Professor Sabir's Posse

Edwards, Walter. "From poetry to rap: the lyrics of Tupac Shakur. " The Western Journal of Black Studies. 26.2 (Summer 2002): 61(10). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 17 Sept. 2008
Abstract:
Growing up in the Bronx and Harlem, Tupac learned and excelled in the verbal dexterity and exuberances that characterize African American working class speech culture. At the same time Tupac also absorbed influences from his mother's political past. From Afeni, from Afeni's husband Lumumba Shakur, and from Lumumba's brother, Muula Shakur, all former Black Panther activists. Tupac learned to believe that racism, economic discrimination and other forms of oppression contributed to the poverty and powerless of working class Blacks.




Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2002 The Western Journal of Black Studies

Tupac Shakur's death on Friday, September 13, 1996, at the early age of 25, brought to an end a complex life marked both by personal controversy and artistic success. His impressive achievements include six solo rap albums, over 30 singles, starting or significant roles in six movies and a body of poems anthologized as The Rose that Grew from Concrete and published posthumously by his mother, Afeni Shakur. Tupac was clearly a performer with multi-dimensional abilities whose contributions to his art deserve to be studied from a variety of disciplinary viewpoints (see Armond White, 1997). This paper is meant to contribute to that effort. It will focus on comparing linguistic and discourse features of Tupac's poetry with the lyrics of the raps in his debut album 2Calypse Now with a view to explaining his success as a rapper compared to his limited impact as a poet. First, I propose that Tupac's upbringing contributed to his complex personal and artistic behavior and also to the central differences between his raps and his poetry. Then I compare and contrast the poems and raps in terms of topics, style, and content. Finally, I offer some general hypotheses about the reasons for the success of the raps compared to the indifferent reception of the poems.

Tupac was born in 1971 and raised in poor inner-city neighborhoods in New York. His father, Billy Garland, as well as his mother Afeni Shakur, had been significant figures in the Black Panther Movement of the 1960s. Thus, from the beginning Tupac was immersed in the culture of the African American urban working class while simultaneously being influenced by the political views, militant passions, and wider social exposure of his mother and her Black Panther colleagues.

Growing up in the Bronx and Harlem, Tupac learned and excelled in the verbal dexterity and exuberances that characterize African American working class speech culture. At the same time Tupac also absorbed influences from his mother's political past. From Afeni, from Afeni's husband Lumumba Shakur, and from Lumumba's brother, Muula Shakur, all former Black Panther activists. Tupac learned to believe that racism, economic discrimination and other forms of oppression contributed to the poverty and powerless of working class Blacks. He learned to blame the so-called white establishment, including the police, for these conditions. As White (1997:48) points out "The Shakurs' tribal activism had become a legend and a legacy [for Tupac]." White (1997:48) quotes the journalist Ron Howell as reporting that, "At fifteen, Tupac must have been thoroughly convinced that to be a Shakur was to confront the possibility of death at an early age. He was learning such lessons almost before he could walk." This indoctrination seemed to have been successful because Tupac at the age of 10 is reputed to have expressed a desire to grow up to be a revolutionary.

But there was a countervailing influence that contributed to the uniqueness of Tupac's education. This was that Tupac's mother encouraged her son to develop his creative and expressive capabilities within a traditional, conservative, educative ethos. To this end, she enrolled him in a drama school in Harlem, The 127th Street Ensemble, at the age of twelve. Here Tupac learned acting and other performance skills. Thus, from early on Tupac was taught to succeed in two different worlds: in the ethos of formal schooling in the creative arts where standard English, formal education, recitation, declamation and print poetry are the norms; and in the palpably real vernacular world of the urban "hood" with its distinctive oral traditions, its religiosity, and its culture of survival, struggle, and celebration. These often-contradictory elements seem to be represented in Tupac's raps and poetry and provide explanatory principles for his work.

In 1985, when Tupac was fourteen, his mother moved the family to Baltimore, Maryland, partly to escape the poverty and difficulties of New York. In Baltimore, Afeni enrolled Tupac in the Baltimore School for the Performing Arts, where Tupac continued the performance education he began in Harlem. The school nourished his creativity and histrionic abilities and allowed him to shape his talent for and interest in composing and performing rap lyrics. It was during this period that he wrote his first rap pieces and named himself "MC New York". Again, we see Tupac spanning the two disparate worlds. He is quoted as saying, "That school was saving me ... I was writing poetry and shit and I became known as MC New York because I was rapping and doing the acting thing."

In June 1988 Afeni Shakur again moved her family, this time to Marin City, California, forcing Tupac, then seventeen, to leave the Baltimore School for the Performing Arts before graduating. It was in California that in 1989 Tupac formed his first rap group, "Strictly Dope," with Leila Steinberg as his manager and Anton Gregory as his producer. This move to Marin marked the end of Tupac's formal training in theatre and poetry and, consequently, the end of the period when he moved between the contrasting worlds of dramatic make-believe and the real world of the urban poverty. For the first time, too, he moved away from the immediate influence of his mother and overtly into a life of petty crime. I believe this almost total immersion into the urban vernacular culture accelerated Tupac's inevitable artistic development into a rapper rather than a traditional poet. I suggest that Tupac's daily life in the rough battleground of urban poverty, coupled with the social and political ideas learned from his parents and their political associates led him to express his art through rap rather than poetry. It is interesting, however, as a further example of the juxtaposition of his two selves that the poems collected in The Rose that Grew from Concrete were written between 1989 and 1991, precisely when he was developing his rap career. The claim I'm making in this paper is that the poems in The Rose that Grew from Concrete and the lyrics of Tupac's raps--as represented in 2calypse Now--respectively represent idealizations of the separate, different worlds that Tupac inhabited and mastered: the world of school and the world of the hood. Each body of compositions reveals important aspects of Tupac's art and gives a different perspective on his talents.

The Poems

Of the 72 poems in The Rose that Grew from Concrete, 33--or almost 46 percent--are love poems, grouped in the second section of the anthology, entitled "Nothing can come between us." These love poems display a sensitivity and vulnerability that contrasts sharply with the harsh "thug" persona that characterizes the Tupac we experience in his rap songs. Some of these poems are quite accomplished. Witness the delicate restraint and lyrical tightness of the poems "The Power of a Smile".

The power of a gun can kill
And the power of fire can burn
The power of wind can chill
And the power of the mind can learn
The power of anger can rage
Inside until it tears u apart
But the Power of a Smile
Especially yours can heal a frozen Heart
And then, in "Things that make my heart break":

Things that make hearts break.
Pretty smiles
Deceiving laughs
And people who dream with their eyes open
Lonely children
Unanswered cries
And souls who have given up hoping
The poem "Wife 4 Life" is colloquial, charming, and disarming:

I hope u heard me when I asked
U that night 2 be my wife
Not for this year or next
But mine for all your life
2 accept me when I sin
Not 2 mention standing the rain
Which comes down as hard as hail
I am not the best of men
My faults could scare the night
But my heart is always pure 2 my wife 4 life
Tupac's voice in these love poems is self-assured; his poetic vision insightful. The poems convey an optimism and vulnerability, which stands in stark contrast to the realities of Tupac's daily life. The idealism in these poems is expressed in the recurring naturalistic imagery. In contrast to the bareness of the urban `hood,' these poems are full of references to fresh air, green trees, dawn, nature, rivers and flowers. It's obvious, also, that the poems were written to be read: their formal structure and ideographic features suggest a visual orientation. Note, too, that the poems are all written in Standard English, are completely devoid of swear words and slang expressions. Absent, too, is the passion and urgency we find in the raps.

A major reoccurring theme of the poems is the heart as Tupac's emotional center. Thus, there are numerous references to pain of the heart, heartbreak, love, tears, joy, and other expressions of youthful love or infatuation. This sentimental persona contrasts starkly with the thug roles Tupac embraced artistically and in reality later in his raps. In the love poems in The Rose that Grew from Concrete Tupac's classical training can be felt through the many references to fairy tales and Greek mythology, especially tales of Cupid. A re-occurring motif in the love poems is a star as the symbol of hope. Together these poems could be seen as an island of artistic escape from the social and economic harshness of what must have been Tupac's daily experience: a mother battling against drug addiction, a life without his father, and poverty. But I see these poems as externalizing a central part of Tupac's inner life. He was a complex man and allowed the full range of his complexity to be expressed in his art.

The anthology has three additional sections; namely, "The Rose That Grew from Concrete," "Just a Breath of Freedom," and "Liberty Needs Glasses." The poems in "The rose that grew from concrete," the first section, are essentially autobiographical. In the title piece, "The rose that grew from concrete," Tupac celebrates his artistic success despite the odds against him:

Did u hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete
Proving nature's laws wrong it learned 2 walk without having
feet
Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams
it learned 2 breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else even cared
Notice the restraint in this poem. It is less a boast than a reflection on the possibilities of human strivings. In the poem "In the depths of Solitude" Tupac writes about yearning to be accepted and respected while never compromising himself. Tellingly, he recognizes his own contradictory complexity.

This Duo within me causes
The perfect opportunity
2 learn and live twice as fast
as those who accept simplicity
In "Life Through My Eyes" Tupac gives us a glimpse of the world of his every day experience. He writes:

Life through my bloodshot eyes
would scare a square 2 death
poverty, murder, violence
and never a moment 2 rest.
The section "Just a Breath of Freedom" includes three poems that reveal the strong bond of love between Tupac and his mother, and his anguish for her struggle against poverty and drugs. In "When Ure Hero Falls" he bemoans his mother's weakened physical or emotional condition:

"When ure Hero falls so do the stars/
And so does the perception of tomorrow."
In "U R Ripping Us Apart" he blames crack cocaine for defeating his mother and weakening the bond between mother and son;

I know the worst is here
I feel it in my heart
U got into the circle
Now you're ripping us apart.
In "A River That Flows Forever" he assures his mother that,

As long as u R with me
We'll ride the River Together.
In the section, "Just a Breath of Freedom," we begin to see the militant side of Tupac. In the title poem he celebrates the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.

Held captive 4 your politics
They wanted to break your soul
They ordered the extermination
Of all minds they couldn't control.
In "For Mrs. Hawkins" Tupac addresses the mother of his friend Yusef who was killed by a white man. He promises ominously,

But Mrs. Hawkins as sure as I'm a Panther
With the blood of Malcolm in my veins
America will never rest
If Yusef dies in vain!
In Fallen Star he eulogizes Huey P. Newton, one of the central figures in the Black Panther movement:

They could never understand
What u set out 2 do
Instead they chose 2
Ridicule u
When you got weak
They loved the sight
Of your dimming
And flickering starlight.
In the final section of the collection, entitled "Liberty Needs Glasses" we glimpse the Tupac who emerged in most of his rap songs. In four of the nine poems in this section, Tupac inveighs against social injustice, oppression and hopelessness. In the title poem he asserts:

Excuse me but Lady Liberty needs glasses
And so does Mr. Justice by her side ...
Justice stubbed her big toe on Mandela
And liberty was misquoted by the Indians
Slavery was a learning phase
Forgotten without a verdict
While Justice is on a rampage
4 endangered surviving Black males.
Note the catholicity of the focus. In this poem, and in others, Tupac pleads for justice worldwide, whereas in his raps he essentially focuses on the specific injustices in the Black community. The poems "How can we be free," and "The promise" repeat the theme of "Liberty needs glasses," presenting a society that fails to provide real liberty and economic opportunity for minorities. However, in the most moving of the pieces in this section, "And 2morrow", we see a hopeful persona who overcomes his anger and looks to a promising future.

Today is filled with anger
Fueled with hidden hate
Scared of being outcast
Afraid of common fate
Today is built on tragedies
Which no one wants 2 face
Nightmares 2 humanities
And morally disgraced....
But 2morrow, I c change
A chance2 build anew
Built on spirit, intent of heart
Ideals based on truth
And 2morrow I wake with a second wind
And strong because of pride
2 know I fought with all my heart 2 keep my dream alive.
In this final section of the anthology, too, Tupac is absorbed with his own personal destiny. In "No-Win" he sees himself backed into a corner with his manhood at stake. He declares himself to be able to kill to survive if he must.

The final poem in the section and in the book "In the event of my demise" is a hauntingly sad piece that foreshadowed Tupac's early, tragic death:

In the event of my demise
When my heart can beat no more
I hope I die for a principle
Or a belief that I had lived 4
I will die before my time
Because I feel the shadow's depth
So much I wanted to accomplish
Before I reached my death
I have come 2 grips with the possibility
And wiped the last tear from my eyes
I loved all who were positive
In the event of my demise.
The poems in the anthology reveal that at age 19, Tupac was a young man of unusual social intelligence who possessed a gift for communicating his ideas in verse. My sense is that Tupac was on his way to finding his voice as a lyrical poet but chose to interrupt that development in favor of his career as a rap artist. This choice seems inevitable since his personal history up to 1989 had prepared Tupac more viscerally to be a rapper than a formal poet. He had lived the life of a poor young Black male in inner cities on the East and West coasts; he understood the struggles, temptations, triumphs and strength of the urban poor; and he knew the sense of oppression that racial and economic discrimination engenders in most members of these communities. By this time Tupac had gained first-hand knowledge of central behaviors in the urban 'hood, including its rich vernacular language, its thug subculture and the crime, violence and nihilism which result from poverty and social neglect. He had internalized and begun to practice the philosophy of revolutionary militancy to which his mother and step father had introduced him. To that end he had joined and in 1989 became chairman of The New African Panthers, "an organization of black youth determined to honor the goals of the original Panthers without duplicating their mistakes" (White 1997:213). Tupac must have seen rap as the natural vehicle for both displaying his poetic talents and voicing his social commentary.

The Raps

By the time Tupac turned his artistic attention principally to rap, the genre was already accepted as a form of "folk-poetry." As Brent Wood (1999:130) points out, "Rap meets most of the criteria normally associated with folk-poetry in English: no formal music or literary training is required, there is a relatively free borrowing of music and words between practitioners, it is often locally-oriented, it does not assume literacy and there is a union rather than separation of music, dance and lyric." Some of rap's precursors provided Tupac with a model for poetically expressed social commetary that was meant to be heard rather than read. The Los Angeles-based Watts Prophets, for instance, had recorded the album Rappin Black in a White Worm in 1971 in which political commentary was delivered on stage in poetic form; and the group the Last Poets recorded in the 1970s such politically charged poems as "Niggers are scared of revolution," "When revolution comes," and "Run nigger" to the tune of drumbeats. According to Rose (1994:2), rap had emerged in the mid- 1970s, "as a Black cultural expression that prioritizes Black voices from the margins of urban America." Rose points out that "rappers speak with the voice of personal experience, taking on the identity of the observer or narrator."

