The Killing of Tupac Shakur (31 page)

Snoop Dogg, a fellow emcee with Tupac at Death Row Records at the time, perhaps said it best.

“People need to let him rest in peace, let that rumor rest in peace,” he told reporters. “Because it’s a hard pill to swallow, people don’t want to accept it. So they gonna keep that myth or that philosophy goin’ on as long as they can, because his music lives on and he’s a legend, you know what I’m sayin’? When you make legendary music, people don’t want to believe you’re gone, like Elvis. They keep sayin’, ‘Elvis ain’t dead,’ but it’s just all about the individual himself. He was a legend, and everybody don’t wanna let it go.”

Since his death, Tupac has been called a black prince, a revolutionary, an icon for Generation X, a hip-hop Lazarus, a brotha for black America.

Some see only the tattoos and the jewelry—the body language—as a way of describing him. Or the angry words and the defiant message. They can’t get past his persona.

Still others see Tupac as the young Malcolm X, speaking for young black America, the voice they couldn’t find for themselves.

And others see him as the most talented singer ever to take the rap-music industry by storm.

To many, Tupac Shakur was a figure of violence, who became a victim of the same violent gang culture he glorified—shot down on the streets of Las Vegas in a gangland-type killing.

His friend, boxer Mike Tyson, told
Playboy
magazine five years after Tupac’s death that he remembered him mostly for his “misplaced loyalty.”

“He was around people who were into drugs,” Tyson said, “but that wasn’t who he was. He was a good person. He got a lot of bad rap. I’ve never seen a good rapper with a good image. They’re good guys, though.”

Those who knew Tupac best saw him as a force moving
toward the truth, cut down too soon, before he could mature and reach his full potential, before he’d had a chance to come into his own. He was young, not yet matured, they said. They felt his anger, his frustration, his pain. They have called him the ‘90s Elvis, or have likened him to John Lennon, or Jimi Hendrix, or Jim Morrison, or Sammy Davis Jr., or any other famous singers who were symbols of something larger than themselves.

“To me, I feel that my game is strong,” Tupac told writer Tony Patrick. “I feel as though I’m a shining prince, just like Malcolm, and feel that all of us are shining princes, and if we live like shining princes, then whatever we want can be ours.” Tupac considered his music spiritual, like the old Negro hymns. “Except for the fact that I’m not saying, ‘We shall overcome,’” he explained, “I’m saying, ‘We are overcome.’”

Many people believe Tupac was a promising talent who wound up a casualty of a society that destroys black youth, males in particular. It’s not just a belief among many that the black man in America today is an endangered species. Statistics back it up. If the drugs don’t get them, the violence will. And if the violence doesn’t get them, cops and the justice system eventually bring them down.

Writer Kevin Powell elaborated: “There’s a perception in the black community that if you’re young and black and male, and happen to be making lots of money, you are vulnerable to attacks from the system or the powers that be.”

“You know what I think?” E-40, a San Francisco rapper who once recorded with Tupac, asked
Spin
magazine. “Tupac is looking down on us, saying, ‘Y’all don’t know what you’re missing up here.’ We the ones in hell.”

The killing of Tupac Shakur heightened the debate about whether gangsta rap promotes violence or is just a reflection of the ugly mood on the streets. A dark aura of violence looms over the hip-hop music industry. To some, Tupac, with his tattoos that promoted firearms, had it coming. To others, his songs spoke against the gun culture of the ghetto.

In “Young Niggaz,” he sang, “Don’t wanna be another
statistic out here doin’ nothing’/Tryin’ to maintain in this dirty game/Keep it real and I will even if it kills me/My young niggaz stay away from dumb niggaz/Put down the gun and have some fun, nigga.”

After Biggie Smalls was shot to death, Quincy Jones, who might have become Tupac’s father-in-law had Tupac survived, wrote in
Vibe
magazine, “When will it end? When will the senseless killing of our hip-hop heroes cease? I thought Tupac’s death was going to be the end of it, but the psycho-drama keeps going. The murder of Christopher Wallace ... is the latest in what is becoming a pathetic string of deaths in and around the rap community. And the speed with which the media turned this unnecessary tragedy into evidence of a ‘Rap War,’ a ‘Slay Revenge,’ makes me worry that we haven’t heard the last shots ring out yet.

