At his tragic death Tupac Shakur was the ultimate status symbol of West Coast music: the smooth flows, the laid-back g-funk production, the riotous political anger, the gangster posturing, the effortless swagger – he was the walking embodiment of West Coast rap. In the decades passing since his death Tupac has slowly transcended hip-hop regionalism, helped especially by the pacification of the coastal wars and the collapse of Death Row Records, and become a martyr figure for hip-hop as an entire genre. Tupac, in his influence and influencers, is representative of not solely the West Coast, but the entire spectrum of what North American hip-hop can offer: he is the West, the East, and even the South.
Tupac was born in 1971, in the East Harlem section of New York City. His mother, Afeni Shakur, and father Billy Garland, were deeply involved in the New York arm of the Black Panther Party during the 1960s and 70s. His godmother, Assata Shakur, is still an active fugitive of the United States government for her role in the Black Liberation Army and their activity in New Jersey. Shakur’s family is steeped in radical history throughout the East Coast of America. In 1986 Tupac and his family would move to Baltimore, where he would attend Baltimore School for the Arts, performing drama, poetry, ballet and jazz. Tupac’s exposure to the radical politics of the Eastern United States would intensify as he began a relationship with the daughter of the local director of the Communist Party chapter. For the first fifteen years of his life, up until the family’s move to Baltimore in 1986, Tupac would be born and raised in the home city of hip-hop itself. His move to Baltimore was an extremely influential time in his life. Repeat interviewer and author Kevin Powell offered this insight into Tupac’s time in Baltimore – “[Baltimore] foreshadowed Tupac Shakur the rapper, foreshadowed Tupac Shakur the amazing [actor]. It would not have happened — any of that — without Baltimore.” A classmate, Becky Mossing, would offer this insight on his trademark West Coast signs; the Thug Life tattoo and his fetishising of the gangster lifestyle – “I honestly believe he was playing a part that he probably was made to play.” It’s undeniable that Tupac was an immensely complex figure and that the influence of Death Row Records and the West Coast certainly seeped into his personality, and was not simply a role he played, but there’s certainly wisdom to be taken in the knowledge that those closest to him saw a different figure to the public persona.
This public persona, however, which is undoubtedly dwarfed and unfairly moulded by the racist machinations of the white supremacist press, was not clearly structured until his release from prison in 1996 and the subsequent release of All Eyez on Me and Makaveli: The 7 Day Theory. Two albums that are drenched in the mid 90s flavours of the West Coast. In the lead up to the ‘West Coast Tupac’ that came to be his most successful persona, Tupac released three politically radical and emotionally sensitive albums far more in line with his private persona, his East Coast upbringing, and the works of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Public Enemy, the Geto Boys and Ice Cube. This is not to suggest that the West does not have a proud tradition of radical protest music, which it does, but that the astronomical success of g-funk/gangster rap starting in 1992 is not something Tupac fully embraced until his subsequent arrival on Death Row Records – an arrival that would not come until nearly five years later in his career.
The release of 2Pacalypse Now was an understated one at best. It crept on to the Billboard Top 200 at number 64 on November 12th 1991. Seven months before Dr Dre would drop the hugely influential The Chronic and change the sound of rap music forever, again. 2Pac had at this point adopted his given name, switching up from MC New York, and signed to Interscope Records. He had played a small part in Digital Underground, gaining notoriety for their song ‘The Humpty Dance’. Channeling his best efforts to emulate Ice Cube and Chuck D, with a New York tongue-twister flow that was excessively popular at the time, 2Pacalypse Now is an impressive, but awkward, blend of styles. It’s most prominent theme is that of police brutality, exploring both its personal and wider impacts on the black community, as well as engaging in subverted revenge fantasies. This is maybe 2Pac’s angriest record. Where later in his career he would begin to mellow out and offer more nuanced critiques, and express a deep inner sadness, this album burns with roughly 20 years of pent-up anger. 2Pac plays on the hypocrisy of white America and it’s centuries of injustice. On ‘Violent’ Pac rhymes:
“My words are weapons and I'm steppin' to the silent
Wakin' up the masses, but you, claim that I'm violent”
Here Pac channels MLK’s odes to the masses and fights against the racist caricature of black men that historically portrays them as inherently violent. It is not black men or Pac that are violent, but the centuries of American oppression that should be criticised for violence. This song samples fellow hip-hop radicals and critics of American hypocrisy, The Geto Boys, who released their classic album We Can’t Be Stopped also in 1991. On ‘Words of Wisdom’(in which Pac spits radical philosophy over a jazz rap beat – beats that the likes of Guru and Digable Planets would make their own) Pac ends by shouting out the following artists:
“America, you reap what you sow
2Pacalypse, America's Nightmare
Ice Cube and Da Lynch Mob, America's Nightmare
Above The Law, America's Nightmare
Paris, America's Nightmare
Public Enemy, America's Nightmare
KRS-One, America's Nightmare”
The lineage of KRS-One, Public Enemy and Ice Cube into forming the 2Pac of 1991 could not be clearer. Brenda’s Got A Baby channels the storytelling of Cube, the production and rawness on Violent is reminiscent of Boogie Down Productions, and the presence of Chuck D and the Bomb Squad can be felt in every part of the album’s stripped down, full throttle structure. On 2Pacalypse Now whilst the influences are worn clearly on his sleeves, they have such a breadth that Pac begins to carve out his own space. He is not solely a West Coast rapper. He is built on the foundations of the East and moulded by his life experiences in the West. He channels the rage and shock value of NWA and the Geto Boys, but pushes this further into the political arena. On subsequent albums he will push the breadth and scope of his work to even greater levels.
