For some, the agreement that (New York, USA, who died at the age of 25 in 1996) signed with the record label Death Row Records represented his death sentence. For the rapper, it meant freedom. Shakur had been in jail for eight months, guilty of sexually abusing a woman between him and other men. On October 12, 1995, the artist known as 2Pac was released from prison after the head of the record company paid bail of almost one and a half million dollars, with the commitment to record three albums for the label. The next day, he got to work and went to the studio to start the sessions for his most ambitious work: All Eyez On Me, double album of 27 tracks and more than two hours long. Released in February 1996, thirty years ago, it earned excellent reviews and remains the best-selling album of his career, considered one of the best in the history of the genre.
During his confinement, 2Pac had become the first artist to achieve number one sales while in prison: Me Against The World (1995), recorded in the weeks prior to his entry, unseated everyone from the top of the charts. The hopes that success would help him straighten out his career and rebuild his life dissipated when he decided to associate himself with one of the most toxic and reviled characters on the scene at that time, the boss of Death Row. A great reference to the hip-hop of the American West Coast (the Californian environment), where Dr. Dre, MC Hammer and Big Daddy Kane were active, Death Row was preceded by the terrifying history of the ringleader, which included extortion, drug trafficking, beatings and criminal association.
On the other side, on the east coast, with the authority that New York was given as the cradle of that music and culture, stood Bad Boy, the record company of Not only were they commercial rivals. His signature artist, , had gone from friend to declared enemy of 2Pac following the shooting suffered in November 1994, which the singer of California Love believed, without apparent evidence, related to the Notorious circle.
When, in prison, 2Pac learned of the song (Who Shot You?), published in February 1995, where it seemed that Biggie was mocking the incident, the rapper prepared his response. Suge Knight would be happy to capitalize on it to deal a blow to New Yorkers. They were entering a phase of total war.
Born to fight
A notable difference between 2Pac and Notorious, beyond the deterioration of their friendship, was the former’s interest in social issues, chronicling the experiences of a black citizen growing up in a country like the United States. That spirit of standing up and denouncing injustice had been incubated at home. In the documentary Tupac: Resurrection (2003), nominated for an Oscar, a first-person biographical narrative of 2Pac was constructed from fragments of interviews, where one of the first lapidary phrases he blurted out was: “My fetus was already in jail.” He was referring to the stay in prison of his pregnant mother, Afeni Shakur, due to her militancy in the prison and an alleged conspiracy to attack police stations, something that was proven to have been fabricated by police officers infiltrated in the anti-racist movement.
Afeni Shakur later dedicated herself to advising residents of the Bronx neighborhood and offering support in matters of labor law, although little by little she ended up hooked on crack. His erratic behavior and the absence of a father, whom he only saw a few times in his life and did not legally recognize him, caused him to go through an unstable childhood, although he supported his mother in her efforts to rehabilitate herself and would dedicate a song to her praising her fighting spirit. .
These raw experiences, far from leading him to marginality, were the basis for the conscious discourse that he used as a teenager, to the surprise of his teachers, about social inequalities and the situation of abandonment on the part of the black population. 2Pac would go so far as to say that his lyrics fulfilled the same function as the reports that showed the hell of the Vietnam War, by revealing to the world the reality of the ghettos. The first single of his career was a statement. Far from the coordinates of what any station would see as commercial, the song told the story based on real events of a 12-year-old girl pregnant by her cousin who, out of shame, hides the baby, throws it in the trash and tries to get money from cocaine and prostitution.
In the film also titled All Eyez On Me (2017), the singer’s first moments of success are viewed with suspicion by Afeni: he alerts him that power has the capacity not to destroy its insurgents, but to give them the tools to self-destruct. He spoke from experience. Although the film disappointed fans due to the weak representation of one of the most charismatic personalities in rap, a parallel was proposed between the counterintelligence work carried out to dismantle the Black Panthers and the silent penetration of the repressive tentacles into the protest scene.