“I love hip-hop. To me, it is a kindred spirit to beebop, the music that started my career. But I also know history. The gangster lifestyle that is so often glorified and heralded in this music is not ‘keeping it real’; it is fake, not even entertainment. A sad farce at best and a grim tragedy at worst.

“‘Real’ is being shot five times with ‘real’ bullets. ‘Real’ is having a promising life ended at 24 years of age by somebody you might call ‘brother.’ If that’s keeping it real, it is up to all of us to redefine what ‘real’ means to the Hip Hop Nation. ... Ultimately, love is real.”

In another statement, this one a news release issued the day after Biggie’s death, Quincy Jones said he was “absolutely stunned.”

“This death, as well as the death of Tupac Shakur, Eazy-E [from AIDS], Marvin Gaye [murdered by his own father], and so many more young people who we never hear about, are senseless acts that should never have happened.

“I spent my formative years growing up in ‘Gangster Central’ on the Southside of Chicago, so I am no stranger to random violence. If life continues to imitate art this way, it will result in self-inflicted genocide. We all need to reevaluate what our priorities are or else we have nothing to look forward
to except more of this madness.”

He said he had developed a “close personal relationship” with “the superstar rappers” over the last 10 years. “It’s witnessing their genius and compassion that makes incidents such as these particularly disturbing to me,” he said.

• • •

No public funeral service was ever held for the slain Tupac Shakur. This was at the request of his family, who said he would not have wanted one. In fact, the family told reporters that Tupac had talked about his death and had specifically stated that he did not want a funeral if he were to die. In high school he told friends they could snort his ashes and get high off of him. His mother took his ashes home to Georgia to the house Tupac had bought for her (through Death Row). Later, she scattered them over a neighborhood park in Los Angeles.

Spontaneous celebrations of Tupac’s life were held all over the country. At the Civic Center in Atlanta, Georgia, friends remembered him shortly after his death. They called it “Keep Ya Head Up! The Celebration of Tupac Shakur,” a three-hour tribute of speeches, poetry readings, dance, and music.

“I know people are sad, but I am here and we are here to celebrate Pac and continue on with his spirit,” Afeni Shakur said of her son.

Shock G and Money-B, members of Digital Underground where Tupac’s professional music career began, issued this statement:

“If you want to mourn, do it for you own personal loss. Don’t mourn for Pac. Remember him for his art and don’t be sad for his death. Pac lived a short, fast, concentrated, and intense life. He lived a 70-year life in 25 years. He went out the way he wanted, in the glitter of the gangsta life, hit record on the chart, new movie in the can, and money in the pocket. All Pac wanted was to hear himself on the radio and see himself on the movie screen. He did all that—and more.”

Tupac was also mourned at his boyhood church, the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church in Brooklyn, New York, which he joined at age 15 with his mother and sister. Tupac left Brooklyn in his teens, but was still listed as a member of the congregation until his death.

“Who will weep for Tupac Shakur?” the Reverend Herbert Daughtry asked mourners at the memorial service. “I will weep for Tupac. I will weep for all our youth.

“He had the genes, he had the ability. Could we have provided the society that would have made him blossom?”

Daughtry said that Tupac’s self-proclaimed ambition to be a revolutionary against injustice to blacks “was just as real as Martin’s and Malcom’s,” referring to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

“I know that there are those who say he went about it the wrong way, joining the ‘gangsta’ culture he glorified in his lyrics,” Daughtry said. “But it’s not for me to judge.”

Mikal Gilmore, in a
Rolling Stone
article shortly after Tupac’s death, wrote that he suspected “Shakur’s death will be cited as justification for yet another campaign against hardcore rap and troublesome lyrics.

“So a man sings about death and killing, and then the man is killed,” he wrote. “There is a great temptation for many to view one event as the result of the other. And in Tupac Shakur’s case, there are some grounds for this assessment. He did more than sing about violence; he also participated in a fair amount of it. As Shakur himself once said, in words that
Time
magazine appropriated for its headline covering his murder: ‘What goes ‘round comes ‘round.’ Still, I think it would be a great disservice to dismiss Shakur’s work and life with any quick and glib headline summations. It’s like burying the man without hearing him.”

