The Killing of Tupac Shakur (13 page)

In 1986, Tupac and his friends in the Jungle formed a rap group and named it Two From the Crew. They wrote songs, including “Lifestyles of the Poor and Homeless,” “Let’s Get
It On,” and “Get Ourselves the Girls.” Their theme song and what would later become Tupac’s anthem was titled “Thug Life,” so named because people in the neighborhood referred to the teenagers as young thugs. Tupac said his music showed how he and others like him lived. The lyrics about violence involving police, for example, were based on actual stories of what young black men faced in the ghetto. His thug-life image, for which he later became famous, was born.

“You were just giving truth to the music,” Tupac later told San Francisco’s KMEL deejay Sway. “Being in Marin City was like a small town, so it taught me to be more straightforward with my style. Instead of being so metaphorical with the rhyme, I was encouraged to go straight at it and hit it dead on and not waste time trying to cover things. In Marin City, everything was straightforward. Poverty was straightforward. There was no way to say ‘I’m poor,’ but to say ‘I’m poor.’”

He would not be poor much longer.

While tupac’s friends in the Jungle rapped with him for the fun of it, they later said that rap was Tupac’s obsession, even as a teenager. Tupac got his foot in the door of the professional music world when he met Leila Steinberg, a young white woman, at a San Francisco park. They became fast friends and Tupac made her his manager. Leila, a part-time teacher at Bayside Elementary, a school near the Jungle, introduced Tupac to poetry readings.

Also a show promoter, Leila was already working with a rapper named Ray Love. She introduced Tupac to Ray. The two began rapping together as the group Strictly Dope. Tupac moved into Leila’s house in Sonoma County, and his public life began.

Leila introduced him to Atron Gregory, the manager of the Grammy-nominated Digital Underground, a seminal Bay Area rap ensemble. One of the things that attracted Atron to Tupac was that Tupac’s lyrics and rhymes were straight from the street. It was what Tupac called “keepin’ it real, keepin’ it street.”

Tupac started out in 1989 at eighteen as a roadie and tour dancer and worked his way up to rapper, debuting on the
Sons of The P.
album. Tupac was a “humpty-hump” dancer on stage, performing while the singers, including Queen Latifah
and Shock G, rapped. Shock G started letting Tupac rap on stage and eventually on an album. Tupac continued rapping with Digital Underground under the moniker MC New York, and went on a world tour with the group.

After the tour, Tupac rented his own apartment in Oakland. He’d earned enough money to buy a lime-green Toyota Celica. He also spent some money on firearms. His friends often visited his apartment to “kick it,” listen to Tupac’s music, smoke blunts, and handle his new guns. His personal arsenal included 12-gauges, a Glock 9, and an AK-47. Tupac felt he was on his way up. After all, he had the possessions to prove it. But he still went back to the Jungle regularly to visit his friends, proudly driving through the projects in his bright green car.

Soon, he’d recorded enough songs for a solo album, but he couldn’t get a record company to release it. One of the labels that rejected him was Tommy Boy Records.

“He was funny, adorable, a real flirt,” Tommy Boy Records president Monica Lynch told William Shaw for an article in
Vanity Fair
. “But as an artist, he wasn’t there.”

By this time, 1990, gangsta was in style, hot, especially in L.A. Dr. Dre was living there, and so were Snoop Dogg, Eazy-E, lce-T, and Ice Cube. Gangsta had become popular with young West Coast whites as well as blacks. L.A. was the place to be. Tupac eventually would get there. In the meantime, other opportunities started to come his way.

While waiting for a record deal, Tupac went along with his friend Money-B on an audition for a movie called
Juice,
a coming-of-age drama. Money-B was trying out for the part of a punk named Bishop, but he didn’t do well. Tupac asked to audition. The producer, Neil Moritz, agreed to let him read. He was “dynamic, bold, powerful, magnetic—any word you want to use,” Moritz later said. “Tupac was it. We cast him right on the spot.”

They shot Tupac’s part in Harlem with Spike Lee’s cinematographer Ernest Dickerson directing. Moritz congratulated
Tupac after his performance and told him, “Ten years from now, you’re going to be a big star.”

“Ten years from now,” Tupac responded, “I’m not going to be alive.”