The artist had several clashes with the police, from the beating he received at the hands of some officers for crossing the street without using the pedestrian crossing to a shooting of which he was acquitted, because the officers were carrying stolen weapons and had lied during the investigation. 2Pac also believed that Jacques Agnant, one of the sex offenders who was with him the night he served time, was an undercover federal agent. Despite this, in Death Row there was an unusual coexistence with other police officers who earned another salary offering security to the mobster Suge Knight and his record company. Some had been sentenced for corruption. The small device intended to protect 2Pac on the night of his murder has given rise to theories about alleged plans, something fueled by the feeling that the authorities put little effort into investigating: the shooting that ended Shakur’s life took place on September 7, 1996, but .
The day of his murder, Tupac watched a fight with Suge Knight in Las Vegas. Later, accompanied by more people related to the capo, they had an altercation with a certain Orlando Anderson, whom Tupac attacked due to the alleged theft of a friend’s chain. Anderson belonged to a gang, the Crips, at odds with the Bloods, a Los Angeles group to which Knight was attached, which had as many thugs from that tribe on Death Row. Later, Tupac was traveling as co-pilot in a car with Knight to continue the party, when, at a traffic light, another vehicle with four occupants stopped next to him and fired shots. Knight was superficially wounded, but the rapper would die six days later, on September 13, in the hospital. Both this murder and that of The Notorious BIG, a year later, were part of the war between the coasts, to which 2Pac had added fuel that summer with Hit ‘Em Up, aggressive song against his colleague, where he boasted of having slept with his wife.
Police never linked 2Pac’s death to the previous incident. Everything took a turn when a former member of the Crips, Duane Davis, considered a person of interest for years, had the idea of publishing his memoirs. In Compton Street Legend (2019) happily recounted how he obtained the murder weapon, how he had provided it to his nephew (none other than Orlando Anderson, who died in another shooting in 1998) and who was in the Cadillac from which 2Pac was shot. Las Vegas police now maintain that Anderson was the murderer, with revenge as a motive, and Davis the mastermind. The gang member, in prison without bail, is awaiting trial, although he has recanted and assured that he wrote the book for fame.
Thug life
Suge Knight’s possible involvement has been a source of speculation ever since. 2Pac did his part: he delivered three albums, the two that included All Eyez On Me and another who wanted to publish under the stage name Makaveli, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, which was released posthumously in November 1996. Among the suggested reasons is 2Pac’s desire to regain his independence once the agreement is completed or a desire to monetize the martyrdom of his most famous artist. Figures like Snoop Dogg (whose first joint, he has admitted, was given to him by 2Pac) have pointed to Knight as responsible. His refusal to cooperate – he has ruled out that Anderson was the murderer, but he also did not want to testify about it – or a resume that only gets worse – he is now in prison for murder – underpin this belief. However, he has not been charged nor is there convincing evidence against him, who has always maintained that he was the real target of the murderers.
The other head of the coastal war, Sean Combs, is not doing any better. Davis, who was arrested as the intellectual author of the murder, accused him of financing the infrastructure of the crime. Since 2018, Combs has begun to be seen as the sinister character he was: he is serving a prison sentence for and facing hundreds of lawsuits from people for drugging and abusing them, many of them minor at the time of the events. Two years ago, another woman filed a complaint of sexual assault, ill-treatment, illegal detention and kidnapping against him, for: she joked suggesting that Combs was 2Pac’s killer, but the producer flew into a rage and brutally attacked her.
The rhetoric that 2Pac raised around the thug life (thug life) is often used against him to describe his descent into hell. But, as he explained in interviews, thug life It was not about promoting crime, but about appropriating the label that white power attached to black people or justifying acts of necessity, such as self-defense or theft. His chiaroscuros are what has made it so difficult over time to encapsulate what the rapper really represented, beyond his boundless influence.
One of the authors who has achieved this best has been the Italian Antonio Solinas, responsible for the graphic novel Tupac Shakur: Only God can judge me (published in Spain by La Otra H in 2022). “Tupac was a complex character,” Solinas tells ICON. “Poet and gangster, generous friend and ruthless enemy, lover of women but also a little misogynist, street rapper but also activist. In the case of Tupac, paradoxically, at mainstream American found it easier to sell the role of nihilistic gangster than that of political activist and, therefore, the system little by little denatured that most indomitable part of his speech. I think that, beyond the lessons that must be learned from Pac’s tragic end, it is enough to look at his work (and what is happening these days in the United States) to understand how necessary it is to always reason in political terms regarding American dysfunctions.
