I Will Do Anything to Protect My Family Tupac

Who Was Tupac Shakur?

Tupac Shakur was an American rapper and actor who came to embody the 1990s gangsta-rap artful, and who in death became an icon symbolizing noble struggle. He has sold 75 one thousand thousand albums to date, making him i of the superlative-selling artists of all time.

A sensitive, precociously talented and troubled soul, Tupac was gunned down in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996 and died six days later. His murder has never been solved.

Tupac began his music career as a rebel with a cause to clear the travails and injustices endured by many African Americans. His skill in doing so made him a spokesperson not merely for his own generation but for subsequent ones who continue to face up the same struggle for equality.

In life, his biggest battle was sometimes with himself. As fate drove him towards the nihilism of gangsta rap, and into the arms of the controversial Death Row Records impresario Suge Knight, the boundaries between Shakur's art and his life became increasingly blurred — with tragic consequences.

Early on Life

Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, in Harlem, New York. His female parent, Afeni, was raising 2 children on her own and struggled for coin. The family moved homes oft, sometimes staying in shelters.

They moved to Baltimore, where Tupac enrolled at the prestigious Baltimore School for the Arts, at which he felt "the freest I always felt."

Tupac's Mom, Father and Sister

Tupac was named Lesane Parish Crooks at birth. After joining the Black Panther political party, his mother changed his first proper name to Tupac Amaru, a Peruvian revolutionary who was killed by the Spanish. Tupac later took his surname from his sister's Sekiya'south father, some other Panther chosen Mutulu Shakur.

Tupac's mother, Alice Faye Williams, was the daughter of a North Carolina maid and a loftier-school dropout. She became significant with Tupac in 1970 while on bond after being charged with conspiring to set off a race war. Afeni was acquitted the post-obit year afterward successfully defending herself in courtroom, displaying a gift for oration that her son would inherit.

She changed her proper name to Afeni Shakur afterward becoming actively involved with the Black Panther Party. Afeni died in May 2016 at the historic period of 69.

Tupac'south father, Billy Garland, was also a Panther simply lost contact with Afeni when Tupac was five years old. The rapper would not encounter his father again until he was 23. "I idea my father was expressionless all my life," he told the author Kevin Powell during an interview with Vibe magazine in 1996. "I felt I needed a daddy to show me the ropes and I didn't have one."

Afeni gave birth to a daughter, Sekiya, 2 years after Tupac. Nevertheless, Sekiya's father, Mutulu Shakur, did not stick around, either.

Jada Pinkett Smith and Tupac'south Friendship

Tupac met extra Jada Pinkett-Smith in high schoolhouse at the Baltimore School for the Arts in Maryland. She had a cameo in his music video for 'Strictly iv My Niggaz.'

Pinkett-Smith was featured in the 2017 moving-picture show on Tupac All Eyez on Me. She later told reporters that she was a drug dealer when she met Tupac and that she plant the "reimagining" of their relationship in the film "very hurtful."

"Information technology wasn't simply nearly, oh, you have this beautiful girl, and this cool guy, they must take been in this — nah, it wasn't that at all. It was about survival, and it had e'er been nearly survival between us," she said.

Move to California and Rise to Fame

Tupac's Baltimore neighborhood was riven by criminal offence, so the family moved to Marin City, California. It turned out to be a "mean little ghetto," co-ordinate to Robert Sam Anison'southward comprehensive posthumous feature on Tupac for Vanity Fair in 1997. It was in Marin Urban center that Afeni succumbed to crevice habit — a drug her son, Tupac, would sell on the same streets where his mother bought her supply.

Tupac'southward love for hip hop would steer him away from a life of crime (for a while, at to the lowest degree). At 17, in the bound of 1989, he met an older white woman, Leila Steinberg, in a park. They struck up a chat about Winnie Mandela. Steinberg would later recall "a young man with fan-like eyelashes, alluvion charisma, and the most infectious laugh."

By the time they met, Tupac was obsessively writing poetry and convinced Steinberg, who had no music-industry feel, to get his manager.

Steinberg was eventually able to get Tupac in forepart of music manager Atron Gregory, who secured a gig for him in 1990 as a roadie and dancer for the hip hop group Digital Underground. He soon stepped up to the mic, making his recording debut in 1991 on Same Song, which soundtracked the Dan Aykroyd comedy Nothing but Problem. Tupac also appeared on Digital Underground's album Sons of the P in October that twelvemonth.

Subsequently the band'due south director, Gregory, took over from Steinberg, he landed Tupac a deal with Interscope Records. A month later Sons of the P hitting the stores came 2Pacalypse At present, Tupac'southward debut album every bit a solo artist.

Tupac oft complained that he was misunderstood. "Everything in life is not all cute," he told journalist Chuck Phillips. "In that location is lots of killing and drugs. To me a perfect album talks about the hard stuff and the fun and caring stuff. ... The thing that bothers me is that it seems like a lot of the sensitive stuff I write only goes unnoticed."

Darrin Keith Bastfield (right) with Tupac (middle) and another friend Gerard Immature.

Photo: Courtesy Darrin Keith Bastfield

Legal Drama and Serving Jail Time

In Baronial 1992, Tupac was attacked by jealous youths in Marin City. He drew his pistol only dropped it in the melee. Someone picked it up, the gun fired, and a 6-year-old bystander, Qa'id Walker-Teal, fell down dead.

While Tupac was not charged for Walker-Teal's death, he was reportedly comfortless. (In 1995, Walker-Teal'southward family brought a ceremonious case confronting Tupac, only settled out of court after an unnamed record visitor — thought to have been Expiry Row — offered compensation of between $300,000 to $500,000.)

In October 1993, Tupac shot and wounded two white off-duty cops in Atlanta — one in the abdomen and one in the buttocks — afterward an atmospherics. However, the charges were dropped afterward information technology emerged in court that the policemen had been drinking, had initiated the incident and that i of the officers had threatened Tupac with a stolen gun.

The example illustrated the misrepresentation of African American males, and the attitude of some police force toward them, which Tupac had been talking about in his music. What was portrayed equally gun-toting "gangster" beliefs by a lawless individual turned out to be an act of self-defence force by a fellow in fear of his life. All the while, Tupac'south star continued to rise.

Tupac did get to jail for 15 days in 1994 for assaulting the managing director Allen Hughes, who had fired him from the fix of the movie Menace II Society for being disruptive.

Tupac vs. Biggie Smalls (aka The Notorious B.I.G.)

Earlier Tupac released his 3rd album, in that location was more than trouble. In Nov 1994, he was shot multiple times in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio, Quad, by two immature Black men.

Tupac believed his rap rival Biggie Smalls was backside the shooting, for which nobody has ever been charged. (Smalls e'er denied he knew anything; in 2011 Dexter Isaac, a New York prisoner serving a life sentence for an unrelated crime, claimed he was paid to steal from Tupac by the artist manager and mogul James "Henchman" Rosemond, and shot the rapper during the robbery).

In June 1996, Tupac released a diss runway, "Hit 'Em Upwardly," aimed at Biggie Smalls and his characterization boss at Bad Boy Records, Sean "Diddy" Combs— ratcheting upwardly the tension between E and Due west Coast rap. Their rivalry was fast condign hip hop's most famous — and ugliest — beef. Inside iii months, Tupac was murdered.

READ MORE: How Biggie and Tupac Went From Friends to Music's Biggest Rivals

Rape Charges Confronting Tupac

In February 1995, Tupac was sentenced to between one and a half and four and a half years of jail time for sexually abusing a female fan. The case related to an incident that had taken place in Tupac's suite in the New York Parker Meridien hotel in November 1993.

Tupac maintained that he had non raped the daughter, although he confessed to the Vibe magazine announcer Kevin Powell that he could accept prevented others who were present in the suite at the fourth dimension from doing so. "I had a job [to protect her]," he said, expressing his sorrow, "and I never showed up."

Joining Expiry Row Records

While Tupac was in prison on rape charges, he was visited by Suge Knight, the notorious characterization boss of Expiry Row records. Knight offered to mail the $i.3 meg dollar bail Tupac needed to be released pending his entreatment. The status was that Tupac sign on to Expiry Row. Tupac duly signed. He was released from the loftier-security Dannemora facility in New York in October 1995.

At the same time as he was glorifying an outlaw lifestyle for Expiry Row, Tupac was financing an at-take chances youth eye, bankrolling Due south Fundamental sports teams, setting up a telephone helpline for young people with problems — all noted in Robert Sam Anson's Vanity Fair article, published afterward Tupac'southward death.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'South TUPAC SHAKUR FACT Menu

Songs and Albums

Tupac has released a full of 11 platinum albums: four during his career, with seven more released posthumously. To date, Tupac has sold more than 75 1000000 records worldwide.

Equally of September 2017, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) listed Tupac as the 44th top-selling artist of all time past album sales and streaming figures.

'2Pacalypse Now'

Tupac's get-go album as a solo artist was 2Pacalypse Now. Although it did not yield any hits, it sold a respectable 500,000 copies and established Tupac as an uncompromising social commentator on songs such as "Brenda'due south Got a Baby" — which narrates an underaged mother's autumn into destitution — and "Soulja's Story," which controversially spoke of "blasting" a police officeholder and "droppin' the cop."

The song was cited equally a motivation for a real-life cop killing by a teenage car thief called Ronald Ray Howard and was condemned by the and then-U.South. Vice President Dan Quayle. "There is absolutely no reason for a tape similar this to be published," Quayle said. "It has no place in our society." With those words, Tupac'due south notoriety was guaranteed.

'Strictly 4 My Niggaz'

Tupac's second album, Strictly iv My Niggaz, dropped in February 1993. It continued in the aforementioned socially conscious vein as his debut. On the gold-certified single "Keep Ya Head Up," he empathized with "my sisters on the welfare," encouraging them to "delight don't cry, dry out your optics, never let up."

The anthology featured contributions from Tupac'due south stepbrother, Mopreme. Mopreme became a member of the hip-hop group Thug Life, which Tupac started and which released the album Thug Life: Book i in 1994.

'Me Against the World'

When Tupac's third solo anthology came out on March 14, 1995, he was in jail. Its title, Me Confronting the Globe, could not have been more apt. It reached No. 1 in the Billboard 200 nautical chart and is considered by many to be his magnum opus — "by and large a work of pain, acrimony and burning agony" wrote Cheo H. Coker at Rolling Rock.

But there was vulnerability, likewise — lead single, "Dear Mama," was a tear-jerking tribute to his female parent, Afeni, that hit number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1995.

'All Eyez on Me'

Tupac's debut for Death Row, the double-length album All Eyez on Me, came out in February 1996. With his new hip-hop grouping Outlawz debuting on the anthology, All Eyez on Me was an unapologetic celebration of the thug lifestyle, eschewing socially conscious lyrics in favor of gangsta-funk hedonism and menace.

Dr. Dre, who had pioneered g-funk with NWA, produced the album'south first unmarried, "California Honey" — which went to No. one on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains Tupac'south all-time-known song. The third single from the album, "How Do Yous Want It," also reached No. 1. Within two months of its release, All Eyez on Me had been certified 5-times double-platinum. Information technology would somewhen get diamond certified.

'How Practise U Want It'

Released as a unmarried in June 1996, "How Do Yous Want It" was more famous for its B track, "Hit 'Em Upwardly," which aired Tupac's Due west Coast feud with East Declension Bad Boy rivals. On the inflammatory song, Tupac spat venom at artists including Biggie Smalls, Lil Kim, Junior Yard.A.F.I.A. and Prodigy of Mobb Deep. The track seemed to chillingly presage Tupac's decease and the ensuing conspiracy theories:

"Grab ya Glocks, when you see Tupac; Call the cops, when you come across Tupac, uh; Who shot me, but ya punks didn't finish; At present ya bout to feel the wrath of a menace," he rapped.

'Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory'

Tupac's fifth album, Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory, was released in November 1996, just eight weeks subsequently his death. It likewise reached No. 1 on the charts. Tupac recorded a full of 6 studio albums released posthumously, up to and including Pac's Life in 2006.

Poems and Book

Earlier Tupac became a rapper, he wrote verse. "The earth moves fast and it would rather laissez passer u past / than 2 stop and c what makes you lot weep," is one verse he wrote as a teenager that would eventually be published in the 2000 book, The Rose that Grew from Physical.

Movies Starring Tupac

Along with his music, Tupac had appeared in several films by the time of his death, among them starring roles alongside Janet Jackson in 1993's Poetic Justice and Mickey Rourke in 1996's Bullet.

Tupac's Wife and Girlfriend

Tupac married Keisha Morris in 1995 while he was still in prison house; the couple had met several months earlier at a nightclub when Morris was 20 and Tupac was 21. Their marriage was annulled five months after Tupac was released from jail, in October 1995; the pair remained friends until his expiry.

Soon afterward his wedlock to Morris ended, Tupac began dating Kidada Jones. They had met at a social club when Tupac apologized for insulting her begetter, Quincy Jones, for only dating white women. Jones was in Las Vegas with Tupac the night he was shot.

The black machine in which rapper Tupac Shakur was fatally shot by unknown driveby assassins as he was riding with friend Suge Knight, who survived the shooting.

Photo: Malcolm Payne/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Decease

Tupac died in Las Vegas on September 13, 1996, of gunshot wounds inflicted half-dozen days prior. His murder remains unsolved.

On September 7, Tupac was in Las Vegas with Knight to sentinel a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Thou hotel. There was a scuffle afterwards the bout between a member of the Crips gang and Tupac.

Knight, who was involved with the rival Bloods gang, and members of his entourage piled in. Subsequently, every bit a auto that Tupac was sharing with Knight stopped at a red low-cal, a human emerged from another car and fired thirteen shots, hitting Tupac in the hand, pelvis and chest. He later died at the hospital. His girlfriend Kidada and his mother Afeni were both with him in his last days.

Tupac's body was cremated. Members of his old band, Outlawz, made the controversial merits that they had smoked some of his ashes in honor of him. His mother announced she would scatter her son'southward ashes in Soweto, Due south Africa, the "birthplace of his ancestors," on the 10th anniversary of his murder. She later changed the date to June sixteen, 1997 — Tupac's 26th altogether as well as the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising.

On March 9, 1997, six months afterward Tupac died, Biggie Smalls was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles; his murder has never been solved, either.

Tupac Conspiracies: Is Tupac Alive?

Tupac died of gunshot wounds in 1996. Notwithstanding, conspiracy theories accept raged ever since Tupac was shot, as his murder has never been solved. Fans accept speculated that Tupac faked his decease. On his anthology Life Goes On, Tupac rapped about his funeral; his vocal "I Own't Mad at Cha" was released ii days after he died. There accept been several reported potential Tupac "sightings" since his death, including in 2012 by Kim Kardashian.

In September 2017, Knight hinted that Tupac might be alive in an interview. "When I left that infirmary me and 'Pac was laughing and joking. I don't see how someone tin can become from doing well to doing bad," said Knight, calculation that "with Pac you never know" if he could be alive and living in secret somewhere.

In early 2018, BET aired an episode of Death Row Chronicles in which quondam Crips member Duane "Keffe D" Keith Davis admitted that he was riding in the auto with the human being who killed Tupac; he declined to identify the shooter in the interview, revealing only that the shots "came from the dorsum seat," though he had earlier told federal investigators that the gun was in the hands of his nephew Orlando Anderson (now deceased).

The revelation fueled the launch of a change.org petition that called for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to declare the instance "cleared." Information technology also led to rumors that new arrest warrants were pending, but the LVMPD shot downwardly those rumors in July, saying that they were reviewing the details of what "remains an open homicide case."

Tupac's Alphabetic character to Madonna

While serving time in prison house, Tupac wrote a letter to Madonna, where he ended relations with the pop star considering of her race. The letter, dated January 15th, 1995 at 4:30 a.grand., was verified to exist accurate by news outlets including Rolling Rock. In July 2017, Tupac's alphabetic character to Madonna was set to go on auction and was expected to bring in $100,000.

In 2018, Madonna brought a lawsuit against the fine art consultant and online auction house behind the auction to stop the sale. A estimate threw out her suit, citing a release that Madonna signed in 2004. Madonna lost her appeal in appellate court in June 2019. The letter was put on auction in July 2019.

The letter explains why Tupac was catastrophe their relationship. "For y'all to be seen with a Black homo wouldn't in whatever way jeopardize your career – if anything information technology would make you seem that much more open and exciting," he wrote. "But for me, at to the lowest degree in my previous perception, I felt due to my 'image,' I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was. I never meant to hurt you."

Tupac also apologized. "Like y'all said, I oasis't been the kind of friend I know I am capable of existence," he said, adding that he'd "grown both spiritually and mentally" and was no longer the "young homo with express experience with [an] extremely famous sexual activity symbol."

'Who Killed Tupac?' TV Miniseries

On Nov 21, 2017, A&E aired the six-office Biography Presents: Who Killed Tupac?, which followed civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump on his investigation into key theories behind Tupac's 1996 killing.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

On April vii, 2017, Tupac was inducted into the Rock and Curlicue Hall of Fame, one of music's highest honors - a worthy inclusion for a rapper hailed by many to accept been the greatest of all time.

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Source: https://www.biography.com/musician/tupac-shakur

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