With Strictly 4 My N*****, the follow up to 2Pacalypse Now, the success of the two lead singles, ‘I Get Around’ and ‘Keep Ya Head Up’ are perfectly indicative of the balance Pac would perfect in his career. ‘Keep Ya Head Up’ is a track filled with emancipatory inspiration, a song that celebrates working class women of colour. It calls for solidarity and strength throughout working class communities of colour, and Pac, barely 23 years old, captures the tender protectiveness of an older brother for an entire nation. It is protest music that hip-hop has never really experienced before. ‘Fuck Tha Police’, ‘Sound of Da Police’, and ‘Fight The Power’ are songs fuelled with righteous rage and exceptionally powerful, but hip-hop has rarely seen such a momentous call for solidarity. At the polar opposite of ‘Keep Ya Head Up’ is ‘I Get Around’, one of 2Pac’s earliest steps away from polemical rap, and a move into his growing status as a sex symbol, which will only exacerbate as he gains the notoriety of a ‘bad boy’ image. The flow and swagger are clearly influenced by Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle, and it is not surprising that both would heartily embrace their image as 2 of America’s Most Wanted. 2Pac’s sophomore album helps him gain further critical and commercial success and comes at a time when the West Coast dominates record sales, where it would only make sense to embrace these cultural surroundings to further himself.
What becomes surprising then is that his third album, Me Against The World, does not continue to follow the trajectory of Strictly 4 My N***** - one would expect him to embrace the likes of Death Row and g-funk (as he will a year later), but instead he returns to the muted palette of the East coast. The album plots the darkest moments in 2Pac’s life, and is released whilst he was still in prison. It reflects on personal pain and loss, his own sense of mortality and suicidal tendencies. It comes a year after nearly being killed in New York and whilst serving time for a sexual assault charge. The lead single, ‘Dear Mama’, is a beautiful elegy on a mother and son’s stretched relationship, which charts at no. 9 on the Billboard Top 200. To this day there is not a single rapper who could emulate that feat.
On the album 2Pac has said, “It was like a blues record. It was down-home. It was all my fears, all the things I just couldn't sleep about. Everybody thought I was living so well and doing so good that I wanted to explain it. And it took a whole album to get it all out. I get to tell my innermost, darkest secrets I tell my own personal problems.” It pairs beautifully with Scarface’s The Diary and Bushwick Bill’s Phantom of the Rapra. The gangster rapper with a crushed soul. It is the most honest, soul-bearing rap album ever recorded and once again it oozes influence from every corner of the hip-hop world. We can see the longevity of the album in almost every rapper after it. Fat Pat’s Ghetto Dreams, Ghostface Killah’s ‘All That I Got Is You’, Kendrick Lamar’s ‘U’, Cousin Stizz’s Monda and 50 Cent’s ‘Many Men’. It scatter-shots away from strict national politics and explores the political via the lens of the personal. It will be the last album 2Pac releases on Interscope Records before he was swallowed by Death Row and spat back out into astronomical success. Before the uncontrollable downward spiral of the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that will coincide with the loss of two of the greatest artists of a generation. It is the last time 2Pac can release a song like ‘Old School’, which offers nothing but adoration for the New York boroughs and the legendary founding fathers of hip-hop, the likes of Grandmaster Flash, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, De La Soul, Mantronix, MC Lyte.
If Pac’s time on Death Row records helped cement him as an icon of the West Coast, it was his first three albums that helped cement his legacy as an icon for all of hip-hop. An absurdly brilliant artist that fused the sounds of the East, West and South. An artist who would be so impactful that to this day endless artists from every region will claim to be the next 2Pac. Kodak Black will allude to him in his album titles; Childish Gambino will claim he is the second coming; Kendrick Lamar will momentarily resurrect him in his albums; Joey BADASS will measure his self-worth next to him. 2Pac has become a universal figure of pride in the hip-hop community, not simply because of the universality of what he wrote, but because of the universal embrace of 2Pac that every corner of the hip-hop world has engaged in. An embrace that, of course, could not be possible if Pac himself had not embraced every corner of the hip-hop community.
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