I have seen, watched, and listened anything I can get my hands on involving Tupac Amaru Shakur and yet I know there is a lot more I have not gotten at. I don’t mean stupid knowledgeable shit like…ok he took a dump at 3:45 pm on a Tuesday in 94. I’m obviously talking about interviews, court cases, events in his life, videos, songs, and him just plain talking to people.
For some time I truly didn’t understand how he changed from a political human’s rights rapper to a ‘gangster’ rapper, flashing money to the cameras. I read an interview on the this website:
http://www.donkilluminati.com/tupacsinterviews.htmReading those interviews and paying close attention to small parts of them is when I realized and totally understood the change.
From the start of his career, it was him against everyone. He told the ugly side of life that no one was willing to hear, even though it had to be told. He was for getting rid of poverty and against not just corrupt cops but the root of it was corruption in general. He believed in equal rights regardless of skin color, your sex, or sexual preference.
People started to hound him day and night all for different reasons and from how he grew up, it put him in a vulnerable position. He was used to hanging out with people he didn’t know that well. That can be very dangerous.
In my eyes, he got backed in a corner he did not see. From one side he was going to court everyday for things he might have said or people trying get money from him and then from the other side people in the rap industry were trying to get him too but more in a life and death sense.
So, all of this at one point was just too much for him to handle. He was going to court for being wrongly accused in a ‘rape’ charge. It wasn’t even rape, it was forcible touching the bottox but when you read the interviews, and his side of the story makes sense to at bare minimum his character.
During this time, he got robbed and shot 5 times in a building where he thought he would be safe. 2 black people robbed him, one person outside and 1 person inside with an apartment like door where you need to be buzzed in for security. It was a building where his friends (at the time the bad boy crew) worked. Puffy and Biggie wouldn’t look or even approach Tupac. They seemed distant and another named Sean (whom I think is the rapper Mase) started to cry his ass off…like total rolling sobs the instant Tupac came into view.
It was then that he started to change and started to believe Thug Life was dead to him. To him Thug Life was a way of life that the world itself was doing. He had went to court the morning after he was shot and saw no remorse, the judge didn’t look at him once during that time, the jury didn’t really care or was really shocked to see him there. No one cared. When he left after court was out for the day or the trial was over, he saw the press was touching his legs and bumping into him just to watch him suffer and moan in pain. He felt it was like everyone was all vultures. That is when ‘Thug Life”, which he represented along and with no help for so long, was dead to him. When he was going into Jail, he said he couldn’t remember how to rap, he couldn’t even remember the lyrics to his own songs. It was all just too much for him. That way it sounded when I read it, it was like he was a broken man.
So, I look at it like he was somewhat feeling empty, maybe a bit depressed and angry and the entire situation. How he got there, how he was robbed and shot, how his supposed friends reacted to it, how he was just left for ‘dead’ by his record label, interscop, and the fact that people in NewYork dissed him while he was in jail and couldn’t do anything about it.
I think and in my opinion, he must have just absorbed everything that happened in jail and used it in a positive sense. He used his year in jail and applied it to what he already knew about Rap. The friends he made in jail and the guards involved in his life some how all some how, maybe subconsciously, lead him to the Rap music he made later in his life.
Before he went to jail, he made songs like Dear Mama and Brenda’s got a baby, after he got out, he made songs like 2 of amerikaz most wanted and Hit’em up.
Can you not see the change? After he got out of jail, he wasn’t as stressed. He was with a group of people that he felt was like him. It was finally a home that would help him. The first place to help him in all his career.
“In my mind, I’d be shaper and the venom will be more potent”
“You don’t threw more gasoline on a fire to put it out”
– tupac speaking incase if he went to jail.
I see the change and it is now in plain view to me. I see this as a major even in his life that no one has really touched upon. If I could make my opinion known I would. For know all I can hope for is that some people read this post, decide to read the 2nd interview on the link above and maybe see what I’m talking about. Hmmm, at some point I might make a YouTube.com video.
Until then, thanks for reading this.