Writer Kevin Powell put Tupac’s life and death in perspective when he eulogized Tupac in the same issue of
Rolling Stone.

“He was a complex human being; both brilliant and fooling; very funny and deadly serious; friendly and eager to
please, but also bad-tempered and prone to violence; a lover of his people and of women, but also a peace divider and a convicted sex offender; generous to a fault but also a dangerous gambler when it came to his personal and professional life; incredibly talented but at times frivolously shortsighted. To me, Shakur was the most important solo artist in the history of rap, not because he was the most talented (he wasn’t), but because he, more than any other rapper, personified and articulated what it was to be a young black man in America.

“But the demons of Shakur’s childhood—the poverty, the sense of displacement, the inconsistent relationship with his mother, the absence of a regular father figure—haunted the rapper all his life. In his song, ‘Dear Mama,’ he sings, ‘When I was young, me and my mama had beefs/Seventeen years old, kicked out on the streets.’

“Now that Tupac Shakur is gone, some will charge that it was the music that killed him or that he had it coming because of the choices he made in his life. Those are cop-out, knee-jerk responses. Shakur, in spite of his bad-boy persona, was a product of a post-civil rights, post-Black Panther, post-Ronald Reagan American environment. We may never find out who killed Tupac Shakur, or why he did the things he did and said what he said. All we have left are his music, his films, and his interviews. Shakur lived fast and hard, and he has died fast and hard. And in his own way, he kept it real for a lot of folks who didn’t believe that anyone like him (or like themselves) could do anything with his life.”

Keisha Morris, Tupac’s ex-wife with whom he remained friends, told
People
magazine, in an issue released while Tupac was still in a coma, “He’s an entertainer, not a gangster. As a person, Tupac is very misunderstood.” After his death, Keisha told
Rolling Stone
, “I thought he was going to walk out of the hospital just like he did before.”

“At the end ... you kind of had that feeling he was going to die, according to his preaching,” writer Tony Patrick said in
Thug Immortal
. “He seemed to have taken up power and weapons, his posse lifestyle, as his deity. Tupac went from
one extreme to the other. There was really no middle ground with him. It was age without maturity, knowledge without wisdom, order turning to chaos. Tupac Shakur should stand as a living testament in the Hip Hop Nation as the pinnacle of greatness achieved, but at the same time, the frailties of human weakness and tragedy.”

His stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, penned a letter, “To My Son,” from inside a Florence, Colorado, federal penitentiary, the night Tupac died. Excerpts were reprinted on the Internet by Double J Productions.

“I love you whenever, forever. Tupac, so much I needed to say, so much you wanted to say. Many conversations between us within the other ...

“The pain inflicted that scarred your soul but not your spirit gave force to the rebellion. Many couldn’t see your dreams or understand your nightmares. How could they, Tupac? I knew your love and understood your passion. But you knew of your beginning and saw your end, racing towards it.

“You taught and fought through your songs and deeds.
Ratt-tatt-tatt
of words penetrating the contradiction of our existence ...

“Who cares? We cared, Tupac. The Shakurs have been guided by struggle, prepared or not, whenever, forever. We’ve exposed our existence, naked from fear, to those who would hear the positive. Who would witness the stress, wear and tear of this lonely path? You couldn’t have evaded the effect or the changes. You inherited it; it was in your genes.

“Friday the 13th didn’t mean a thing. Life is for living and dying well ... You understand the pain of disappointment in the ones we love. You pushed so many away. Burnt so many bridges so they wouldn’t follow you into battles against the demons you were facing. Knowing well to what lengths you would go. This battlefield of reality is littered with many meaningless casualties.

“You never yelled out, ‘Somebody, save me!’ You only asked for your soul to be free, whenever, forever. You told us to keep our head up, knowing the pain was coming. Knowing
to look for the strength in the heavens. Set your soul free, Tupac Amaru.

“The victories—we will teach your mission. We are thankful for you. We love you, Tupac Shakur. We ain’t mad at you. We’ll be better because of you.

“So now I give you my tears so I might assimilate your loss and I can live on in peace.

“Knowing I will feed your spirit with unconditional love, knowing you will need it on your next journey. May Allah bless you for your deeds and forgive your errors. Tupac, come to me and give me strength.