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| Birth Name(s) : Tupac Amaru Shakur |
Date of Birth: June 16, 1971 |
| Status:
N/A
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Partner:
N/A |
| Profession:
Actor/Musician |
Official Site
Go to the Tupac Shakur Official Homepage |
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Full Tupac Shakur Biography
Born Tupac Amaru Shakur in New York City he grew up primarily on the streets of Oakland, California. His first breakthrough in music came in 1991 as a member of the group Digital Underground. In the same year he recieved individual recognition for his album "2Pacalypse Now" - but this album was also the beginning of his notoriety as a leading figure of 'gangsta rap' with references to cop killing and sexual violence. His solo movie career also began in this year with Juice (1992), and in 1992 he co-starred with Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice (1993).
But law confrontations were soon to come; a 15 day jail term in 1994 for assault and battery, and in 1995 a conviction for sexual assault of a female fan. He was released after serving 8 months pending an appeal, but following the Tyson vs Seldon fight in Las Vegas he was hit by four bullets while riding in a car driven by Death Row Records chief executive 'Marion "Suge" Knight'. His right lung was removed in emergency surgery, and after 6 days in a medical coma he died. |
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Additional Tupac Shakur Biography
Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known by his stage names 2Pac, Makaveli, or simply Pac, was an American artist renowned for his rapping and hip hop music, as well as his movie roles, poetry, and his social activism. He is recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest-selling rap artist, with over 75,000,000 albums sold worldwide, including over 50,000,000 in the United States alone. Most of Shakur's songs are about growing up around violence and hardship in ghettos, racism, problems in society, and sometimes qualms with other rappers. Shakur's work is known for advocating political, economic, social, and racial equality as well as his raw descriptions of violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and conflicts with the law. Many fans, critics, and industry insiders rank him as the greatest rapper ever.
In October 1993, in Atlanta, Georgia, Shakur shot two off-duty police officers (one in the leg, one in the buttocks) who were harassing a black motorist. Charges against Shakur were dismissed when it was discovered that both officers were intoxicated and were in possession of stolen weapons from an evidence locker during the occasion.
At the time of the shooting, Shakur was riding alongside Knight, with his bodyguard following behind in a vehicle belonging to Kidada Jones, Shakur's then-fiancée. The bodyguard, Frank Alexander, stated that when he was about to ride along with the rapper in Knight's car, Shakur asked him to drive Kidada Jones' car instead just in case they were too drunk and needed additional vehicles from Club 662 back to the hotel. Shortly after the shootings, the bodyguard reported in his documentary, Before I Wake, that one of the convoy's cars drove off after the assailant but he never heard back from the occupants.
After arriving on the scene, police and paramedics took Shakur and Knight to the University Medical Center. According to an interview with one of Shakur's closest friends and music video director Gobi, while at the hospital, he received news from a Death Row marketing employee that the shooters had called the record label and were sending death threats aimed at Shakur, claiming that they were going there to "finish him off". Upon hearing this, Gobi immediately alerted the Las Vegas police, but the police claimed they were understaffed and no one could be sent. Nonetheless, the shooters never arrived. At the hospital, Shakur was in and out of consciousness; heavily sedated, breathed through a ventilator and respirator, was placed on life support machines, and was ultimately put under a barbiturate-induced coma after repeatedly trying to get out of the bed.
On his second record, Shakur continued to rap about the social ills facing African-Americans, with songs like "The Streetz R Deathrow" and "Last Wordz." He also showed his compassionate side with the inspirational anthem "Keep Ya Head Up", while simultaneously putting his legendary aggressiveness on display with the title track from the album Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. he added a salute to his former group Digital Underground by including them on the playful track "I Get Around". Throughout his career, an increasingly aggressive attitude can be seen pervading Shakur's subsequent albums.
The contradictory themes of social inequality and injustice, unbridled aggression, compassion, playfulness, and hope all continued to shape Shakur's work, as witnessed with the release of his incendiary 1995 album Me Against the World. In 1996, Shakur released All Eyez on Me. Many of these tracks are considered by many critics to be classics, including "Ambitionz Az a Ridah", "I Ain't Mad at Cha", "California Love", "Life Goes On" and "Picture Me Rollin'".; All Eyez on Me was a change of style from his earlier works. While still containing conscious songs and themes, Shakur's album was heavily influenced by party tracks and tended to have a more "feel good" vibe than his first albums. Shakur described it as a celebration of life. Nonetheless, the record was critically and commercially successful.
Many of the speakers discussed Shakur's status and public persona, including State University of New York English professor Mark Anthony Neal who gave the talk "Thug Nigga Intellectual: Tupac as Celebrity Gramscian" in which he argued that Shakur was an example of the "organic intellectual" expressing the concerns of a larger group. Professor Neal has also indicated in his writings that the death of Shakur has left a "leadership void amongst hip-hop artists." Neal further describes Tupac as a "walking contradiction", a status that allowed him to "make being an intellectual accessible to ordinary people".A memorial of Tupac Shakur at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia |
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Tupac Shakur Quote(s)
| All good niggas, all the niggas who change the world, die in violence. They don't die in regular ways. |
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