piss Pac off song, "Brooklyn's Finest". With the help of the media, especially Vibe and The Source more words are exchanged via interviews and tempers flair in the already tense world of Rap.
Since his release and hostile takeover as the once again King of Rap, the entire Bad Boy camp was virtually unheard from for months. Months go by as the make-believe war seemed to die down and by now, Tupac is at the height of his fame with two more finished movies ("Gridlock'd" and "Gang Related") and the Makaveli "The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory" LP soon to be released.
On September 4 Tupac returned to New York for the MTV Music Video Awards and got into a scuffle, adding on to the media's East vs. West theory. On September 7th 1996, after the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon fight, the Death Row entourage beat up Crip gang member Orlando Anderson (now dead also) in the MGM casino for allegedly stealing a gold and diamond encrusted Death Row medallion from an employee.
Later that night a car pulled up next to the car which was driven by Suge with 2Pac in the passenger seat, and fired several shots. Tupac took 4 more bullets in an apparent act of revenge. Suge who was grazed by bullet fragments made a senseless U-turn (there was a hospital in plain view right down the street from the crime scene) and drove wildly to get to a hospital, but he was stopped by the Police who heard the shots and saw him driving recklessly, and an ambulance was on the scene shortly thereafter. That night, and the next six were to be Tupac Shakur's last seven days on earth. On Friday September 13th, at 4:03pm, six days after the shooting, Tupac Shakur was pronounced dead and the Nation is shocked.
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