Juice
marked another turning point in Tupac’s life. He not only was a rising rap star, but a movie star to boot. In interviews for a video biography about Tupac,
Thug Immortal,
his friends said that before Tupac had made his first movie, there had been a softer side to him. But while playing the role of Bishop, a street-smart hard-core thug, it was as if Tupac decided to
become
the character. He took on the persona of Bishop and began talking and acting tough. His friends said he wasn’t really like that, he was just trying to look hard, because he thought it was expected of him as a thug rapper. His friends later described him as a chameleon, becoming whatever he thought those around him wanted him to be.

It was about that time that Tupac had the words “THUG LIFE” tattooed across his midriff. He later claimed Bishop was just a reflection of one type of young black male during that particular time; he said that not all young black males were violent. He pointed out that the role of Lucky, which he played in the film
Poetic Justice,
was just the opposite, that of a young black man who was a parent, lived at home, and was working to get ahead. Still, Tupac appeared to identify more with Bishop than Lucky.

Atron Gregory, in the meantime, was trying to set up a deal with Interscope Records, an independent label owned by department-store heir Ted Field (heir to the Marshall Field fortune) and Jimmy lovine, a former John Lennon record producer. At the time, Interscope was in a partnership with Warner Music Group, a subsidiary of Time Warner. Interscope president Tom Whalley signed Tupac to Interscope. Interscope and Gregory sealed a deal for Tupac’s debut album,
2pacalypse Now
. Released in 1992, it went on to sell $90 million worth of albums.

“Right away you could tell that this guy [Tupac] was different from the rest of the world,” Whalley told
Vanity Fair’s
William Shaw. “I couldn’t slow him down. I never worked with anyone who could write so many great songs so quickly.”

Tupac’s rap had a fresh voice, a fresh style on the gangsta scene. There was a softness behind his bad-boy persona. He had an emotional depth that was revealed in the more contemplative lyrics in his music. But beneath the surface, he was an angry young man, haunted by demons from his youth that surfaced in his tougher lyrics.

He demonstrated his unique range as a performer on
2pacalypse Now
. The record included militant lyrics depicting violence between young black men and the police, drawing on the gang culture of South Central Los Angeles and Compton. The hit single “Brenda’s Got A Baby,” with its references to cops being killed, caused an uproar. Then-Vice President Dan Quayle singled out the album, criticizing it for its encouragement of violence, cop killing, and its disrespect for women. Quayle, in his war against the breakdown of traditional values in the entertainment industry, used Tupac as an example, saying that Tupac’s lyrics had “no place in our society.” Bolstered by the invaluable publicity, the CD catapulted Tupac’s career into star territory. He was nominated that year for an American Music Award as best new rap hip-hop artist.

In the video biography,
Thug Immortal
, writer Tony Patrick described Tupac as charismatic.

“There was something special about him,” Patrick said. “You saw it in his records. I saw it a little bit more in his movies. He had that glow. He had that charisma. There was no one else who looked like him. He had the eyebrows. He had the cheekbones. You know, handsome. Sometimes when you saw him sitting there introspective, if you were a woman you wanted to go over there and ask him, ‘Pac, what’s wrong? What can I do for you, baby?’ He had that special glow about him that attracted you to him right away.”

While
2pacalypse Now
was still on the charts, Tupac’s film debut in
Juice
hit screens around the country.
Juice
director Ernest Dickerson spoke to MTV about what it was like directing the rap star. Dickerson described Tupac as a thinking man.

“I think that he’s very introspective,” he said. “I mean, when we were shooting
Juice
, in between takes he would spend a lot of time by himself, writing. You know, he thinks a lot. He thinks about what’s going on in the world, he thinks about what’s going on in the neighborhoods, and he talks about it in his music. The thing that I really got from Tupac was that he was always thinking, always at work. His mind was always going.”

In early 1992, after the filming of
Juice
wrapped up, Tupac and longtime friend Charles “Man-Man” Fuller moved from northern California to South Central L.A. Tupac began taking target practice at shooting ranges and working out with weights. His success continued to soar.

