The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (186 page)

Fast becoming rap’s highestprofile act, 2Pac as a character had few equals within the genre as the nineties reached their halfway mark: he seemed more concerned with enhancing his own legacy than diminishing that of his socalled rivals. But 2Pac found himself recast as hip hop’s new ‘bad boy’ and became embroiled in what many believe to have been an entirely orchestrated feud with The Notorious BIG – the rivalry seemingly nurtured by idle words and the cunning of others.

Tupac Amaru (it’s Inca for ‘shining serpent’) Shakur was renamed by his single mother, Afeni – a former Black Panther who had served time for terrorism while pregnant with him – who told him falsely that his absent father was dead. Her son quickly proved that he was a talented, if wayward soul; indeed, he showed such range in his days at the Baltimore School for the Arts that his tutors believed the young man going by the name ‘MC New York’ could have played Shakespeare. Because of his turbulent family life, though, Shakur was moved to Oakland before he could complete his studies. As he morphed into his alter ego, 2Pac, it became apparent to the young extrovert that music, in particular rap, was the main market for him. After all, he had much material for his lyrics: his stepfather was a wanted narcotics dealer (eventually jailed for sixty years), his mother a confessed addict whose dedication in bringing him up inspired 2Pac’s early career. Alongside the gangsta staples of corrupt cops and ‘booty’, the rapper included veiled references to literature and, particularly on the debut album
2Pacalypse Now
(1991), lyrics that appeared to empathize with subjugated women, which set him apart from the posturing of most of his rivals. Shakur was still keen to prove that he was red-blooded, however, and his numerous girlfriends included actress Salli Richardson, Keisha Morris (to whom he was married for reasons of convenience while in prison) and finally Kidada Jones – daughter of black-music legend Quincy Jones – his room partner on the fateful final night in LA.

While recording his own work – and also with critically acclaimed unit Digital Underground – Shakur gained broader notoriety for his role in the street movie
Juice
(1992), several light years away from the roles hoped for by his Baltimore tutors. But this was who the man now was – a savvy, sharp-tongued operator with fewer scruples but the charisma to elevate him to the pinnacle of his chosen field. (A year on, he featured in
Poetic Justice
alongside Janet Jackson – the actress/singer insisted that her opposite number took an AIDS test before shooting; he refused.) Around this period, Shakur had a notable pair of his many, many altercations with the police: the first saw him win a $42,000 lawsuit after being beaten up for disrespecting Oakland officers; the second was a bizarre incident in which the rapper raced to the rescue of a black motorist in Atlanta, shooting two officers he believed were harassing the young man. In the event, the policemen involved were found to be intoxicated – and all charges against Shakur were dropped. This, of course, elevated him to the position of God among his peers. Shakur’s subsequent incarceration for a sexual-abuse felony – which he denied until his death – did little to undermine their thinking. But, before he could even face the sentence, events took another strange turn: Shakur was shot outside a nightclub during an apparent robbery. He only just escaped with his life (Bad Boy artists renamed him ‘1Pac’ after he lost a testicle) but was imprisoned nonetheless in February 1995. Serving eight months inside Clinton Correctional Facility, Shakur kept busy: he read widely, married Morris and earned the dubious distinction of being the first ever artist to boast a Billboard number-one album while inside (Me
against the World).
The FBI were equally busy, it seems. They had long seen the gangsta movement as a national menace, perhaps even Black Panther-affiliated. It was (allegedly) FBI policy to place undercover officers with jailed felons from the hip-hop community in order to create dissension within their ranks. 2Pac’s followers believe that he was encouraged to think that his erstwhile friend Christopher Wallace (aka rapper The Notorious BIG/Biggie Smalls) had been involved in his attempted murder the previous November. 2Pac – who had countless feuds with fellow artists – created a further rift with his former cronies by switching allegiance from the East Coast to the West, joining Death Row Records in California at the behest of formidable head honcho Marion ‘Suge’ Knight, who was prepared to pay the artist’s bail in return for three albums for his label. Shakur perhaps saw in this man the father figure he had missed in his youth; Knight clearly saw something beyond this kind of relationship. He himself had a long-running feud with Bad Boy (the New York label owned by Puff Daddy, for whom The Notorious BIG recorded), and was believed to have used Death Row (now Tha Row) as an outlet for less-than-legal pursuits. However, while Knight involved himself with these underground activities, Shakur recorded an astonishing amount of material for him – certainly more than three albums’ worth, as would become apparent in the years that followed. Just before his death, the rapper (who had famously predicted his short lifespan) recorded the single ‘I Ain’t Mad Atcha’ and shot a premonitory video depicting himself in heaven jamming with a number of his dead heroes.

Suge’ Knight:
‘You OK, Pac?’

2Pac :
‘Me? You’re the one shot in the motherfuckin’ head!’

