photo from "Me Against the World"
He died from gunshot wounds he received a few days earlier when him and Suge Knight were cruising the streets of Las Vegas.
2pac was only 25 years old when he died, but he led an interesting life.
He grew up with a single mother who was a civil rights activist who fell on hard times and developed a drug addiction. He moved around a lot when he was a child, going from the various districts of New York City to Baltimore and, as a teenager, to Oakland.
He liked poetry and ballet, both of which are stigmatized by his peers as "soft" and "feminine". To show his peers he wasn't soft, he developed a violent temper that spiraled out of control. As a teenager, he embraced the "thug life", and developed a love of alcohol, weed and guns.
He used his poetic talents to start a rap career. As a rap artist, he had an appeal that very few could match. Whereas some rappers only focus on the same thing (ie. some rappers only do sex songs, others only do gangsta songs, others only do activist songs, etc.), 2pac does it all!
He could show
- a sensitive side ("Dear Mama", "Keep Ya Head Up", "Do 4 Love")
- a fun, playful side ("I Get Around" "All About U", "How Do You Want It?")
- a social activist side ("Changes", "Something 2 Die 4", "White Man'z World")
- and an angry side ("Hit Em Up", "Bomb First", "Papaz Song").
In other words, 2pac expresses all the emotions we feel! He wasn't a one-dimensional rapper, and we're not one-dimensional people. This was what connected many people to 2pac.
But this was also what disappointed many people with 2pac. Many who loved his sensitive and social activists songs were disappointed by his violent angry songs! Many of those people were also heartbroken by 2pac's run-ins with the law.
As mentioned, 2pac had a violent temper, which got him several assault charges. He was known to threaten others with baseball bats, beat up those who offended, and even shot at 2 off-duty police officers.
However, the one allegation that really got him to serve serious jail time was his sexual assault charge. A woman accused him of rape after a night of clubbing. He claimed the sex was consensual. The woman said she was intending to spend the night with just him, but his friends came in to the room and violated her, with him joining in!
Those allegations were so the opposite of what 2pac said in "Keep Ya Head Up", where he said
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up
Because of that song (and his other sensitive songs), many had a hard time believing that 2pac was guilty of those allegations.
But since then, anti-rape activism has gotten stronger. Bill Cosby's reputation has been ruined when multiple women came forward with rape allegations. Stanford swimmer Brock Turner is now a public outcast when he was convicted of rape. Rick Ross had to publicly apologize for a rhyme in which he bragged about drugging a woman's drink. Nate Parker's new film is being boycotted over a rape charge from 1999 that he was acquitted of.
Granted,anyone can make accusations. Some people charged with raped were later found innocent of all charges. Famous cases of that happening included the football player Brian Banks, pundit Tucker Carlson, rapper DMX and the Duke lacrosse players. Unlike Bill Cosby, these guys didn't have a long line of accusers. Neither did 2pac.
Around the same as his trial for sexual assault, 2pac was going to visit a recording studio in which both Notorious BIG & Puff Daddy were present. But in the lobby of that building, 2pac got shot by unknown assailants. 2pac got paranoid and accused both rappers of setting him up to be killed.
Around the same time, he became close friends with Suge Knight, who was the head of Death Row Records, which was the most popular rap record label at the time. The label already had Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg.
While 2pac was in jail, Suge Knight mocked Puff Daddy at an award show, raising tensions between the East Coast & West Coast rap communities.
When 2pac was released from jail, he joined Death Row Records and made his #1 album "All Eyez on Me". It had radio friendly songs ("California Love", "How Do You Want It"), gangsta pride songs ("2 of Amerika's Most Wanted"), sensitive songs ("Life Goes On", "I Ain't Mad at ya!"), and more! It was a certified street classic, and one of the best selling rap albums of all time. It set a standard to which other rap albums are compared to.
Meanwhile, 2pac publicly insulted the Notorious BIG (and anyone associated with him) on the song "Hit Em Up". At awards shows, 2pac & Suge Knight confronted Notorious BIG, Puff Daddy and their Bad Boy crew!
Then it happened. On September 7, 1996, 2pac & Suge Knight were in Las Vegas to cheer on Mike Tyson at a boxing match. After the boxing match, 2pac, Suge Knight and their entourage had their time to fight. Most of the people 2pac & Suge Knight were with were affiliated with the Bloods, and they attacked a person associated with the Crips.
After the fight was broken up, 2pac & Suge Knight were cruising the streets of Las Vegas when 2pac & Suge Knight got shot! 2pac received most of the gunshots and died 6 days later.
Meanwhile Suge Knight was found to have violated probation for the fight in Las Vegas and spent a few years in jail.
Notorious BIG was believed to be responsible for killing 2pac in retaliation for the "Hit Em Up" song. No evidence ever proved that claim. However, he was killed the following year after attending a party in Los Angeles.
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When 2pac died, there was a lot of unreleased music. 2pac was known to spend long hours at the studio every night making new tracks. He had more than enough to fill multiple albums that were released following his death.
Even 2 decades later, his music lives on! Songs like "California Love" still gets played at many nightclubs. Car stereos still play "2 of Amerika's Most Wanted" or "All About U". "Dear Mama" is listed on the Library of Congress national music registry, as well as widely shared on Facebook every Mother's Day!
Rap music has changed since he died! Whereas his era was the era of the "East Coast-West Coast rivalry", the South has since dominated hip-hop by large margins.
Gangsta rap doesn't have the popularity it used to have. Rappers still be rapping about getting drunk, smoking weed and having sex, but there's much less talk about drive-by shootings! Also, the videos are now more likely to take place in mansions & elegant nightclubs rather than poverty-stricken neighborhoods.
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In a few months, the movie about 2pac's life, titled All Eyez on Me will be in theatres, This is coming a year after NWA had their own biopic Straight Outta Compton which itself was a pop-culture phenomenon, with a huge marketing campaign, huge tickets sales, and everyone claiming to be "Straight Outta" somewhere, even if that "somewhere" is a rich suburb or a religious private school.
Straight Outta Compton (the movie) will be a hard act to follow. Time will tell if All Eyez on Me (the movie) will have even near the same impact.