Tupac’s critical acclaim for
Juice
led to his second movie role, co-starring as Lucky opposite Janet Jackson in
Poetic Justice.
Director John Singleton also praised Tupac’s acting abilities. Singleton told
Vibe
magazine, “He’s what they call a natural. You know, he’s a real actor. He has all these methods and everything, philosophies about how a role should be played.”
(Vibe
magazine has since published a collection of interviews titled
Tupac Amaru Shakur 1971-1996.)

“When I saw
Juice,
Tupac’s performance jumped out at me like a tiger. Here was an actor who could portray the ultimate crazy nigga. A brother who could embody the freedom that an ‘I-don’t-give-a-fuck’ mentality gives a black man. I thought,
This was some serious acting.
Maybe l was wrong.

“During the filming of
Poetic Justice,
Pac both rebelled [against] and accepted my attitude toward him as a director [and] advisor. This was our dance in life and work. We’d argue, then make up. Tupac spoke from a position that cannot be totally appreciated unless you understood the pathos of being a nigga, a displaced African soul, full of power, pain, and passion, with no focus or direction for all that energy except his art.”

Writer Veronica Chambers was on the set of
Poetic Justice
at the invitation of Singleton, who’d asked her to author a behind-the-scenes book. In an
Esquire
article published after
Tupac’s death, she reported that “Tupac had a hard time following the rules.”

“Half the time, there were no problems at all,” she wrote, “but it wasn’t unusual for Tupac to get high in his trailer, to be hours late to the set in the morning, or to get pissed off for what seemed like no reason at all. Once, toward the end of the shoot, Tupac was told he could have a day off. That morning, the producers decided that they would shoot publicity stills and called Tupac to the set. He arrived with his homeboys and began screaming, ‘I can’t take this shit. Y’all treat a nigga like a slave.' )He stormed off to his trailer and promptly punched in a window.

“It certainly wasn’t the first time a star has had a fit on a set. But Tupac was a young black male with more than a little street credibility. At the time, nobody knew how far he was willing to take his mantras about living a ‘thug life.’ There was indignation on the set about being blasted by some young punk, but there was also fear, fear both
of
Tupac and
for
Tupac. I believe this was a pattern of concern that those around him felt right up until his death.”

In late 1993, Tupac, his stepbrother Mopreme (a.k.a. Maurice Harding), and three others recorded
Thug Life, Volume 1
. It was hard-core rap. The album went gold.

• • •

Tupac had escaped life in the ghetto, but he couldn’t seem to get the ghetto out of his life. As he experienced firsthand the tough gansta life he rapped about, his personal rap sheet grew. 0053tarting in 1992, when Tupac was charged with battery for slapping a woman who asked for his autograph, criminal charges and civil lawsuits loomed over him like a dark cloud. At one point, Tupac was scheduled for court dates in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, and Detroit, all within a two-week period. He was doing his part to live up to the bad-boy image he’d cultivated for himself.

Mopreme has said that when Tupac’s second solo album
with Interscope,
Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z
., was released in 1994 with a red cover, everyone assumed Tupac had become a member of the Bloods, since red is its color. While he sometimes hung out with Bloods, Tupac also on occasion hung out with Crips. But Tupac came to be identified with the Bloods, especially after he signed on with Death Row Records, run by Suge Knight, whose connection to the Bloods ran deep. Tupac’s affiliation came back to haunt him in the scuffle at the MGM Grand with Orlando Anderson, who police said was a member of the rival Crips.

In 1992, Tupac was involved in a civil wrongful-death lawsuit after a six-year-old boy was killed at a northern California festival celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Marin City neighborhood, or the Jungle, where Tupac had spent his teenage years. The boy was caught in gunfire between a member of Tupac’s crew and a rival gang member. Interscope Records, under which Tupac was recording at the time, settled with the boy’s family out of court for nearly a half-million dollars. While Tupac had to pay the half-million because of the civil court order, he was never criminally charged.

Then, on Monday, April 5, 1993, Tupac was arrested and accused of trying to hit a fellow rapper with a baseball bat at a concert at Michigan State University. The incident was triggered when Tupac got angry on stage and threw a $670 microphone that belonged to the group MAD. Rapper Chauncey Wynn publicly objected to Tupac’s behavior. A near-riot broke out when the audience stormed the entertainers; security guards and police had to clear more than 3,000 people from around the stage.