So, with all that had gone on before, the events of the night of 7 September had an eerie and depressing inevitability about them. 2Pac and Knight, dressed to the nines, were special ringside guests of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson at his Las Vegas fight with Bruce Seldon. After the fight, Shakur got into a skirmish of his own in the lobby of the MGM hotel, the venue for the spectacle. Recognizing Orlando ‘Baby Lane’ Anderson, who had recently beaten up and robbed one of his bodyguards, Shakur flew at the Compton ‘Crip’ (ie, a gang member affiliated more with Bad Boy than with Death Row, whose protection came from the ‘Bloods’). He was joined by Knight, who, break-ing the terms of his own parole, weighed in with some convincing kicks. Within an hour the smell of revenge was in the air. 2Pac travelled to Knight’s Club 662 (where the artist was apparently due to perform with Run DMC) in the boss’s Sedan, leading a convoy of friends. At an intersection just half a mile from the club, the Sedan was joined by a white Cadillac, from which an occupant aimed a gun at Knight’s car and issued thirteen shots into the vehicle. While Knight suffered only a graze to the head, Shakur, who had attempted to dive into the back, was hit four times – in the chest, arm and thigh. He had not been wearing the regulation bulletproof vest issued him by Death Row. After a series of operations, including one to remove a lung, Tupac Shakur was pronounced dead at 4.03 pm on 13 September – a black Friday that would be long commemorated by his legions of fans.

The Notorious BIG (who had apparently been in Vegas that evening) and Puff Daddy expressed no real surprise at Shakur’s shooting but great shock and regret when he didn’t pull through. The copycat murder of Biggie just months later
(
March 1997)
blew the whole scenario wide open once more, with accusations flying all over. Yet fifteen years on, the truth remains unconfirmed – and will likely remain so, given the number of those involved protected or running scared. Or indeed dead. 2Pac’s longtime pal rapper Yafeu ‘Kadafi’ Fula had been in the convoy and offered to testify to what he saw – but was shot before he could utter a word. Baby Lane was similarly gunned down in 1998. Knight’s detractors maintain that he orchestrated the entire fracas at the MGM, though the huge risk to himself (and his parole terms) make this unlikely; he was, however, known to be concerned by rumours that Shakur wished to return to New York, maybe into the arms of Bad Boy – perhaps out of the rap industry altogether. When interviewed by the ubiquitous Nick Broomfield in San Quentin (where he was serving time for the parole violation), Knight’s emphasis seemed to be more upon the ‘crime’ of snitching than on the proliferation of gun murders within the rap community. (Now released, Knight remains close to controversy: as recently as August 2005, he was shot in the leg at a party for rapper Kanye West.)

2Pac’s mother continues to release her son’s material (some under the alias of Makaveli), and his sales have quintupled since his death. To his mother’s credit, much of the royalty money has been used to found Georgia’s Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts. In 2005, ‘Ghetto Gospel’ gave the star a first UK number one – in the company of the still-very-much-alive Elton John.

OCTOBER

Thursday 17

Chris Acland

(Lancaster, 7 September 1966)

Lush

(Panik/Infection)

The tragic suicide of drummer Chris Acland offers perhaps the ultimate cautionary tale to those seduced by the idea of a career in a rock band. In 1996, Lush had finally graduated from stalwart indie also-rans into a bona fide chart-bothering pop unit, yet Acland was earning barely £ 150 a week when he died. Acland had played in a number of other guitar bands before he and Miki Berenyi formed Lush – Acland, Berenyi (vocals/guitar), Emma Anderson (ditto) and Steve Rippon (bass, replaced by Phil King in 1991) – at North London Polytechnic in 1988. The band had an ethereal sound owing much to the likes of The Cocteau Twins, and indeed shared the latter’s 4AD label. Although Lush had a loyal-enough following, it was clear that it would wane once the shoe-gazing movement of the early nineties had run its course. The gut-punch Britpop gave UK music seemed to change the band’s fortunes for the better: in the mid nineties, they returned with the hit album
Lovelife
(1996) and a run of Top Thirty singles including the sneering, Camden-centric ‘Ladykillers’ – a far cry from the fey soundwashes of yore.

‘Getting in the charts and having your face in the papers doesn’t mean you’ll be up to your eyeballs in cash. If you’re lucky enough to sell millions, then it’ll be record companies, publishers, managers, agents, licensees and PRs that take their slice before any money finds its way to you.’

A sobering warning from Lush’s Miki Berenyi

But despite these successes, Lush were unable to break the US, and the constant touring and promotion came at a price. With Anderson set to quit, all plans were put on hold by the appalling news that followed. Spending a week at his parents’ home in Kendal, Cumbria, Chris Acland was found hanged in their barn. Apparently depressed by his financial and domestic situations (including a distressing split with a girlfriend), Acland had been on prescription sedatives for some time before he took his life. Said Berenyi, ‘Chris’s death finished Lush. He was one of my best friends ever and there was very little else I wanted to do without him.’

NOVEMBER

Saturday 2

Eva Cassidy

(Oxon Hill, Maryland, 2 February 1963)

(Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers)