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Few have preserved their lives better than Tupac Shakur. The prolific writer guaranteed his immortality by leaving 10 years' worth of music behind. The 26-song double CD R U Still Down? (Remember Me) is the first of many posthumous releases to come. On it, he exhibits the Black Panther ideology he learned from his family. Tupac's passionate growl attacks the brain with haunting tales of abandonment, imprisonment, miseducation, economic depravity, loneliness and premonitions of his own death. These poems of hopelessness intentionally horrify listeners. Tupac understood that giving the raw, uncensored truth appeals to the human consciousness and our natural inclinations to right the wrong. This was his duty as a representative of the voiceless masses of poor youth living in America. The ignorance of mainstream media outlets such as MTV has clouded the public's perception of Tupac. Their insistence on categorizing him as a "gangsta" rapper biased people who'd never listened to his albums. The first attempt on Tupac's life, the court cases and the jail time furthered critics' beliefs that he was too thuggish for a commercial audience. Another thing that led to the misunderstandings of Tupac's narratives was a failure to recognize hip-hop as a poetic art form, as a way of expressing personal emotions and struggles. The sensual Songs of Solomon, the lovely sonnets of Shakespeare and the verbal jazz of Langston Hughes are gifts from the past that clue us in to the commonality of the human experience. Tupac followed in this literary tradition. His combination of street terminology with the poetic devices of metaphor, allegorical phrasing and imagery resulted in poignant sociopolitical critiques. He constructed his songs in the style of the old Negro spirituals--disguising a message to a target audience by way of universal appeal. To the unknowing listener, the hymns were mere expressions of praise, but to the slaves they were verbal maps to the North and freedom. Likewise, Tupac hid messages of a better way than violence, particularly the 10-point program of the Black Panthers, under a thug persona. Still, Tupac's cunning, complex manipulations of the language were misinterpreted by music critics who narrowed their focus to the shallowness of the profanity instead of the depth of his overall message. Critics were given another opportunity to listen with a poetic ear, and to recant their erroneous critiques of Tupac's work, in November 1996. Two months after his death, his album The Don Killuminati--7 day theory was released, under Tupac's latest alias, Makaveli. He had used the change to distance himself from the negativity surrounding his previous pseudonym, 2Pac, and to direct listeners to his renewed sense of purpose. He placed the responsibility of uniting the black community on the shoulders of his "thug nation," pleading with black youth to stop killing each other. This message was openly visible on tracks like "Blasphemy" and "White Manz World" and lurking underneath "Me and My Girlfriend" and "Hail Mary." A basic understanding of the history and tradition of hip-hop is necessary when listening to Tupac's music. The golden years, 1985 to 1992, directly influenced him. Artists like Public Enemy, N.W.A. and Eric B. & Rakim were conscious of what was said on their records because they wanted to uplift the minds, and heighten the esteem, of fans. MCs espoused political, economic, social and spiritual revolution on the mike as well as pushing black awareness. They realized that rap was a vehicle by which ideas could be communicated nationwide and that their verbal attacks on Big Brother sold well, despite being too controversial for radio. This revolutionary spirit came naturally to Tupac, by way of his mother, Afeni Shakur, a former Black Panther. But he was also a product of the ghetto, where the influx of crack and increased gang violence were beginning to take their toll on the young black male population. Tupac knew that the grimy, street "hellrazors" often missed political messages, so he created a steelo that would appeal to them. He was able to use their language to open their minds to the consciousness of hip-hop, thus remaining true to the golden-years motto "Each one teach one." There is now a rebirth of hip-hop, led by the golden-era MCs, in response to the deaths of Tupac and Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G. Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith, the original funk doctors, have squashed their beef to put EPMD Back in Business. Rakim ends a five-year hiatus with The R: The Eighteenth Letter Forever, a reminder to headz that he is the god of the microphone. Other groups, such as Public Enemy, Brand Nubian and Pete Rock & CL Smooth, have reunited and are slated for new releases in 1998. Even the now-legendary Run-DMC will drop an album next year. All are returning, they hope, to usher in peace and save the lives of a generation marked by fratricide. Tupac, along with many others, has been returned to the essence too soon, but these deaths have not been in vain. The hip-hop community has rediscovered the desires of all humans: love, peace and happiness. There is a bright future ahead. That's my word. |
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