The content and delivery of Tupac's raps locate his material in the category of gangsta rap defined by Morrison (forthcoming) as "a music of rebellion and anger that developed in response to a racist and nihilistic society." More specifically, Tupac specialized in narratives that involved what Boyd (1997:69) refers to as "G culture" and describes as a cultural movement "geographically specific to the West Coast, especially Los Angeles ... composed of fictional as well as real-life occurrences, mediated as well as non-mediated events" (quote taken from Morrison, forthcoming). By 1971, Gangsta rappers such as Public Enemy, Ice--T and Ice Cube had begun to rap about the bleak economic conditions in Black inner-city neighborhoods, and to use the rap medium to draw attention to racism, police brutality and other oppressive behaviors practiced against working-class African Americans. These gangsta rappers introduced and conventionalized the use of the street vernacular to convey informality and linguistic authenticity, and graphic, obscene language partly as means of communicating anger, outrage and "realness" to audiences of young, urban Blacks. Such groups as NWA and 2Live Crew had also demonstrated, unhappily, that obscenity, misogyny and homophobia in rap lyrics increased record sales. It is into this burgeoning rap culture that Tupac Shakur, an unpublished, unproven amateur poet, actor and budding rapper came to try to make his name in 1990. His success was almost immediate. His first solo album, 2pacalypse Now, went gold and the cut Brenda's Got a Baby became a major hit and established Tupac as a preeminent rap star. What explains this success?

Although there are clear similarities between the body of poetry Tupac had already produced and the lyrics of his raps, we see in the latter a radical shift of focus, themes, language and rhetoric; and a new, fierce identification with the inner-city and the issues and behaviors that define it. We also see more clearly in his raps the contours of the psychic complexity we had noted in his poetry. This complexity has become a defining property of the perceptions of Tupac.

White (1997: 56) points out that 2Pacalypse Now "revealed cultural indebtedness with almost disarming naivete ... writing and recording this album was [Tupac's] artistic answer to the political principles taught by Afeni and Mutula, Rev. Daughtry and Public Enemy." The raps on this album focus fiercely and unrelentingly on the experiences, characters, issues, social philosophy and drama of the Black neighborhoods Tupac had grown up in and knew intimately. Thus, his work achieved an immediacy and connectivity with his audience that his poetry lacked. Informal discourse analyses of some of the cuts on the album tell the story. The first cut, "Young Black male," announces the dramatic difference between Tupac's poetic and rap personas. The first line is "hard like an erection" delivered with high energy and defiance. The rap presents the protagonist as a DJ living the thug life. He is hard, dangerous and armed. He is misogynous and mercenary; thus he is getting paid, getting laid, and getting drunk. The rap is wicked and wild, full of the verbal exuberance that was absent from the poems.

The language is the AAVE vernacular, generously laced with street slang and dripping with attitude. In this very first rap Tupac uses the "F word" four times compared to zero in the complete book of poems, and he starkly paints a picture of the thug that is unflattering but real both in terms of the verbal sketches and the dialogue. This rap is clearly addressed to the audience described by Warner (1999) as Poor Inner-City Youth (PYI).

The second cut, "Trapped," is addressed to the members of the G culture, since it discusses both real-as-life and fictional gang events. It communicates Tupac's understanding of and visceral connection to the mind set of a typical young black male in the hood: a feeling of being trapped and oppressed:

You know they got me trapped in this prison of seclusion
happiness, living on the streets is a delusion.
Tupac describes the oppressive life of a thug: the continuous dehumanizing harassment by police often leading to fatal confrontations; the constant pressure to assert his manhood by fighting or shooting individuals who disrespect him; the fugitive existence; the sense of hopelessness; the inevitable incarceration; and the frequent contemplation of suicide as the manly response to humiliation of prison life:

What do I do?
Live my life in a prison cell
I'd rather die than be trapped in living hell.
These lines encode a chronic fatalism, yet the rap's chorus asserts repeatedly, "They can't keep the black man down." Thus we are impelled to ask ourselves: Is the chorus a mocking reminder that the rhetoric of resistance is empty in the face of the destiny that awaits the Black male? Or is the chorus a rallying cry for the revolution? "Trapped" fuses social observation, social critique and poignant, dramatic description:

Even a smooth criminal one day must be caught
Shot up or down with the bullets that he bought
Nine millimeter kicking, thinking about what the streets do to me
Cause they never talk peace in the Black community
All they know is violence, do the job in silence
Walk the city streets like a rat pack of tyrants
Too many brothers heading for the big pen
Niggas coming out worse than they went in.
Freed from the metrical restrictions of formal print poetry and writing within the freer boundaries of folk poetry, Tupac is able to communicate the complex worldview of the thug with passion and realness. The thug's emotional experiences are complex; they include loneliness and hopelessness but also defiance: "If one more cop harasses me I might go psycho."

"Trapped" displays the special talent Tupac had acquired for painting verbal pictures that capture the essence of life in the `hood' and converts into drama the lived experiences of its young male inhabitants. The lines,

Now I'm trapped and want to find a getaway
All I need is a G and somewhere safe to stay
Can't use the phone
Cause I'm sure someone's tappin in
did it before
Ain't scared to use my gat again
capture the desperation of a Bigger Thomas-like figure fleeing justice but prepared to die fighting if confronted. It is this ability to "make it real" that distinguishes Tupac from other rappers. The notion of realness has to do, also, with the fact that Tupac, in embracing the rap medium, began to locate his lyrics within the communication traditions of the African American community where adventure narratives, tall-tales, boasts, "running it down," sounding and signify are styles of talking (Kochman, 1971). "Trapped" includes boasts and "running it down" sequences.

The cut "Soulja's Story" is another version of the thug life exposition. The title itself taps into the political semantics of the `hood' by describing young Black males as soldiers in battle against the system (remember Sista Soulja?). The rap features a "soulja" whose mother is on drugs, whose father has abandoned the family, who is constantly "sweated" by cops who suspect him of dealing drugs, and who eventually kills a member of the drug task force, is caught and jailed. This "Soulja's" younger brother, who also aspires to be a "soulja," mounts a daring attack on the prison in an effort to free his brother and gets fatally shot in the head, and his older brother gets shot too. Here again Tupac captures poignantly in his lyrics the harried life of a young Black male but complicates our reception of this picture by showing us the bleak destiny that awaits the soulja if he succumbs to the life of a thug. The piece ends thus:

I caught a bullet in the head, the scream never left my mouth
my brother caught a bullet too
I think he gon pull through, he deserve to
The fast life ain't everything they told ya
Never get much older, following the tracks of a soulja.
The cut "Word of Wisdom" does not resonate with the ambiguity of the two raps discussed above. It is a straight indictment of America for killing off young black males in the `hoods. "One by one," and a call to action for these young black males to right back. The battle against this genocide, claims Tupac, is carded by such rappers as himself, Ice Cube, The Lynch Mob, Above the Law, Public Enemy, and by militants such as Mutula Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, and Assada Shakur. Though less complex, this rap fits into the ethnography of speaking, as a piece of "running it down" and clarifies the meaning of the word "Nigga," an important aspect of Tupac's political vocabulary. For him the word is an acronym for Never Ignorant; Getting Goals Accomplished.

The word "Nigga" shows up often in the raps on this album and in the work of rappers in general. "Crooked Ass Nigga" is a cut on this album on which Tupac, Stretch, Easy-E, and Ice Cube collaborate. The rappers scatologically present various scenarios with Crooked Niggas. Tupac declares:

Crooked ass niggaz come in all shapes and size
They wear disguises
Backstabbin's what they specialize in
They'll try to getcha, they'll sweatcha to get in the picture
But Tupac's rap is made real by scenarios in which Tupac and Stretch each are involved in dramas in which they foil the attempts of various "Crooked ass Niggas" to rob them.. This rap, along with "Lunatic," "Violent," "Rebel of the Underground" and "I don't give a F_uck," displays another side of Tupac's artistic personality. In these latter raps he shows his mastery of "woofing" and boasting and dissing, all central parts of the African American speech system in which obscenity and aggressive language are required. They also show the dark side of Tupac's personality: that he is capable of lurid thoughts and vengeful, cruel behavior.

These raps also have the political intent of giving vent to Tupac's sense of outrage about the prejudices against young Blacks perpetrated by various establishment institutions including the CIA, FBI, Marin County Sheriff Department, the San Francisco Police Department and America in general. The sins Tupac inveighs against over and over again include the constant sweating of young Blacks by the police. The piece "Violent," like "Trapped," contains a dramatic confrontation between a defiant protagonist who refuses to submit to the police, although the odds are stacked against him and his "homies" are being shot to death. The point of this rap is to claim that the label "Violent" is typically attached to young Blacks who speak out against injustice. The drama is told in terse, fluid verse and communicates the fierce courage of the protagonist and his intention to keep fighting to the end. Unlike in "Trapped," the protagonist is still standing at the end, although he is clearly doomed. Thus, Tupac again sends us a complex message in "Violent." The protagonist is doomed, either by virtue of the relentless and ineluctable push toward violence and crime that the society exerts on him, or by the dehumanizing culture that poverty promotes; or by the resistance he offers if he is a real nigga in the sense of Never Ignorant; Getting Goals Accomplished.

The 2Calypse Now album contains two cuts, "Part Time Mutha" and "Brenda's Got a Baby," which display Tupac's complex responses to women. On the one hand, I think that Lucy Morrison's (2000:1) comments are fair when she asserts that "Tupac's lyrics are deeply ingrained with the misogyny and thug life so typical of gangsta rap ... [and] Tupac's music also reveals the white stereotypes that African American women have to fight to escape, revealing his own struggle and, perhaps, failure to defeat the African American male stereotype imposed upon him." Certainly, Tupac has nasty things to say about women in "Young Black Male" and other cuts on this album.

However, also like Morrison, I'd like to propose that Tupac was also sensitive to the plight of poor African American women both as a group and as individuals. In "Part-time Mutha" he clearly sympathizes with the girl whose young dope-fiend mother was too preoccupied with her drug habit to take proper care of her daughter. The result is that her daughter was raped and made pregnant by her stepfather and lived in fear of discovery. Eventually the daughter had to tell her mother of the abuse only to be accused by her mother of seducing her rapist. Tupac's narrative is terse, clear and poetic. Here's the victim speaking:

I grew up in a home where no one liked me
moms would hit the pipe, every night, she would fight me
poppa was a nasty old man, like the rest
He's feeling on my chest, with his hand in my dress
Just another pest, and yes I was nervous
Blood sensor tests, I just don't deserve this
I wanna tell mom, but would she listen
She's bound to be bitchin if she hasn't got a fix in
So ... now I lay me down to sleep
Lord don't let him rape me
If he does my soul to keep
Don't let the devil take me
Gotta believe in him, and dissin her own daughter
Clearly there is empathy and sympathy in this characterization of the daughter's fate.

This is true also of Tupac's treatment of the central character of "Brenda Got a baby". The rap is the tale of a twelve-year-old girl whose parents were junkies and neglected her education. They didn't pay her enough attention to prevent her from getting sexually involved with her cousin who made her pregnant. Brenda ended up having the baby without any support since her lover abandoned her. She threw the baby down an incinerator to get rid of it. Her life after that is the typical horror story for poor young Black girls with uncaring, drug dependent parents. She ends up in prostitution, after failing as a drug dealer. Tupac's treatment of Brenda's tale is insightful and sympathetic. Once again he captures in terse poetry the essence of the lived experience and thus connected viscerally with the life experiences of the inner city Black community. Tupac's rendering of her final descent is starkly real, and sharply etched:

Now Brenda's gotta make her own way
Can't go to her family
they won't let her stay
No money, no babysitter, she couldn't keep a job
she tried to sell crack, but ended up getting robbed
so now what's next, there ain't nothing left to sell
so she sees sex as a way of leaving hell
It's paying the rent, so she really can't complain
prostitute, fair slang, and Brenda's her name
she's got a baby.
Thus, in the 2pacalypse Now album we see the outlines of the uniqueness of Tupac's talents and can infer the reasons for his success as a rapper. These reasons are both linguistic and perceptual:

a) The ability to articulate the experience of economic, social and racial oppression experienced in the inner city Black community with passion using the rhetoric he inherited from his education as the son and step son of former Black Panther militants.

b) His talent for coupling political and revolutionary rhetoric with dramatic scenarios that connect with the actual and vicarious experiences of members of the hood. The effect was to communicate a sense of "realness."

c) His use of the typical speech styles of the African American community--boasting, woofing, running it down, and tall tales.

d) His ability to use AAVE grammar, rhythm, intonation and vocabulary to delivery his messages, making them sound real to urban Black youth. In this regard Tupac's lyrics exhibited vernacular "lyrical fitness," a concept used by Morgan (2002) to explain the intrinsic standards of linguistic appropriateness recognized by in-group AAVE speakers and knowledgeable consumers of hip hop poetry.

e) The perception that he was an authentic member of the Black underclass that he rapped about. His personal confrontations with the establishment certified his "realness." Thus, many of his fans saw him as a victim of "player haters" in the sense of that expression defined in Smitherman (1994), i.e. "envious people who criticize others' success" (Morgan 2001: 198).

f) The complexity of his responses to the realities of life in the 'hood. I propose that this made Tupac seem palpably real to his audience.

I'd like to propose that (e) and (f), though nonlinguistic, are as important, if not more important, than the others in explaining Tupac's popularity as a rapper. In his raps, as in his personal life, Tupac moved agonizingly and contradictorily between embracing the values and behaviors of the thug life, and warning other young men to eschew this path. He also vacillated between nihilism and hope; between misogyny and reverence for women as expressed in raps like "Brenda's Got a Baby" Keep ya Head up" and the phenomenally successful "Dear Mama"; between spitting out obscenities and lewd posturing in a cut like "Hit em up" and thoughtful expositions like "Words of Wisdom." Through these public airing of his angst he came across as being truly honest, i.e., "real" to the audiences he addressed.

This quality of realness in Tupac's work has not gone unnoticed by his fellow rappers. In an interview I recently had with him, the Detroit-based rapper "Eshan" said, "Tupac was real, man. He made you feel that you were there. He brought it home with sincerity" (personal communication, September 2001). In an article in Rolling Stones published on October 11, 1996, Kevin Powell concludes, "We may never find out who killed Tupac Shakur, or why he did the things he did and said what he said. All we have left are his music, his films, and his interviews. Shakur lived fast and hard and has died fast and hard. And in his own way, he kept it real for a lot of folks who didn't believe that anyone like him (or like themselves) could do anything with his life" (my emphasis).

Tupac himself considered being real to be a very positive personal characteristic. In several raps in the 2calypse Now album he refers to this quality, as he did in raps on other albums. For example, in the rap "Dear Mama" he praised his mother for "staying real." In the song "Changes" on his Greatest Hits album he says, "it takes skill to be real." Morgan (2001:187) commented on the importance of "Realness" to the working-class African American culture in a recent article. She pointed out that" the music, sounds, and lyrics from some of Hip Hop's most talented writers and performers has resulted in what has undeniably become the one cultural institution that urban youth rely on for representation, honesty--keeping it real--and leadership" (emphasis hers).

Note, however, the chilling deconstruction of the notion of realness that Quincy Jones offers in his Foreword to Vibe magazine's anthology Tupac Shakur (1998). After praising Tupac for being "a fighter, a young man who constantly sought out demons and battled them--to his death," Jones observes that "real is being shot four times with real bullets. Real is having to induce paralysis to stop you from ripping your guts out. Real is having a promising life cut short at 25 years of age by someone you might call `brother'." I think Tupac would have agreed.

That Tupac's contradictions are viewed positively by his fans is exemplified by this quote from the website www.makaveli.com that my assistant Boatama Ntiri found on August 24, 2001:

"Pac had two sides to his music. Everyone knows he contradicted himself in his songs but this was the flavor that made Tupac who he was. Pac could sing songs of struggling to survive, and showing love to the people, his moma and kids, and then he'd turn around and become the heartless thug that could fuel songs like "Hit Em Up" and "When We Ride on Our Enemies." This was what really made Tupac shine and sell ... This was the power that most rappers just cannot hit today. He could take you from the cold bloody streets up to the mansion of gold. That was power. That is where it became complicated" (Strange, 1996: 84).

Strange (1996:84) also referred to Tupac's contradictory impulses: "Many different people see Tupac as many different things: hustler, actor, thug, realist, lover, hater, opportunist. But in reality he is all of these. And while this observation may appear to make him unique, it actually simplifies him into the universal symbol of young Black manhood that he is."

Tupac acknowledged this dualism in himself. In an interview for Vibe (February, 1996) he admitted "Everybody's at war with different things ... I'm at war with my own heart sometimes."

Among the apparent contradictions one finds in an analysis of the discourse in Tupac's lyrics are the following:

* He displays a strong commitment for social change in his communities despite the paranoia and nihilism created within its borders.

* For all his fatalism, he still raps about improving the conditions of the lives of the young thugs coming after him

* He recognizes that the vicious cycle of thug life will continue, but continues to offer encouragement that change is possible. Thus he:

* challenges young g's to break away from the gangsta lifestyle

* challenges young Blacks to go out and do something positive with their lives

* challenges his audience to "study your lessons," ask questions, strive to do your best, keep your essence, stay calm under pressure (big themes in the poems)

* repeatedly acknowledges his inability to sustain a long term relationship, yet expresses continued desire for one

* recognizes his anger, but is quick to say that he doesn't want to make excuses for it

* identifies himself as psychotic and begs for help, but recognizes his inability to receive it

Whether or not his introspection and acknowledgment of personal responsibility are sincere, they are perceived as such by a large segment of urban youth as being real.

I conclude with the claim that Tupac Shakur's literary talents, expressed in his book of poems, The Rose that Grew for Concrete, though considerable, were not fully developed at the time he wrote poetry. However, his verbal virtuosity, social intelligence along with his ambivalence, passion for reform, and artistic honesty found an appropriate outlet in gangsta rap. The raps in 2capalypse Now presaged the raps in the other albums by displaying the same mix of ideas as represented in the later work. It seems to me that Tupac was courageous enough to put all of himself out there. To lay it all on the line, so to speak. I suggest that this artistic integrity allowed the world to experience his brief brilliance.

Acknowledgements

I'd like to acknowledge with sincere gratitude the contribution of Karen Milligan to the information and analyses in this paper. As my research assistant in the winter of 2001 she collected and coded an enormous amount of material on TupacShakur and helped me understand it. I'd like also to acknowledge the research assistance of Boaatama Ntiri during the summer of 2001. I'm indebted to Karen Milligan for this list of apparent contradiction in the lyrics of Tupac Shakur.

References

Boyd, T. (1997). Am I Black enough for you: Popular culture from the `hood and beyond. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kochman, T. (1972). "Toward an ethnography of Black American speech behavior." In T. Kochman (ed.) Rappin and stylin out. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Morgan, M. (2002). "Working words in hip hop: The rebirth of African American English research." Paper read at Wayne State University, February 28.

--. (2001). "`Nuthin' but a G thang': Grammar and language ideology in hip hop identity." In S. Lanehart (ed.) Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 187-210.

Morrison, C. (In Press). "Death Narratives from the `Killing Fields': Narrative and Pentadic Criticism & The Case of Tupac Shakur." In Ronald L. Jackson II and Elaine B. Richardson eds. Understanding African American rhetoric: Classical origins to contemporary innovations. Routledge.

Rose, T. (1994). Black noise. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.

Shaw, T. A. (posthumous, 1999). The Rose that Grew from Concrete. New York: Pocket Books.

Smitherman, G. (1994). Black talk: Words and phrases from the hood to the amen corner. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Strange, A. (1996). "Death wish: Tupac Shakur: Life after death, living on death row & killing the East Coast." The Source, 84-89, 111.

Wood, B. (1999). "Understanding rap as rhetorical folk-poetry." Mosaic, 32 (4).

Warner, Jr., E. (1998). "Searching for a pragmatic aesthetic: The rhetorical strategies of gangsta rappers--Myths, rituals and dramas of Outlaw music." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Communications Department, Wayne State University.

Vibe Editors. (1998). Tupac Shakur. New York: Three Rivers Press.

White, A. (1997). Rebel for the hell of it: The life of Tupac Shakur. New York: Thunder Mouth Press.

Discography

Shaw, T. A. (posthumous, 2000). The rose that grew from concrete, Vol. 1.

Walter Edwards holds a B.A. in English from the University of Guyana, an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Lancaster, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of York. He is currently a full Professor in linguistics and Director of the Humanities Center at Wayne State University. His research interests include Guyanese Creole studies, African American Vernacular English, the sociolinguistics of rap lyrics, and language and culture.

Gale Document Number:A94384617




© 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning.
 

Melissa Mah
English 201A
1-2:50
17 September 2008

ARTICLE
Tribby, Mike. "Ardis, Angela and Shakur, Tupac. Inside a Thug's Heart. " Booklist. 100.17 (May 1, 2004): 1534(2). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 17 Sept. 2008

Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2004 American Library Association

Ardis, Angela and Shakur, Tupac. Inside a Thug's Heart. May 2004. 256p. illus. Kensington/Dafina, $21 (0-7582-0789-1) 782.421649.

As deceased gangsta rapper Shakur closes in on limi Hendrix as the most prolific post-humous recording artist, new books about him proliferate. Ardis, his girlfriend, offers a more-intimate-than-usual perspective, though the acknowledgments may be sounding a note of warning by thanking Tupac's mother, former Black Panther Afeni Shakur, for "allowing this book to see the light of day" Given her efforts to control her son's legacy, this suggests that the contents of this peek inside Tupac's emotional life may be somewhat constrained, and its judgments, softened. Ardis is breezy and competent, and Tupac's letters and poems to her, presented as facsimiles of the originals, show that, even when writing a loved one, his style was much like his lyrics. The book delivers insight into Tupac's private thoughts and evidence that even a successful rapper with "thug life" tattooed on his body had gentle and introspective feelings as well as smoldering resentment and rage. Good fan stuff, a primary resource for things 2pak, and a likely circulation builder for hip-hop-intensive collections.

Gale Document Number:A116733955


© 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning.




MY SUMMARY
In the article “Ardis, Angela and Shakur, Tupac. Inside a Thug's Heart” by Mike Tribby, it talks about Tupac’s relationships with his last girlfriend and his mother. His mother, a former member of the Black Panther, Afeni Shakur had released a new book after her son’s death in honor of him and what he was to society. She released this book to give his fans an emotional feel of what his life was like and what he felt throughout his life. In this new book Afeni included songs and poems that Tupac had wrote to his girlfriend Ardis. The author, Mike Tribby, compared his writing styles of his life to the poems and lyrics he had written for his love. He noticed a similarity between these styles of writing, and said “even when writing a loved one, his style was much like his lyrics”, though he had different themes for his songs, the way he portrayed them in his music was mostly the same. Afeni Shakur also added that “The book delivers insight into Tupac's private thoughts and evidence that even a successful rapper with "thug life" tattooed on his body had gentle and introspective feelings as well as smoldering resentment and rage”, in this new book she illustrates the image of a thug life and what it meant to her and her son.
This book was written as a tribute to Tupac and his phenomenal life as a rapper. This book was also to inform his fans about what he had gone through and what made him the way he was. This book is recommended to Tupac’s fans and those who are interested in his life.
 

Dalena Tran
English 201A
1-2:50 pm

Tupac and Biggie Smalls

In a film, Biggie and Tupac, directed by Nick Broomfield, the life and rivalry between Christopher Wallace, also known as Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur is followed by the director. Broomfield intrudes into the rappers personal life and begins questioning them unexpectedly.
The film presents a compare and contrast between the two rappers. It also follows the stories of they mysterious death of the two. In 1996, Tupac was killed in Las Vegas by an unknown gunman. Six months after his death, Biggie was shot in Los Angeles. The shooter was never identified. Many believe that the rivalry between the two artists were the main cause of both of their deaths.
Broomfield was also able to travel coast to coast to demonstrate a background of the two rappers. From his trips, Broomfield was able to find Tupac Shakur’s bodyguard, Kevin Hackie. Hackie allegedly accused Suge Knight for the death of Tupac because of his past threats. Before Tupac’s death, it was informed that Hackie threatened Tupac for leaving Death Row because he was not given $10 million for his part of the bargain. As for Biggie’s murder, chief investigator, Russell Poole, believes that an LAPD was involved with Bloods gang members on the behalf of Suge. He believes that the reason for Suge’s action was because of the display of rivalry between the two rappers.
The film also involved Bigggie’s mother; an imprisoned artist who witnessed Suge, and Biggie’s right hand man, Lil Cease, who influenced Poole’s believes that Biggie was under the FBI’s eyes at all times. The film creates numerous questions rather than answers as the filmmaker presents tears, violence, laughter, and death.


Steinhart, Daniel. "Biggie and Tupac. (Buying and Booking Guide)." Film Journal International 105.7 (July 2002): 58(1). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 18 Sept. 2008
http://find.galegroup.com.proxy.alameda.peralta.edu/itx/start.do?prodId=EAIM.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Stephanie Yu
English 201A
MW 1-2:50

Title:Unsolved Mysteries.(unsolved murders). Source:People Weekly 68.12 (Sept 17, 2007): p199. (1661 words) Document Type:Magazine/Journal Bookmark:Bookmark this Document Library Links:

Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2007 Time, Inc.

TUPAC SHAKUR

Slain in a drive-by gang shooting, the rap star remains the subject of conspiracy theories

On the evening of Sept. 7, 1996, after watching a Mike Tyson fight, Shakur, 25, was in the passenger seat of a BMW driven by Marion "Suge" Knight, the head of Death Row Records, on the crowded Las Vegas Strip. Suddenly a white Cadillac pulled up with four men inside. Shots were fired, and Shakur--who took four slugs in the chest--was fatally injured.

Out of those bare facts, many conspiracy theories have mushroomed. Earlier in the evening, Shakur's entourage had roughed up Orlando Anderson, a member of the Crips street gang. According to some witnesses, Anderson enlisted the Crips to carry out the hit and bragged the next day about being the triggerman. Police questioned Anderson but he was never arrested. (Anderson was later gunned down in L.A.) Some Shakur supporters accuse authorities of deliberately running a slack investigation and perhaps even having been involved in the hit. Others suggest that Knight, despite the fact that he was next to Shakur, could have been mixed up in the plot. Knight has repeatedly denied involvement. "The Crips shot Tupac," says Cathy Scott, the author of The Killing of Tupac Shakur, "but who was behind it?"

The chance that question will be answered seems remote. "The case is cold," says Scott. "Out of the four people in the Cadillac that night, two are dead. And I would imagine the other two are looking over their shoulders."

Source Citation:"Unsolved Mysteries.(unsolved murders)." People Weekly 68.12 (Sept 17, 2007): 199. Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 19 Sept. 2008

Gale Document Number:A168427966

my summary

The article that I find called Unsolved Mysteries. (unsolved murders.), it talks about a lot of people were killed, but nobody can find the murders. Tupac Shakur is one section of those that article. The section about the death of Tupac Shakur tells that Tupac was killed by shooting on September 7, 1996. He was a rap star and he was 25 years old at that time. On September 7, 1996, after he watched the fight of Mike Tyson, he was sitting in a BMW which was driven by Marion Knight, and there was a white Cadillac pull up and four men came out to shoot in Las Vegas Strip. Tupac took four slugs in chest, and then he died. On the day of his death, Orlando Anderson accompanied Tupac in the early evening. And Anderson was a member of the Crips street gang, he joined the Crips and he was going to hit and be the triggerman. Even though the police suspected of him, but Anderson was never arrested. Some body would suspect that Knight might be a participant of the event, but he denied repeatedly. We know the Crips killed Tupac, but nobody know who is the mayor of this involvement.
 

Miloš Bucalo
English 201A
MW1-2:50


Article:

Title:Biggie and Tupac. (Buying and Booking Guide). Author(s):Daniel Steinhart. Source:Film Journal International 105.7 (July 2002): p58(1). (589 words) Document Type:Magazine/Journal Bookmark:Bookmark this Document Library Links:
Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2002 VNU Business Media

LIONS GATE/Color/1.85/Dolby SR/107 Mins./Not Rated

Featuring: Tupac Shakur, Christopher Wallace, Marion Suge Knight, Russell Poole, Kevin Hackle, Billy Garland, Mopreme, Voletta Wallace, Reggie Wright, Sr., Reggie Wright, Jr., Sonia Flores, Mark Hylond, Frank Alexander, Lil Cease, Gene Deal, Nick Broomfield.

Credits: Directed by Nick Broomfield. Produced by Michele D'Acosto. Director of photography: Joan Churchill. Edited by Mark Alkins. Music by Christian Henson. Associate producers: Georgea Blakey, Barney Broomfield. A Lafayetie Film production for Channel 4.

Engrossing but suspect documentary that delves into the unsolved murders of rap superstars Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. 02-165

Documentary-maker Nick Broomfield is good at catching his interview subjects off-guard. As soon as he meets them--or, in some cases, barges in on them--the camera is rolling, the mic is in their face, and the ham-fisted Brit director is firing off questions. The result is that Broomfield gets his subjects talking candidly before they've had the chance to compose themselves. It makes the director an amusing guide through the gangsta-rap underworld as he tries to uncover the mysteries behind the murders of Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, Notorious B.I.G.) and Tupac Shakur in the sensationalistic documentary Biggie & Tupac.

The hardcore rap world that Biggie and Tupac inhabited is as full of intrigue, betrayal and revenge as any crime novel. In 1996, Tupac was gunned down and killed in Las Vegas following a Mike Tyson fight. Six months later, Biggie was shot dead in Los Angeles following an after-awards party. No one was ever charged for the homicides, and most attributed the murders to an East Coast-West Coast rivalry, but mounting evidence connected the killings to the head of Death Row Records, Suge Knight. Knight's label was a multi-million-dollar empire that popularized gangsta rap with artists such as Tupac, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. But Death Row had a more sinister reputation for its ties to the Bloods street gang and corrupt L.A. cops.

Chasing various leads, Broomfield travels from coast to coast to track down a host of lively characters linked to the two rappers. Kevin Hackie, a former LAPD officer who worked as a bodyguard for Tupac, alleges that Suge Knight arranged Tupac's murder after the rapper threatened to leave Death Row because he wasn't receiving over $10 million in royalties. Russell Poole, a chief investigator in the Biggie murder, believes that an LAPD cop and avowed Bloods gang member orchestrated Biggie's murder on behalf of Suge. Poole thinks that Suge wanted to draw attention away from his involvement in the Tupac slaying by making both murders look like the fallout of a rivalry. Other interviewees include: Biggie's devoted mother; an imprisoned scam artist who witnessed Suge and LAPD officers planning the hit on Biggie at a topless bar; a former Mr. Universe turned born-again Christian who served as Tupac's bodyguard; and Biggie's protege, Lil Cease, who was interviewed by the FBI and shown photographs that proved Biggie was under FBI surveillance at the time of his death.

Though the conspiracy theories are carefully examined, the film raises more questions than it answers. What sets the work apart from most other true-life crime documentaries is that Broomfield infuses his film with humor. He leaves in scenes that most other filmmakers would throw away, like a rambling interview with Tupac's stepbrother Mopreme, in which the sound runs out. The director's irreverence generates a few laughs, but his cheekiness sometimes undermines his efforts to create an earnest investigative documentary. Secretly running the camera and exploiting the foibles of interviewees is the stuff of tabloid TV.

SUMMARY:

In the title: “Biggie and Tupac. (Buying and Booking Guide)” by Daniel Steinhart it talks about how are killed rap superstars Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, Notorious B.I.G.) and Tupac Shakur. In First part of title it talks about documentary how made by Nick Broomfield, who interview a lot of people. He interview people from the gangster-rap underworld try to uncover why these two rapper are killed. In the rest of title Daniel Steinhart gave us information that Tupac was killed in 1996 in Las Vegas , and Biggie six months later shouted in Los Angeles after some party.

There also talking about a Death Row Records and his stock-holder witch name is Suge Knight. He was one how popularized gangsta rap, and he popularized stars such as Tupac, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Only “small” problem was that he has very bad or poor reputation. Mrs. Broomfield travel a lot, from coast to coast, to find more information about murdered, so he interview a lot of people. He find that Tupac bodyguard Kevin Hackie(former LAPD officer), come with that Suge Knight commissioned Tupac's murder, because Tupac did not want to received 10 million who he want to give him like his royalty. He found more, he found that Russell Poole chief who was investigator in the Biggie murder, Mrs. Poole comes with believe that Suge Knight want to see death both rappers, and Sure Knight want to show like that Tupac and Biggie did not like with other or that was between, their rivalry.
 

Lisa Ryan
Engish 201A
MW 1-2:50

Samuels, Allison. "Rising Up: Tupac Shakur was murdered in 1996. In a new documentary, he leaps off the screen to tell his own story, and shows why he's never gone away" Newsweek(Nov 24, 2003):78. Expanded Academic ASAP.Gale. College of Alameda. 17 Sept. 2008
http://find.galegroup.com

Summary:

The article that I chose to summarize is from Newsweek entitled, Rising Up". It is about a documentary on Tupac’s life, which was produced by Afeni Shakur, Tupacs mother. The article captures the true commitment and strength of Afeni as she brings this documentary to the screen for the first showing to the public. She is overcome with emotions and asked the crowd "Please be patient with me." She describes her journey at bringing this film to the big screen. She shared that the journey was filled with pain and pleasure. As a result of making this documentary, she say's that she finally understands the meaning of her son's life. But this doesn't take away from the fact that it's still difficult for her to watch.

The article talked about Tupac’s death at the age of 25 and how many of us still believes that his death was a sham. There is also a quote from 50 Cent where he states, "I worry about Tupac and what he's coming out with. It’s like he's around the corner still ruling things like he always did." Afeni did a great job capturing the true essence of how Tupac wanted the world to see him, through his own voice. Her work was ingenious and had Tupac actually telling his story through some shrewd editing. The viewer's enjoy hearing Tupac voice throughout the film.

The article praises Afeni for Tupac's success and references to her association in the Black Panther Party and the strength that she has maintained. In the article she is viewed as someone to fear and respect for her tenacity. Even though her own struggles with crack use and incarceration, she managed to implant in her son a sense of black pride and a appetite for artistic expression that would result in his influencing generations of people, even in his death.

Tupac had an affinity for acting or being in the spotlight. His childhood experiences included, theatre, dancing, acting and music. His life took a turn for the worse when his mother relocated them to California. This is where she was introduced to crack cocaine and Tupac had to learn take care of himself. Tupac eventually left high school and chose rap music as his way out of poverty. He made it big and enjoyed the lavish life but it was not without turmoil.

In this documentary Tupac in an eerie kind of way predicts his own demise when he states “Who shot me?”Shit I don't know." I feel like he saying, no one is suppose to know who shot him, because that's not what's important, he wants us to remember his legacy and learn something from his life. Even in his death he's still trying to help his brother's and sister's overcome the ills of poverty.
 

Lisa Ryan
Engish 201A
MW 1-2:50

Samuels, Allison. "Rising Up: Tupac Shakur was murdered in 1996. In a new documentary, he leaps off the screen to tell his own story, and shows why he's never gone away" Newsweek(Nov 24, 2003):78. Expanded Academic ASAP.Gale. College of Alameda. 17 Sept. 2008
http://find.galegroup.com

Summary:

The article that I chose to summarize is from Newsweek entitled, Rising Up". It is about a documentary on Tupac’s life, which was produced by Afeni Shakur, Tupacs mother. The article captures the true commitment and strength of Afeni as she brings this documentary to the screen for the first showing to the public. She is overcome with emotions and asked the crowd "Please be patient with me." She describes her journey at bringing this film to the big screen. She shared that the journey was filled with pain and pleasure. As a result of making this documentary, she say's that she finally understands the meaning of her son's life. But this doesn't take away from the fact that it's still difficult for her to watch.

The article talked about Tupac’s death at the age of 25 and how many of us still believes that his death was a sham. There is also a quote from 50 Cent where he states, "I worry about Tupac and what he's coming out with. It’s like he's around the corner still ruling things like he always did." Afeni did a great job capturing the true essence of how Tupac wanted the world to see him, through his own voice. Her work was ingenious and had Tupac actually telling his story through some shrewd editing. The viewer's enjoy hearing Tupac voice throughout the film.

The article praises Afeni for Tupac's success and references to her association in the Black Panther Party and the strength that she has maintained. In the article she is viewed as someone to fear and respect for her tenacity. Even though her own struggles with crack use and incarceration, she managed to implant in her son a sense of black pride and a appetite for artistic expression that would result in his influencing generations of people, even in his death.

Tupac had an affinity for acting or being in the spotlight. His childhood experiences included, theatre, dancing, acting and music. His life took a turn for the worse when his mother relocated them to California. This is where she was introduced to crack cocaine and Tupac had to learn take care of himself. Tupac eventually left high school and chose rap music as his way out of poverty. He made it big and enjoyed the lavish life but it was not without turmoil.

In this documentary Tupac in an eerie kind of way predicts his own demise when he states “Who shot me?”Shit I don't know." I feel like he saying, no one is suppose to know who shot him, because that's not what's important, he wants us to remember his legacy and learn something from his life. Even in his death he's still trying to help his brother's and sister's overcome the ills of poverty.
 

Treana Penn
English 201A
1:00-2:50pm

"Dedicated to Dunham. " Natural History. 116.1 (Feb 2007): 61(1). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 17 Sept. 2008


Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2007 Natural History Magazine, Inc.

You dance because you have to.

--Katherine Dunham (1909-2006)

Katherine Dunham sought, in the native dances of the Caribbean, in the pounding rhythms of Africa, the cultural origins for the distinctive form of dance she pioneered. She spent her long life creating art of transcendent power and beauty, coupled with awareness of both racial inequality and ethnic pride.

Dunham was an exceptional and gifted woman--when she died in New York last May at 96, she held a 1936 degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago and scores of honorary doctorates. She founded revolutionary dance troupes, choreographed at the Metropolitan Opera, and performed on Broadway. Her great love for the Haitian people led her to embrace the Vodoun religion and to capture headlines by going on a 47-day hunger strike at age 82 to protest U.S. treatment of Haitian refugees.

"Dedicated to Dunham" is the Museum's tribute to this remarkable woman, a one-day festival on Sunday, February 25, during African-American Heritage Month, celebrated as part of the Museum's Global Weekends programming. From 1:00 to 5:00 p.m., dancers and educators who studied with Dunham and the young stars who are influenced by her extraordinary work will perform, present panels, and screen films about Dunham and her remarkable life.

"I used to want the words 'She tried' on my tombstone," Dunham once said. "Now I want 'She did it.'" Dedicated to Dunham shows that, indeed, she did.

Dedicated to Dunham is coproduced by the American Museum of Natural History; Barbara Horowitz, founder and president of Community Works; and Voza Rivers, executive producer of New Heritage Theatre Group. Global Weekends are made possible, in part, by The Coca-Cola Company, the City of New York, the New York City Council, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support has been provided by the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., the Tolan Family, and the family of Frederick H. Leonhardt

Gale Document Number:A158832458



© 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning.
 

Treana Penn
English 201A
1:00-2:50pm

Title:Reaffirming African American cultural values: Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits as a musical autobiography.
Author(s):Timothy J. Brown.
Source:The Western Journal of Black Studies 29.1 (Spring 2005): p558(16). (11113 words)
Document Type:Magazine/Journal
Bookmark:Bookmark this Document
Library Links:

*

Abstract:

This paper analyzes Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits (1998) to reveal: 1) Shakur's rhetoric employs three African American cultural values (the oral tradition, a diunital orientation, and spirituality), which further defines the unique characteristics that comprise African American discourse; 2) when interpreting Shakur's message through the lens of African American cultural values, his Greatest Hits functions as a musical autobiography that constructs identity and provides a voice for the Black youth culture. Given these two findings, Shakur extends the cultural values that underlie African American rhetoric to construct a message that is more complex, enlightened, and introspective than what tends to characterize the public criticism of gangsta rap. A rhetorical criticism of Shakur's Greatest Hits also highlights how using cultural values as a theoretical framework is a way for rhetorical scholars to demonstrate a more complete understanding of the cultural meaning of texts that are created and consumed in the African American community.

Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2005 The Western Journal of Black Studies

Gangst Rap: The Interconnection of Capitalism, Controversy, and Culture

Since the first successful commercial rap song, "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang was released in 1979, rap music has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry that has been appropriated by corporate America to advertise a variety of products from soda to shoes. Although the growth of rap music and hip-hop culture has elevated the genre and its African American artists to icon status, rap's growth has not occurred without controversy. One genre of rap music, gangsta rap, has endured harsh criticism for lyrics that glamorize a gangster lifestyle, which Boyd (1997) has argued places ultimate value on the excesses of our capitalistic culture: materialism, power, machismo, sexism, and violence. By emphasizing the excesses of capitalism, gangsta rap has taken the idea of "getting paid" to the most extreme form. Due to gangsta rap's explicit lyrics, there has been widespread criticism from all points on the political spectrum. A discussion of the congressional hearings into gangsta rap is provided by Kitwana (1994), Ramsey (2003), and Wong (2001).

The denouncing of gangsta rap has also been common among portions of the African American community. During Benjamin Chavis' tenure as Executive Director of the NAACP, he caused internal conflicts between himself and the Executive Board by attempting to embrace gangsta rap as a Black art form (Brown & Rahoi-Gilchrest, 1999). The ultimate rejection of gangsta rap by the NAACP was echoed by many middle class African Americans and African American feminist groups (Kelley, 1996). Furthermore, an Urban League poll revealed that 67% of African Americans perceived rap artists as inappropriate role models (Holland, 2001). Compounding these negative opinions of rap music were the highly publicized incidents between gangsta rappers and law enforcement. Many gangsta rappers have been caught up in the imagery and the bravado of their lyrics as the distinction between art and life are often blurred. One rapper turned actor, whose career and life exemplified this tension was Tupac Shakur. After surviving a shooting in 1994 and time in prison in 1995 for sexual assault, Shakur was a victim of a drive by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996. The artist, who rose quickly in gangsta rap by selling six million albums, died according to the "Thug Life" he rapped about in many of his songs. Upon his death Newsweek reported that hip-hop had lost "the most articulate voice of intelligent black male anger" (Samuels & Leland, 1996). Despite receiving accolades from some scholars and many of his followers, Tupac Shakur and the genre of gangsta rap continues to be widely perceived by critics as a type of music that advocates lawlessness, nihilism and has little redeeming cultural value (Kelley, 1996; Ogbar, 1999). T. Boyd (1997) and M. Dyson (2001) provide an explanation of the primary criticisms directed at gangsta rap.

However, to simply dismiss gangsta rap or a gangsta rapper such as Tupac Shakur as a "thug" whose music has contributed to the "moral decline" of American culture would be too simplistic a statement to explain the messages contained in his music. In contrast to the negative criticisms of gangsta rap, some scholarship has illustrated the multifaceted messages of the genre and Shakur's legacy as an intellectual, political figure, and an urban folk hero. A recent symposium held by the Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard university in 2003 explored and discussed Shakur's cultural impact.

Through common experiences groups of people share cultural values that comprise their social reality. I will draw upon research from scholars who have analyzed various aspects of African American culture, have identified common experiences individuals used in response to their reality and have identified many cultural values from the experiences of African Americans. These common experiences also form the basis of what scholars label the African American community (or composite culture) and/or the African American experience. See Hecht, Jackson, & Ribeau (2003); Smitherman (2000), and Jackson (1999) for a more in-depth discussion of African American cultural values. This paper will provide a textual analysis of Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits to make two arguments: 1) Shakur's rhetoric employs three African American cultural values (the oral tradition, a diunital orientation, and spirituality), which further defines the unique characteristics that comprise African American discourse and are representative of Black protest music; 2) when interpreting Shakur's message through the lens of African American cultural values, his Greatest Hits functions as a musical autobiography that constructs identity and provides a voice for the new Black youth culture. The new Black youth culture is the term Kitwana (2002) uses to label the post-civil rights generation. According to Kitwana the new Black youth culture is defined by its defiant attitudes and dispositions, through "hood" films, hip-hop magazines, and youth-oriented television programming such as MTV, and activism that is in opposition to both mainstream politics and older-generation African American activists. Kitwana explains all these characteristics are influenced by rap music and that rap music has the greatest impact on the new Black youth culture.

Given these two findings, Shakur extends the cultural values that underlie African American rhetoric to construct a message that is more complex, enlightened, and introspective than what usually characterizes the public criticism of gangsta rap. This rhetorical analysis fulfills the need in the discipline of communication for studies that use an African American cultural approach to understand how African American rhetoric is influenced by cultural practices that inform the style, meaning, and rhetorical choices made by African American rhetors (Asante, 1980; Asante & Abarry, 1996; Atwater, 1984; Morrison 2004).

Significance of Study

Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits (1998) is a significant cultural text for analysis because Shakur has greatly impacted rap music, hip-hop culture, and Black culture. Shakur's impact is clearly evident in two ways. First, through his music Shakur illustrates that he is a social critic and a good example of Black protest music. At its core, Black protest music is characterized by the expression of resistance and the articulation of the heartache and pain that Blacks have endured throughout history (Ellison, 1989; Neal, 2002; Floyd, 1995). Likewise, Shakur as a social critic conveys through his music the despair, anger, and resentment that resonates with many African Americans. Shakur's ability to articulate these strong feelings and emotions in words is a further characteristic of Black protest music, which according to

Ellison (1989) expresses personal emotions and the most intense communal fears. Furthermore, Shakur's message focuses upon struggle and fulfillment which underscore another recurring theme in Black protest music (Floyd, 1995).

Second, Shakur's Greatest Hits are worthy of study due to the mythic construction of his life, music, and legacy. It is the mythos surrounding Shakur that separates him from other rappers such as 50 Cent, Snoop Dog, or Ice Cube. In death, Shakur gained immorality as singles and CDs were released after his death. In fact, Shakur's popularity increased after his death, as his record sales grew, while his life became the subject of books, college courses, television documentaries, and films. Also, academic conferences have been held on Shakur to address his social impact and legacy as a public intellectual (Kitwana, 2003). Due to Shakur's popularity, he is often referred to "the Black Elvis" as rumors of sightings and urban legends about him faking his death abound.

The mythical construction of Shakur is further magnified by his connection to the "golden era" for Black protest music--the civil rights movement and the growth of Black Nationalism. During the 1960s, the Black Panther Movement grew in large part to an increasing frustration by some African Americans with the traditional civil rights movement (Neal, 2002). Shakur's mother was a Black Panther, which provides Shakur with a legitimacy to "the struggle" that few rappers can match. His association with the Black Panthers contributes to a mythos that through his music, Shakur carries on a legacy (and militancy) of the Black Panthers.

These examples illustrate how Shakur continues to be an important source for understanding Black culture in the post-civil rights era (Neal, 2003). Furthermore, fans continue to create thousands of tribute sites that are found on the Internet. As actor, Larenz Tate, stated, "He [Shakur] has definitely etched his mark in hip-hop culture. But he was also able to transcend the hip-hop culture into the pop world, to film and television and all kinds of media. For him to still be as big now as he was when he was alive is amazing" (qtd. in Dyson, 2001, p. 5).

Given the cultural significance of Tupac Shakur, a textual analysis of his Greatest Hits will provide a further understanding of African American discourse and Black protest music. Before an analysis is made, it will be appropriate to review the literature of gangster rap.

Gangsta Rap as Cultural Expression

Guthrie Ramsey (2003) argued that we are now living in the Age of Hip-Hop as rap music and hip-hop culture have greatly impacted American society and the global community. Due to its growth and development, many scholars have examined rap music and hip-hop culture to discuss the various influences it has made on American culture. For example, Rose (1994) provided a comprehensive and thorough analysis of rap's lyrics, music, culture, style, and social context to explain the interplay of racial and sexual domination, the technological and cultural practices, and the popular resistance to rap music.

Meanwhile, Kitwana (1994) discussed the development of rap music and its commercialization. One argument Kitwana made is artists not only need to create rap music that is true to hardcore rap, but rap music that encourages struggle, activism, and respect for Black life. Ramsey (2003) also discussed the commercialization of rap music, but within the contexts of film and gospel music. Ramsey argued that hip-hop films through the use of rap music form an important component in the narratives of the films, which audiences can identify with. Furthermore, gospel artists such as Kirk Franklin mimic rap music's practice of borrowing from different musical genres while also critiquing secularism, sacredness, and commercialism.

Ogbar (1999) examined the complexity of the political "culture wars" over acceptable standards from the center of the hip-hop community. Ogbar (1999) illustrated how the hip-hop community contains a diversity of thought as various hip-hop artists have both defended their music, denounced other artists who are hypermaterialistic, and attacked critics who attempted to pander to the fear and ignorance of the average individual. Neal (1999) reinforced this point, by explaining that various artists in hip-hop have issued critiques of hip-hop to challenge the widespread glamorization of violence, misogyny, and fast money schemes. In fact, Neal (1999) explained that no other genre is more self-consciously critical of itself as hip-hop. In addition, Dyson (1996) argued that the social criticism and commentary of gangsta rap forces Whites and Blacks to confront societal issues that are often ignored.

In a comprehensive examination of the influence of gangsta rap on Black popular culture, Boyd (1997) discussed the underlying impact politics, popular culture, and consumption has had in the evolution of gangsta rap. Boyd (1997) argued that gangsta rap, rejects a political agenda and assimilation into the main stream (although it is already absorbed by it) in order to project a nihilistic attitude toward free expression and every day life. This point is supported by Kelley (1996) who explained that when gangsta rap evolved it was reduced to hard-core gangsta rap that articulated nihilism for nihilism's sake. Meanwhile, Allen (1996) analyzed message (political) rap to argue that message rap died out as a genre of rap music because there was no political movement to support its message. According to Allen (1996), without a mass following, the genre did not produce enough revenue for the record companies to continue to produce message rap.

Furthermore, Watts (1997) argued that what has been pushed by record companies is gangsta rap that is manufactured as an overdose of commercialized reality. Watts (1997) explained that at the heart of rap's commercialized reality are the obscene excesses of pop culture and the tension between "street" vs. "decent" values. Watts (1997) further argued that consumerism also symbolically reproduces the street code, commodifying it into an acceptable package for audience consumption.

One means in which rap music is commodified into an acceptable package for audience consumption is through rap fanzines (teen magazines that cover popular artists). Forman (1995) explained that rap is made more acceptable by following the conventional teen magazine format, which glosses over social and political issues contained in rap music. More specifically, social and political controversies such as sexism contained in rap are obscured in these fanzines by articles that focus upon trivial topics such as style and fashion. By negotiating the complexities of raps' various genres, these magazines help construct images for the audience that are acceptable for consumption.

The scholarship mentioned highlights the dialogue that is taking place about rap music and hip-hop culture as it provides an understanding of the creation and evolution of rap music and hip-hop culture. A few of the studies about gangsta rap, however, imply that gangsta rap represents values that are contrary to African Americans' traditional cultural values. In using Ice-T's "Cop Killer" as an example, Watts (1997) argued that gangsta rap illustrates, "a reckless 'street' orientation that undermines traditional black folk sources of authority" (p. 53). Watts (1997), however, makes this claim without identifying the values that comprise Black culture or the authorities that define values for African Americans. A few studies illustrate African American communication practices such as the dozens, call and response, toasts, and signifying that are present in rap music but these studies do not address how the African American communication practices are based upon cultural values that shape rap music. For example, Smitherman (2000) provides a broad rhetorical analysis of some communication and linguistic practices found in rap music. Yet, it is not a comprehensive single speaker textual analysis that analyzes cultural values. Other works that provide brief references to some communication practices in rap music include Kitwana (1994), Rose (1994), and Kelley (1996). Therefore, this examination will begin by defining three cultural values from the African American culture that serve as the theoretical framework for the analysis of Shakur's Greatest Hits.

African American Cultural Values

Historically, African American culture has been shaped by political, social, and economic conditions and how African Americans have responded to these circumstances. The struggle against oppression has produced African American neighborhoods, churches, social groups, and schools which have helped construct African American identity and culture. As a result, African American discourse is underlined by cultural values that are expressed in a unique set of rules, norms, and strategies. Several studies have identified and categorized these communication characteristics that are common to the African American culture.

Communication scholars have argued that in order to understand African American communication completely, the focus of the analysis needs to be upon the underlying cultural values that shape African American rhetoric (Asante, 1980; 1987; Asante & Abarry, 1996; Atwater, 1984; Cummings & Daniel, 1997). When rhetorical criticism does not take into account the cultural values of an African American speaker the analysis misses the opportunity to provide a more complete understanding of the cultural meaning of the text (Asante, 1980; 1987; Asante & Abarry, 1996; Atwater, 1984; Cummings & Daniel, 1997). Therefore, this paper will take an African American cultural perspective by illuminating three African American cultural values found in Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits. These three cultural values include: the oral tradition, a diunital orientation, and spirituality. Although these cultural values are presented separately these concepts are interconnected and function interdependently.

The Oral Tradition

The oral tradition is a fundamental value that defines African American culture (Hecht et al., 2003; Smitherman, 1998; 2000). As Smitherman (1998) explained:

The African-American oral tradition is rooted in
the belief in the power of the word. The African
concept of Nommo' 'the word' is believed to be the
force of life itself. To speak is to make something
come into being (p. 208).

African American culture has always been one that relied on the power of the spoken word to motivate, persuade, and pass down history from generation to generation (Smitherman, 1998). Moreover, the oral tradition was further relied upon due to American laws that prevented slaves from being taught how to read and write (Gates, 1991). Without a written language it was easier for Whites to control Blacks. Without a written language there was no repetition of memory, history, or self. As a result, those who could speak well earned the respect, praise, and leadership of the African American community (Smitherman, 2000).

Given the importance the culture has placed on the spoken word, conversation is not only a means for understanding reality, but a means for achieving group approval and recognition. As Smitherman (2000) explained, "We're talking, then, about a tradition in the black experience in which verbal performance becomes both a way of establishing 'yo rep' as well as a teaching and socializing force" (p. 204). Therefore, ritualized verbal interactions such as playing the dozens and verbal strategies such as braggadocio, image-making, and indirection play a powerful role in teaching, socializing, and perpetuating the oral tradition in the African American community (Morgan, 1998; Smitherman, 2000).

A Diunital Orientation

A diunital orientation means reality consists of complementary opposites (such as good/bad, right/ wrong, comedy/tragedy, concrete/abstract) which are interdependent and function to form a dual identity (Bell, 1994; Pennington, 1990; Richards, 1990; Rose, 1982/83; Smitherman, 2000). Therefore, a diunital orientation rejects the western perspective that reality is absolute. Instead, a diunital orientation explains why the African American culture is more apt to perceive issues, concepts, or entities as complementary opposites (perceiving the world as both good and bad simultaneously) rather than in absolutes (perceiving the world as being either good or bad) (Hecht et al., 2003; Pennington, 1990; Richards, 1990). A diunital orientation can best be understood from W.E.B. Du Bois' (1903/1990) articulation of double consciousness--that African Americans experience dual and often conflicting realities simultaneously.

According to Richards (1990), African Americans' diunital orientation is based upon an African worldview that survived the middle passage, the slave experience, and other oppression African Americans overcame in America. A diunital orientation is the result of the African worldview's emphasis on harmony, where complementary opposites are interdependent and function dynamically to create a unified reality. Smitherman (2000) further explained that with the African worldview:

Harmony in nature and the universe is provided by
the complementary, interdependent, synergic interaction
between the spiritual and the material. Thus
we have a paradigm for the way in which 'opposites'
function. That is, 'opposites' constitute interdependent,
interacting forces which are necessary
for producing a given reality (p. 201).

With a diunital orientation, the dynamic interdependence of opposites provides balance and rhythm to life. It also provides a viewpoint that is able to perceive the fluid and complex nature of reality that is not fixed, but dynamic and ever evolving.

Spirituality

Spirituality is the means that enables individuals to be in touch with their soul (Richards, 1990; Smitherman, 2000). Spirituality stems from the cultural belief that humans are comprised of the psychological (the mind), the physical (the body), and the immaterial (the soul). The culture acknowledges that we are all spiritual beings who respond to a physical and spiritual reality (Smitherman, 2000). The cultural value of spirituality does not separate the physical from the spiritual world. Rather, both realities are experienced simultaneously. As Smitherman (2000) argued, African Americans "believe that soul, feeling, emotion, and spirit serve as guides to understanding life and their fellows. All people are moved by spirit forces, and there is no attempt to deny or intellectualize away that fact" (p. 215).

One of the contexts in which spirituality has been studied is in the traditional African American church. Smitherman (1998) explained that this African American cultural value was the product of how African Americans "Africanized" Christianity when they adopted Christianity as their religion. African religions were based on many spirits and when African Americans were converted to Christianity, they evolved the practice of worshiping many spirits to worshiping one spirit (the Holy Spirit) to experience God's presence. When God is experienced through the Holy Spirit, it brings individuals in touch with their soul (Churches that practice experiencing God's presence through the Holy Spirit are often referred to as spirit filled churches). This explains why traditional African American church services are participatory services where people experience the Holy Spirit through song, ritual, music, and dance (Richards, 1990). Characterizing the traditional African American church as being spirit filled does not imply that non-traditional African American churches lack spirituality. The brief discussion of spirituality in this essay simply identifies the origins of the cultural value of spirituality and its significance within African American culture. Richards (1990) explained how spirituality is enacted during the praise and worship part of a church service where members are able to experience God's presence through the Holy Spirit:

There is no closer bond that a group of black people
can feel than that which comes from the experience
of feeling and expressing our deepest emotions
together. The group becomes a sacred community
once again, and so its members gain strength
from communal experience. The ritual becomes an
affirmation of their communal identity. (p. 220)

Although spirituality as a cultural value is best understood as the means to experience God's presence through the Holy Spirit, the concept itself is not synonymous with experiencing the Holy Spirit. Experiencing the Holy Spirit through a church service is just one example of how spirituality is a means to be in touch with one's soul. With spirituality, what becomes real is what touches the soul (Richards, 1998). Richards further explained that outside the traditional African American church, spirituality is enacted in black music where lyrics, song, and singers create melodies that touch the souls of black audiences. In fact, spirituality enables individuals to express deep felt emotions and it also defines the moral and emotional fiber of the culture. Given the significance of spirituality as a cultural value, Richards (1998), argued that spirituality is a cultural value that defines the essence of the culture's ethnic identity.

In summation, spirituality is a means for being in touch with one's soul. When something resonates with the soul, then it becomes meaningful. This is true, whether a choir sings a song that brings tears to church members' eyes during praise and worship or when an individual is deeply moved by someone reading poetry, or whether musical lyrics an individual is listening to resonates with his or her soul; they are all examples of how spirituality is a means to experience what is real, but what is unseen and immeasurable.

The cultural values of the oral tradition, a diunital orientation, and spirituality, while presented separately are actually interconnected and function interdependently. For example, the power of the spoken word (the oral tradition) is how one can experience and be in touch with one's soul (spirituality), which is based upon on a diunital orientation (experiencing complementary opposites simultaneously). These cultural values will be illustrated through a rhetorical analysis of Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits.

Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits: Reaffirming Cultural Values

Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits is a double CD collection that contains twenty-five rap songs from six previously recorded CDs that span from 1991 to 1996. In addition, Shakur's Greatest Hits contains the previously unreleased song "Changes." An analysis of these songs demonstrates how the cultural values of the oral tradition, a diunital orientation, and spirituality shape Shakur's message.

The Oral Tradition

Effective speakers have excellent verbal skills to construct a narrative that gains the audience's attention, builds identification with the audience, elicits empathy, and conveys logical and emotional appeals. This is especially true with oral cultures, where the speaker has to have a delivery style that is as impressive as the content of the message (Smitherman, 2000). In his Greatest Hits, Shakur builds identification with his audience by clearly and concisely reconstructing the social context of his youth, the circumstances he endured, and the obstacles he faced. Shakur conveys his story through a powerful narrative that addresses the issues of his generation and offers insightful perspective. For example, in songs such as "So Many Tears," "Unconditional Love," "Brenda's Got a Baby," and "Dear Mama" Shakur reconstructs the difficult and drastic conditions of his youth. In "Dear Mama," Shakur explains how he was the child of a teenage mother:

When I was younger and my mama had to be seventeen
years old, kicked out on the street/ though
back at the time I never thought I'd never see her
face/ ain't a woman alive that can take my mama's
place.

Furthermore, Shakur states:

I finally understand for a woman it ain't easy trying
to raise a man/ You were always committed/ a
poor single mother on welfare, tell me how you did
it.

Shakur's upbringing resonates with many, especially those who have experienced or are experiencing growing up in a single headed household, which recent statistics indicate 69% of all Black children are raised in single-parent homes (Rosenthal, 2004). Shakur further constructs his narrative in "Dear Mama" by explaining he didn't know his father and when his father died, he did not cry at the funeral since he didn't know him. For Shakur, not having a father led him to seek acceptance in other places. The desire to be connected with others, and especially the need to have a father figure is a human need that most individuals can identify with. Driven by the need for connection, Shakur explains in "So Many Tears" how he became involved in gang life:

Back in elementary/ I thrived on misery/ left alone
I grew up among a dying breed/ In my mind, couldn't
find a place to rest/ until I got that 'thug life' tattooed
on my chest.

Furthermore, he explains in "Dear Mama:"

I hung around with the thugs/ and even though they
sold drugs/ they showed a young brother love.

By listening to these songs, the listener gains an understanding of the harsh realities that shaped Shakur's identity and the obstacles he faced. These circumstances also inform Shakur's perspective on life, shape his understanding of the world, and his place in it.

Another aspect of the oral tradition has been to speak out on the injustices that African Americans face in this country. Speakers have used their verbal skills to voice an African American position that is often marginalized by society. Shakur also voiced his opinion on many social issues such as police brutality, discrimination in the criminal justice system, abortion, violence, single parenthood, and politics. In addressing these issues, Shakur demonstrated that he is more multi-dimensional on social issues than what critics acknowledge when discussing gangsta rap. In "Changes" Shakur commented on many social issues that he believed should be pursued to improve the conditions of African Americans. For example, Shakur addressed police brutality as he explained how an African American's life is of little value to society as cops are allowed to use excessive force and society shows little compassion for African Americans:

Cops give a damn about a Negro/ pull a trigger,
kill a nigger, he's a hero/ Give it back to the kids,
who the hell cares?/ one less mouth on welfare/
First, ship 'em dope and let 'em deal with brothers/
give 'em guns, step back, watch 'em kill each
other.

Furthermore in "Trapped," Shakur calls attention to the practice of racial profiling:

They got me trapped/ can barely walk the city
streets, without a cop harassing me/ searching me/
then askin' my identity/ hands up, throw me up
against the wall/ didn 't do a thing at all/ tellin 'you
one day these suckers got to fall.

Another issue that Shakur comments on is the disparity in the criminal justice system and specifically, the disproportionate number of African Americans who are in prison. The latest statistics report that one in five African American men in their twenties is in prison, on probation, or parole (Rosenthal, 2004). In songs such as "Changes," Shakur shows his concern for African Americans:

And it ain't a secret, though concealed as fact/ the
penitentiary is packed and it is filled with blacks.

Shakur contends that the criminal justice system is biased toward blacks by handing out mandatory sentences for the possession of drugs such as crack cocaine (which was part of the crack epidemic that infiltrated many poor urban African American communities during the 80s and early 90s), whereas the powder form of the drug (which is popular among whites) does not carry mandatory sentences. The criminal justice's double standard is illustrated in "God Bless the Dead:"

Why the hell am I locked in jail?/ they let those
white boys free, you'll be shocked as hell!/ In my
mind I can see it comin'/ and all the time it's a plot
to keep a nigga runnin'!

In addition to perceiving the criminal justice system as a plot to keep African Americans in bondage, Shakur explains how prison does not rehabilitate individuals, it only makes them hardened criminals. Shakur states in "Trapped:"

Too many brothers daily headed for the big pen/
Niggas come out worst off then when they went in.

Finally, two brief examples show how Shakur takes on the issue of abortion and violence. In "Keep Ya Head Up," Shakur states:

Since a man can't make one/ he has no right to tell
a woman when and where to create one/ So where
do real men get up?/ I know you're fed up ladies,
keep your head up.

In "2 of Amerika's Most Wanted" with Snoop Dog, Shakur explained how critics should not blame gangsta rap for violence. Instead, Shakur argued that violence had been occurring in America long before rap music and violence had already been glamorized in films and television before gangsta rap. He states:

Now follow as we ride/ two of the best from the
west side/ And I can make you famous/ Niggas been
dying for years, so how can they blame us!

These examples demonstrate how Shakur draws upon the oral tradition to tell his own story, which enables him to construct his own selfhood and identity (of living in a single parent household) and to voice his opinion on issues he sees facing Black youth culture. How Shakur interrogates these issues illustrates Woods (1998) argument that critics have to look beyond the explicit lyrics to hear the deeper meanings that are communicated in gangsta rap such as injustice and discrimination. It also reaffirms the oral tradition, as Shakur performs the contemporary role of "disturbing the peace" in order to provide a voice for those who are muted in today's society.

A Diunital Orientation

An analysis of Shakur's Greatest Hits also demonstrates a diunital orientation, which explains why his rhetoric contains complementary opposites such as being positive and negative at the same time. Interestingly, scholars like Dyson (2001), Kitwana (1997), Medina (1997), Morrison (2003), and Williams (1997) identify Shakur's internal battles and the inherent contradictions in his rhetoric, but none explain how these contradictions are characteristic of the African American cultural value of a diunital orientation. For brevity, I will focus on how a diunital orientation underlies two inherent contradictions in Shakur's Greatest Hits: his perception of women and violence.

Sexism has been a common criticism of gangsta rap. Shakur's rhetoric contains plenty of examples of sexism, but he also articulates a positive image of women. In his Greatest Hits, Shakur both celebrates and degrades women. In songs such as "Dear Mama," "Keep Ya Head Up," and "Unconditional Love," Shakur celebrates, encourages, and supports African American women. In "Keep Ya Head Up" Shakur states:

Don't cry, dry your eyes, never let up/ forgive but
don't forget, girl keep your head up/ And when he
tells you, 'you ain't nothin,' don't believe 'em/ and
if he can't learn to love you, you should leave 'em/
cause sister you don't need him.

Furthermore, in this song he says:

I wonder why we take from our women/ time to heal
our women/ be real to our women/ I think it's time
to kill for our women/ time to heal our women/ be
real to our women.

In "Dear Mama," Shakur is grateful for the nurturing he received from his mother and he appreciates the sacrifices his mother has made:

When it seems that I'm hopeless/ you can say the
words that can get me back in focus/ When I was
sick as a little kid/ to keep me happy there's no limit
to the things you did/ And all my childhood memories/
are full of all the sweet things you did for me/
And even though I act crazy/ I got to thank the Lord
that you made me.

Moreover, he explains:

There are no words that can express how I feel/ You
never kept a secret, you alway stayed real. And I
appreciate how you raised me/And all the extra love
that you gave me.

These examples along with brief examples in the song "Unconditional Love" demonstrate that Shakur constructs a positive image of women. The examples also illustrate how Shakur has a "softer" side to his "Thug Life" image. For this reason, some label Shakur a feminist agent who communicates a passionate identification with women (Neal, 2003).

Despite articulating a positive image of women in certain songs, these sentiments are contrasted by how Shakur degrades women in other songs such as "I get around," "All about U," "Temptations," "Toss it Up," and "How Do You Want It." In most of these songs Shakur only sees women as sex objects. This can be seen in the song "How Do You Want It:"

Positions on the floor, it's erotic/ ironic/ cause I'm
somewhat psychotic/ I'm hittin' switches on bitches,
like I would fix hydraulics/ Up and down like a roller
coaster/ I'm not quittin' until the show is over/ In
and out like a robbery/ I'll probably be a freak and
let you get on top of me.

In the song, "I get around" Shakur proclaims his player lifestyle by saying:

There ain't no need in being greedy/ you want to
see me, dial my beeper number baby when you need
me!/ And I'll be there in a jiffy/ don't be picky, just
be happy with this quickie/ When will you learn,
you can't tie me down/ check it out, I get around.

How do we account for these contradictions? A diunital perspective suggests that Shakur's rhetorical construction of women is not an either/or but both. A diunital perspective forces us to analyze the totality of what Shakur is saying, how he is saying it, and to whom it is directed. From his Greatest Hits, it's apparent he is not labeling all women one way or the other, instead it is a selective construction that invites the listener to see his perspective towards women as a complex complementary opposite that reflects a reality of Shakur being part of a patriarchal society, yet being raised by a strong Black woman. Dyson (2001) notes that Shakur's contradictory perspective towards women reflects a masculine ideology found in hip-hop that accepts women as long as women are in their "place," which creates acceptable and unacceptable categories for women. If a woman is a wife or mother, then she is expected to act accordingly and provide a stable domestic environment. If a woman is promiscuous, however, she is seen as a sex object and treated accordingly. Therefore, categorizing women into acceptable and unacceptable roles explains how men can be close to some women, while also degrading other women. It is, nevertheless, a contradiction that reflects a dynamic dialectic that is not resolved his Greatest Hits or in society.

Similarly, Shakur's rhetoric reflects the diunital orientation when he raps about his lifestyle. Throughout his songs, Shakur articulates both a positive lifestyle that embraces hope and determination and a gangsta lifestyle that promotes violence. For example, in songs such as "Changes," "Keep Ya Head Up," "Dear Mama," "Me Against the World," and "Unconditional Love," Shakur is very encouraging to Black youth culture as he asks them to overcome their circumstances. In "Changes" Shakur advocates abandoning old ways and accepting new ways to live by accepting one another as friends:

I've got love for my brother/ but we can never go
nowhere unless we share with each other/ We got
to start making some changes/ learn to see me as a
brother instead of two distant strangers.

In the song, "Me Against the World" Shakur speaks directly to the listener at the end of the song by saying:

I know it seems hard sometimes but remember one
thing, through every dark night there is a bright
day after that. So no matter how hard it gets, stick
your chest out, keep your head up, and handle it.

In "Unconditional Love" Shakur explains that he wants to encourage the youth and help them transcend their circumstances for a better future:

My mission/ is to be more than just a rap musician/
The elevation of today's generation, if l can make
them listen.

Finally, in "Changes" Shakur in the middle of his song urges listeners to make positive changes in their lifestyle. He states:

We gotta make a change. It's time for us as a people
to start making some changes. Let's change the way
we eat, let's change the way we live, let's change
the way we treat each other. You see, the old way
wasn't working so its on us to do what we got to do
to survive.

These examples support how Shakur encourages listeners to better themselves as he constructs a positive outlook on life. In essence, his rhetoric suggests that people can overcome their circumstances if they maintain a positive attitude. At the same time, however, Shakur articulates a message that advocates a "Thug Lifestyle." Shakur's message embraces violence as he defends what Claude Brown (1965/1971) described as a person's reputation, which includes his money, his woman, and/or his manhood. Shakur defends his reputation and espouses a gangsta lifestyle in songs such as "Hit 'em Up," "Troublesome '96," "Changes," "2 of Amerika's Most Wanted," and "Picture Me Rollin."

In the song, "Troublesome '96" Shakur espouses the gangsta lifestyle as he articulates bravado and swagger:

Say my name like Candyman/ bet I'll roll on your
ass like an avalanche/ Sole survivor, learn to get
high and pull drive bys/ murder my foes, can't control
my nine/ Hearin' thoughts of my enemies
pleadin' please/ bust their ass, motherfuckers tried
to flee.

Another example occurs in the song "Hit 'em Up:"

I'm a self made millionaire/ thug livin 'out of prison,
pistols in the air!/ Now it's all about Versace, you
copied my style/ five shots couldn't drop me, I took
it and smiled!/ Now I'm about to set the record
straight/ with my A.K., I'm the thug that you love to
hate!

Also, in the song, "Changes," Shakur articulates that he is not ready to give up the "Thug Life:"

As long as I stay black/ I got to stay strapped/ and
I never get to lay back/ because I always have to
worry about a buck I roughed up from way back.

Shakur in constructing both a positive and negative lifestyle reinforces the cultural value of a diunital orientation. According to Schusterman (1995), rap inherently reflects these contradictions because artists are driven by conflicting needs. The artist needs to succeed commercially, while not "selling out" by being too commercial. Therefore, Schusterman argues that all genres within rap articulate contradictory themes. Schusterman's (1995) argument is supported by Watts (1997) who identified the tension in gangsta rap between "street" vs. "decent" values. However, neither Schusterman nor Watts links this tension to the African American cultural value of a diunital orientation. Both authors assume that the tension has to be one or the other, which is a western perspective, not an African American perspective. Instead, linking the tension to the cultural value of a diunital orientation reveals a greater understanding of how the culture perceives issues as complementary opposites.

Not only does a diunital orientation explain Shakur's rhetoric but it also reflects the tension between "Tupac the artist" (as a commodified performance) and "Tupac Amaru Shakur" (the human being). Shakur represented an internal tension between performer and person that underlined the message in many of his songs (Medina, 1997; Strange, 1996). As Medina (1997) wrote,

What is most telling about Tupac Shakur is that he,
more than anyone embodied DuBois' profile of the
dualistic black pscyche in white America, and derails
it into the 21st Century with the on-going problem
of the color line. (111)

The tension between performer and person added to the blurring between reality and fiction which contributed to his popularity with his fans who perceived him as an authentic Black man for "keeping it real." As one seventeen-year old high school senior explained:

The mothafucka was me. He lived what I live. Even
when he got paid, he still had to worry about the
bullshit--you know what I'm sayin '. He wasn't no
fake nigga talkin' about he was from the 'hood--that
nigga lived what I live ... that nigga got shot
livin' what I live. So, hell yeah, Tupac meant a lot
to me. (qtd. in Gilber, 1997, pp. 66-67).

Tupac, as one of the symbolic leaders in the younger generation's articulation of its frustrations, aspirations, and desires, not only saw the inherent contradictions that existed in America, but his career reflected them. As a result, his rhetoric highlights these contradictions which have been exaggerated in the post-civil rights era.

Spirituality

Another criticism of gangsta rap is it undermines the traditional forms of authority in the African American community, most notably the African American church. Historically, the African American church has been the bedrock in the African American struggle for freedom, equality, and opportunity. The African American church had been the primary context in which individuals would experience and be in touch with their soul through the Holy Spirit. However, some of the younger generation believe the church has lost touch with them (Leland, 2004) Since some of the younger generation believe the church is no longer in touch with them, they turn to rap music (for their spirituality) which uses explicit language that captures, the anger, frustration, and injustice they feel toward their life. As Ramsey (2003) explained, contemporary gospel music has embraced the stylistic features of rap music to innovate gospel music making it more appealing to younger members.

Although Shakur uses explicit lyrics to describe his condition, he has not abandoned his spirituality (Dyson, 2001). As Rapper Big Tray Dee said of Shakur, "I knew he was a real spiritual person, maybe not as far as proclaiming it, but you can hear it in his songs, in his art. He is looking for an answer, trying to find it with his people, through his music" (qtd. in Dyson, 2001, pp. 207-208). Shakur uses spirituality to tap his inner most being to create a message that constructs a common reality that elicits identification with his listeners. As pastor Reverend Willie Wilson stated during a memorial service for Shakur in Washington, D.C.:

Hip-hop artists in many instances are the preachers
of their generation, preaching a message which,
too often, those who have been given the charge to
preach prophetic words to the people have not
given. He [Shakur] was their preacher, if you will
who brought a message that [young people] can
identify with, related to what was real that spoke
to the reality of the circumstances, situations [and]
environments they have to deal with every day. (qtd.
in Dyson, 2001, p. 202)

While Shakur's rhetoric does articulate the frustration and anger of a disillusioned generation, he does realize that he is a spiritual being who has a soul. According to Shakur's mentor, Lelia Steinberg, Shakur was always interested in spiritual matters and he studied spiritual teachers because he wanted people to think about sin and how there is a spiritual element in life (Dyson, 2001). Shakur understood that his soul is part of a spiritual realm that is governed by God's moral authority. Therefore, throughout his Greatest Hits, despite the articulation of hopelessness and despair, the one hope in Shakur's life is God. In Shakur's Greatest Hits, he taps into his spirituality for moral direction and for God's forgiveness in order to be accepted into His kingdom in the afterlife. For example, Shakur states in "Unconditional Love:"

How many caskets can we witness/ before we see
it's hard to live this life without God, so we ask for
forgiveness.

In addition, Shakur states in the refrain of the song "Life Goes On:"

How many brothers fell victim to the streets?/ Rest
in peace young nigga, there's a heaven for a G.

These examples highlight how Shakur does acknowledge spirituality by articulating how God is the ultimate authority and power in one's life. Also, a further analysis of spirituality in Shakur's Greatest Hits shows that the artist is attempting to negotiate between a "street" and "spiritual" orientation. It is a struggle others in his generation can identity with: the need to defend your "rep" on the street, while also living a spiritual life that pleases God (this tension also demonstrates a diunital orientation). In this struggle, Shakur contemplates his own spirituality as he faces the prospects of death and the afterlife. Likewise, Shakur also ponders his fate as he attempts to reconcile his life with God. In "So Many Tears:" Shakur states:

And fuck the world, because I'm cursed/ I'm having
visions of leaving here in a Hearst/ God can
you feel me?/ Take me away from all the pressure
and all the pain/ show me some happiness again/
I'm going blind/ I've spent my time in this cell/ ain't
livin' well/ I know my destiny is hell/ Where did I
fail?

In "Life Goes On" Shakur explains:

Give me a paper, a pen/ so I can write about my life
of sin/ A couple of bottles of gin/ in case I don't get
in/ Tell all my people I'm a rider/ No body cries
when we die/ we outlaws, let me ride/ Until I get
free/ I live in the fast lane, got police chasing me.

Shakur contemplates how long he has left in "Picture Me Rollin:"

Now that I'm released, how long will I live?/ Will
God forgive me for all the dirt a nigga did?

Finally, Shakur comments in "Shed So Many Tears:"

Will I survive until the mornin' to see the sun?/
Please Lord forgive me for my sins, cause here I
come.

In trying to reconcile his life with God, Shakur demonstrates a common human desire to make peace with God before judgment day. This reconciliation also shows that Shakur is caught up in a lifestyle that despite his willingness to change, his environment contains too many negative influences to complete his transformation. The struggle to reconcile with God in a negative environment that does not encourage positive change is a tension that underlines many of Shakur's songs. Shakur consistently relies on his spirituality for moral direction. In "How Long Will They Mourn Me" he states:

It's kind of hard to be optimistic/ when your homie's
laying dead on the pavement twisted/ Y'all don't
hear me though/ I'm tryin' hard to make amends/
but I'm losing all my motherfucking friends/ Damn,
they should have shot me when I was born/ now
I'm trapped in the motherfucking storm.

In "Shed So Many Tears" Shakur says:

Lord knows, I tried/ been witness to homicide/ drive
by, taking lives, little kids die/ Wonder why as I walk
by/broken hearted as I glance at the chalkline,
getting' high/ This ain't the life for me/ I want to
change, but there ain't no future right for me/ I'm
stuck in the game.

A final example comes from the song, "Hail Mary:"

On a one way trip to prison, sellin 'drugs/ we 're all
wrapped up in this livin ', life as thugs/ Catch me
Father please, cause I'm fallin ', in the liquor store/
that's the Henessey I hear callin,' can I get some
more?

Shakur's spirituality reflects an-internal struggle between trying to reconcile with God to gain eternal life in heaven and being stuck in an environment that makes change difficult. In the process, Shakur questions his place in society and whether he is worthy to receive God's forgiveness. Shakur's spirituality and his struggle for moral direction also reflect what Rickford and Rickford (2000) considers to be a unifying characteristic of all Black music; the journey to reach the "Other Side." (p. 80). For African American artists, the "other side" represented an idealistic place such as a trouble-free afterlife, an earthly life of liberation, or a destination free from racism, poverty, and disease, where individuals can construct their own identity and reach their highest human potential.

Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits as a Musical Autobiography

The cultural values that shape Shakur's message in his Greatest Hits also function in another way--as a musical autobiography that constructs identity and provides a voice for Black youth culture. As Dyson (2001) explained:

Tupac identified with the legions of hurting, beleaguered
black youth whose only option appeared to
be to 'ride or die,' to blast or be blasted into
oblivion. His identification may have been self-destructive,
wrongheaded, and morbid--but it was
thorough and heartfelt. As a result, millions of youth
have identified with him, with his swaggering courage,
with his sexy defiance and splenetic rebellion,
with his pain and vulnerability, with his hunger for
the end even as he clung, like they cling, fiercely to
life. (p. 265-266).

Although Shakur's Greatest Hits were constructed posthumously, it is appropriate to define this text as an autobiography because contemporary criticism assumes that all texts are interrelated to other texts. As a result, texts have endless meanings and constructions which make it difficult if not impossible to define the "originator" of a text (Brummett, 1994). Therefore, autobiographies and Shakur's Greatest Hits have multiple constructions that contribute to the creation of the work. The comparison made between autobiographies and Shakur' Greatest Hits focuses on the shared functions and not necessarily whether a text is (or to what extent) is constructed by the "originator." Like an autobiography, Shakur enacts the oral tradition, a diunital orientation, and spirituality to tell his story but he uses the vehicle of rap music to convey it, which explains why his Greatest Hits can be defined as a musical autobiography. The fusion of autobiography and rap reflects hybridity (the mixing of different cultural practices) that Ramsey (2003) argued has long been part of African American culture. As a musical autobiography, Shakur's Greatest Hits symbolizes the connection between rap music and the cultural values that can be found in other forms of African American expression such as literature, music, poetry, and comedy. In fact, Rickford & Rickford (2000) argue that all forms of African American communication such as literature, song, poetry, and conversation are all interrelated and share common communication practices that evolved from the African American culture and lived experience.

Denied the most fundamental rights such as literacy, citizenship, selfhood, or even possessing a collective history as a people, the African American autobiography tradition (starting with the slave narratives) allowed individuals to construct their own selfhood and identity, while also serving as a means to articulate the collective history of the race. As Gates (1991) stated:

If the individual black self could not exist before
the law, it could, and would be forged in language,
as a testimony at once to the supposed integrity of
the black self and against the social and political
evils that delimited individual and group equality
for all African Americans. (p. 4)

According to Gates, African American autobiographies function to: enable writers to construct their own self and personal identity, to define the collective cultural identity for African Americans, to articulate resistance to an oppressive society, and to document African American history. Furthermore, at the heart of all autobiographies is the narrative as writers must be skillful storytellers who use language effectively to appeal to their audience (Rickford and Rickford, 2000). All these functions of African American autobiographies have produced a body of work that has enlightened, challenged, and motivated individuals who have read these culturally significant stories. These narratives articulate a story that most be told. Although the autobiography is never new, it always must be heard because it reconstructs a reality, which forms a collective history that serves as a light in the darkness of humanity.

Likewise, rap music also continues the autobiographical tradition by enlightening, challenging, and motivating individuals who listen to its messages (Boyd, 1997; Kelley 1996; Morrison; Smitherman, 2000). As a musical autobiography, Shakur's Greatest Hits tells a story that must be heard in order for others to understand the despair of those who are less privileged and to document their experiences to prevent their stories from being overlooked by society. In fact, the documenting of experiences clearly unites African American autobiographies with rap music. As Smitherman (1998) explained, the rapper is a postmodern African griot who is a gifted storyteller, who is fluent in using the language, and who "testifies" to what is going on (p. 269). The cultural values that link the African American autobiography (starting with the slave narratives) to rap music (the narratives of postindustrial urban life) perpetuate a practice that begun when Africans were brought to America. The continuation of these cultural values demonstrates a link between two forms of Black expression that represents a commonality among generations that is often missed.

Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits further demonstrates the same functions as the African American autobiography in the following ways: Shakur constructs his own selfhood and identity, which Black youth can identify with; his Greatest Hits contributes to the collective cultural identity--especially Black male identity that is persuasive in Hip-Hop culture; it is a form of resistance to the White and Black establishment to call attention to the oppressive conditions that affect poor urban youth; and it forms a collective history of postindustrial culture from a hip-hop perspective. Through his Greatest Hits, Shakur articulates a powerful narrative (the oral tradition) that points out the contradictions in contemporary society (a diunital orientation) and employs spirituality to motivate individuals to discover their true self, their relationship to God, and their place in humanity.

Conclusion

My life in particular never has stayed fixed in one
position for very long. You have seen how throughout
my life, I have often known unexpected drastic
changes. (X, 1965, p. 385).

This statement by Malcolm X (1965) toward the end of his autobiography can also be applied to the musical autobiography of Tupac Shakur. Shakur's Greatest Hits reveals his struggle to change in an impoverished environment that provided few positive opportunities for a lasting transformation. It is the expression of struggle that makes Shakur's Greatest Hits an example of Black Protest music. This struggle also reveals the contradictions of contemporary society--a society of great wealth and great poverty, a society of the privileged and the underprivileged, and a society of the just and unjust. Shakur's musical autobiography gives voice to those left out and left behind, those who are at the bottom of the socio-economic level. It is Shakur's complex and introspective message that captures some of the sentiments of today's disillusioned youth from gang-bangers to college students. At the time of Shakur's tragic death, Malcolm Hill, a sixteen-year-old explained, "Tupac said the things I thought and felt a lot of times. It's like sometimes I feel I am really bad and can't nobody do nothing to me. And then sometimes I think I am f--ed" (qtd. in Samuels and Leland, 1996, p. 73). Shakur's Greatest Hits spoke to a generation who identified with these contradictions.

A rhetorical criticism of Shakur's Greatest Hits also highlights how focusing on cultural values can provide a greater understanding of the cultural meaning of a text. Using cultural values as a theoretical framework is a way for rhetorical scholars to demonstrate what Atwater (1984) argued for long ago--to develop new rhetorical tools that are true to the heritage of African Americans that provide a deeper meaning to the communication that is articulated and consumed in the African American community. Employing an African American cultural perspective illustrates how Shakur's rhetoric reflects the underlining African American cultural values that shape African Americans rhetorical strategies, choices, means, and style. As a result, this rhetorical criticism further defines an African American cultural perspective that communication scholars can use to interpret and to understand African American discourse such as Black protest music. In this case, analyzing African American cultural values provides an alternative perspective for understanding gangsta rap--an understanding that links gangsta rap to other African American cultural forms of expression such as the autobiography. Illustrating the cultural values that are common to both texts is a way to connect two different generations and stimulate dialogue between voices in the African American community that are often disconnected (Dyson, 2001; Ramsey, 2003).

As rhetorical scholars discover and employ new rhetorical methods that are developed from an African American perspective, their criticism will produce a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural meanings conveyed by African American texts. By understanding how Shakur's rhetoric is informed by and employs cultural values that have defined other forms of Black expression, it is clear that Shakur's Greatest Hits repeats a story that has been told. It does so, however, on its own terms, by transforming the cultural values to achieve what Frederick Douglass articulated long ago: agitate! agitate! agitate!
 

Peter Dominguez
English 201B
MW 1-2:50
September 20,2008


"Retiring Was Not an Option: TUPAC: RESURRECTION. " Time. 162.21 (Nov 24, 2003): 68. Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 17 Sept. 2008


Byline: Richard Corliss

He has been called the thug Elvis and Malcolm X reborn as a rapper. Since he predicted his own demise and since the movie of his life and death is called Tupac: Resurrection, we may as well surrender to hip-hop hype and say Tupac Shakur was the gangsta Jesus. True to his cult status, Shakur's myth blossomed after his death. So did his estate. It earned a lively $12 million last year. As with the deaths of so many celebs, his was a pity, an irony, a great career move.

Shakur, who was gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996, packed a lot of brutality and poetry into his 25 turbulent years on earth. Lauren Lazin's zippy documentary is as close as the dead can come to writing autobiography; its narration is woven from extensive interviews given by the charismatic antihero. Like a film noir epic, this is a fable of violent men, mean motives and surly patter, told in flashback, and narrated by a dead man. This artful assembly of photos, film outtakes and TV clips is all the more fascinating for being--within the confines of show-biz mythmaking--true.

Tupac was the son of Afeni Shakur, an officer in the Black Panther Party. The boy's feelings for his mother were a jumble of resentment ("I always felt she spent more time with the People than with her people"), sorrow (for her drug habit) and loving respect.

At school he studied dance, theater, art. In another environment, this bright, friendly kid could have become Will Smith or Wayne Brady. But rap's siren song called, and with it a rap sheeta gangsta's bona fides. As he says, "I had no police record until I made a record." Before he was 20, he went gold with the CD 2Pacalypse Now and joined the thug elite. "I didn't create thug life," he protested. "I diagnosed it." But he also lived it and paid for it.

Marianne Moore said poetry is a world of "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." Shakur's poetry, spitting out violent imagery with an oracular tinge, was a summary and prophecy of his own brief life: an imaginary Uzi with real bullets. In his work, poignant portraits of ghetto misery (the brilliantly elegiac Brenda's Got a Baby) collided with cop-baiting insurrectionism ("Can't find peace on the streets/til the niggaz get a piece, f___ police, hear them screamin'").

On the streets, the rapper couldn't find peace and didn't make it. Pummeled by cops after an arrest for jaywalking in 1991, he sued the Oakland Police Department for $10 million (and got $42,500). It didn't always go his way. He beat several assault charges before doing jail time for sexual abuse of a woman.

Which was the real Shakur? Was he the congenial fellow chatting with his MTV confessor Tabitha Soren and explaining cultural inflections? ("Niggers is the guys strung up by a rope during a lynching. Niggaz is the guys walking past the velvet rope on their way into the club.") Or The west coast warrior exchanging rhetoric and artillery in dissing contests with his bitter rivals, East Coast hip-hoppers Biggie Smalls and Puffy Combs? Shakur had been an actor since childhood and showed real gifts in the films Juice and Gridlock'd. Maybe Thug Tupac was one more fictional character, which he acted out with a Method man's frightening authenticity.

One knows the end of this tragedy yet keeps hoping Shakur's charm and brains will save him--that Tupac Reloaded gives way to Tupac Revelations. This fine, persuasive movie will have to serve as his testament, and it's a fitting one. How many men can say they wrote their own epitaphs in their own blood? By Richard Corliss

Gale Document Number:A110237878


My Summary


Tupac has been known as both a great rap entertainer and a street preacher that was mixed into one. He also predicted his own death in his rap, and there was a movie made after his death called "Tupac:Resurrection" so some thought/think of him as the"gangsta Jesus". Ever after his death Tupac continues to to earn money off his work. Last year alone his work accumalated over $12million dollars. Tupac's death was a tragedy but even though he's gone he still continues to make money.

Tupac was 25 when he was shot to death in 1996 on the streets of Las Vegas. Shakur's mother was a member of the black Panther party her name was Afina Shakur. He resented that his mother spent most of her time with her orginizatine and not with him.

While at school Tupac was envolved with many extra curricular activities such as dance, theater and art. Maybe if Tupac would have been raised in a diffrent location(freindlier/nicer neighborhood) he wouldn't have become a a gangter rapper. He say's that through out all this time he lived in the streets he never had a criminal record until he made a gold rap record. He said that all he did was just live the life he did, he talked about it and paid for it.

Tupac's poetry was full of his own past life expieriences. It was like when Tupas wrote his words in his note book he painted a vivid picture so we all can see/feel his
words. During this time Tupac was still being harrassed by the police and putting it in his music.

In 1991 Tupac was jaywalking in the streets of Oakland and was beat up by some police men. Tupac sued the city for $10 million but he ended up getting $42,500. Tupac did do jail time for sexual abuse, but that was after he beat several assualt charges.

The writer wounders who was the real Tupac, the one chating freindly on MTV or the violent gangter rapper that we hear on his albums. He wounderd if one of the Tupac's could have just been a front, because he was in acting ever since he was young. Maybe that was just another character he made up to gain publicity. Who knows at the end? He believes that the movie Tupac: Revelations will serve as Tupac's final testament.
 

Changes Essay

Throughout my growing years I have come encounter with various trails and tribulations that have cause me to make changes in my life which was the solution to my problems. I have been through many changes in my life. The three most important changes that I have been through is adjusting to my father never being able to walk again, having to live with my grandmother not being here anymore and graduating high school. My dad got shot and was paralyzed when I was three years old and that was a big change for me . I think that was my biggest change . My granny just recently died from cancer and that was very hard for me. I still cant believe it but I got to realize she’s gone. Graduating high school changed me mentally and it made me realize no more fun and games or in other words time to walk into adult atmosphere.
My father got shot when I was only three years old. This made him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. In may 1993 my father was disabled for the rest of his life and he will never be able to walk again. I will never know what its like to have a father who stands on his own two feet. When I was old enough to realize how serious things was I started to look at life as it was a glass cup. What I be mean by this is life is fragile and its easy to break. Its hard enough to change into a mind state of not being able to ever see your father walk, on the other hand its even harder dealing with a grandmother’s passing away.
I recently had a grandmother that passed away from cancer. Her son is the one paralyzed my father. Cancer is a serious dieses that is not to be played with. I have had two grandmothers who came encounter with cancer. One of my grandmother survived. And one that recently passed. This death gave me a serious wake call to live healthy and to enjoy my youth. There are changes for the better and the worst. I know its for the better because she is in a better place now. Having to deal with this tragedy has made me change my mind mentally and just continue my education and get a degree just as she would tell me too.
My high school graduation was a very important and one of the most important times of my life. When entering college you must have a business handling mentality. My high school graduate was my test to see if I am becoming a man. This has changed me mentally, and this was a gap in my life to see if I really had the determination in me. I had a problem in high school with math. I had to sacrifice a lot of sleep and a lot of my time to learn the material. In conclusion to answer my question is change always hard to do, in my opinion yes change is hard to do.
Throughout my growing years I have come encounter with various trials and tribulations that have cause me to make changes in my life which was the solution to my problems. Dealing with a father not being able to walk again, a grandmother passing from cancer and graduating high school. These are all issue that have changed my life for the better.

Julian Pete
8:00-8:50
English 201A
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Albert Dennie
Professor Sabir
English 201A
21 September 2008

mtv.com/tupacshakurarticles

Biggie and Combs sought to have had a hand in the tragic death of Tupac Amaru Shakur.
In the late evening of Nov 30, 1994 Tupac Shakur was called to the Quad Studios to lat down a rap on a mix tape which he was supposed to be paid $7000. When he received payment he was approached by some men who have believed to have had knowledge of this transaction and Tupac was beaten and shot twice. Although report says that Tupac accidentally shot himself twice the truth remains to be sought. There is speculation that Christopher “Notorious Big” Wallace and Sean “P.Diddy” Combs were aware of the ambush and supposedly told the attackers to not shoot him when they did or so reports of the evening state. Jimmy “The Henchman” Rosemond was also said to have co-masterminded the ambush against Tupac. It is said that the ambush was a way of trying to pressure Shakur to join the Bad Boy camp which employed Wallace and Combs and a few others. In the song entitled: Against All Odds Shakur verbally attacks “The Henchman” by saying "And did I mention/ Promised a payback, Jimmy Henchman/ In due time/ I knew you b---- n---as was listening/ The world is mine/ Set me up/ Wet me up/ N---as stuck me up/ Heard the guns bust/ But you tricks never shut me up." It is stated in FBI reports that they have talked to jailhouse informants who state that “The Henchman” was involved.
It is believed that Christopher Wallace was in Las Vegas the night Shakur was gunned down and he was negotiating a $1 million hit with the gang called “The Crips” against Shakur. Although there are people and rumors going on that say otherwise this information has not been verified. It is said that there was “beef” amongst the two which fueled the east coast west coast beef. It is said that the “beef had started when Combs was given a substantial amount of money to start his own record label when Shakur was offered a contract he replied “no”. This is what we believe started the confrontations between the two, Wallace and Shakur. Reports say that on the night of the shooting in 94’ that Wallace was recovering form a car accident in New Jersey. It is also stated that on the night of Sept7, 1996 Wallace was at home in New Jersey when he called his baby mother Faith Evans a talented singer, crying over the shock and lost of Shakur. It is said to believe that Wallace had hatred towards Shakur but Faith says otherwise. She states that Wallace had love for Shakur even though the so called “beef” was going on. It is said that the same night Shakur was gunned down that Wallace received threats that his life would be ended and within a couple months after the shooting of Shakur, Wallace was fatally gunned down. Even thought the truth still remains to be sought over the two individuals there is a lot of misprint, miconceptulation, and rumors going on about the two very talented artists. Neither one of the artists are here today to defend themselves as rumors keep going on about is Shakur dead, whether Wallace had a part, and was Wallace’s death a retaliation of Shakur’s?
 

Francisco Marcial
English 201 A
MW1-2:50pm

“Tupac: Life goes on: why the rapper still appeals to fans and captivates scholars a decade after his death”


In the article “Tupac: Life Goes On: why the rapper still appeals to fans and scholars a decade after his death” by Michael Eric Dyson, is telling us about why is Tupac even more famous after his death. When Tupac Shakur was still alive he released 5 albums and a decade after his death, Tupac released more than half. He released 8 more albums and they were often on the top boards of music, most of the times. When Tupac was still alive he sold over 10 million discs and when he was dead he sold around 25 million more. Tupac shakur has always been one of the top dead artist along with elvis presley, Bob Marley, and Marilyn Monroe. Tupac Shakur has been one of the top artist that influences most of the youth and one of the biggest figures in rap music. He inspired many youths to read more books because if you wanted to know what Tupac was saying and be able to understand him. “Tupac is so smart, the more you know abou what he’s saying, the smarter you must be”(Dyson, Par10). Tupac has gain most of the youth because of his talent with words and because for always being real. He also had many followers because most of the people that followed him could connect and relate to what he was saying.”While he often decried racism and spoke about black and whites, he rarely thought in black and white terms”(Dyson, Par6). Most of the time he also spoke about how life is; being a poor young black person living in the ghetto. Tupac is still hitting really high and he will always be until all of the things that he talked about in his songs end.
 

Joshua Brown-James
English 201A
1-2:50pm

Summary

In the article From Poetry to rap: the lyrics of Tupac Shakur, by Walter Edwards he explains how Tupac learned from his family members and close friends “to believe that racism, economic discrimination and other forms of oppression contributed to the poverty and powerless of working class Blacks.” (page)The article starts off by explaining that he was raised by a family that taught him to be hard and to blame the white man for everything he wanted to grow up to be a revolutionary because he was influenced by his family to do so. The article goes on to talk about Tupacs childhood and how he was raised. He went to performing arts school while being raised in Baltimore where he learned to live in two worlds which were “in the ethos of formal schooling in the creative arts where standard English, formal education, recitation, declamation and print poetry are the norms; and in the palpably real vernacular world of the urban "hood" with its distinctive oral traditions, its religiosity, and its culture of survival, struggle, and celebration.”(page) he wrote his first rap while at this school and began to love poetry. But in 1988 was the end of his belief in the two worlds when he left the performing arts school and went to marin county were he began to belive in rap and street life. The article goes on to give previews of raps and poems that he want to give people a feel for his lyrics. The article explains the many different characteristics of tupac such as he wasn’t just hard and thuggish all the time he also had a sensitive and caring side that many often didn’t know about or wanted to know about because they already had an image of him that was negative. the article goes into a deep reflection of the kind of person Tupac was and his outlooks on life. he was a stong man that had many positive beliefs on how to change the world and how others should start caring about the changes we need to make as people. This was an article that focused mainly on how Tupac converted from a soft spoken young poet to a hardcore gangster rapper not caring about what image people had of him. This was a good thing for him but some could argue that this was also what caused his death at such a young age. Tupac had a caring side to him for his people but when it came to other things he had a non-caring attitude that most didn't like to well. Tupac was a sensitive man and he could have been one of the power young black men in our society but now all we are left with is wondering what he could have done to help change our world for the better. This was a great article that I would recommend to all to read because it explains both sides of Tupac and how he went from poetry to rap which is great to read about because you can get and a sense of what Tupacs personality was like.
 

Renee Dumaguit
Eng201B
1-2:50pm

In the article, "Prophecy fulfilled. (death of rap singer Tupac Shakur)" by Patrick Rogers, he brings the readers back to the month of Tupac's death. Also, Rogers proves that Tupac was a prophet to his death, and that he is missed dearly by many people. "[Death] stalked Shakur for six days as he [lied] in a coma after suffering massive chest wounds"(Rogers, par.2). His mother “…[keeps] a vigil at his bedside since he was shot”(Rogers, par 2). This shows that he was a prophet to life.

The lyrics in Tupac’s songs indicates the prophecy of his death. One of his famous albums from 1995 has sold over a million records includes a few songs that have the word “death” in it: “Death Around the Corner” and “If I Die 2nite.” These two songs plus many other songs that he has recorded involves the word “death” or has to do with “death” itself. Some people say that he predicted his own death, and Reverend Herbert Daughtry, who knew Tupac since he was a kid, says that Tupac “…lived with death”(Rogers, par 1)

When Tupac passesd away his mother was devastated. She misses him dearly. After his body was released to his mother, Afeni Shakur, she cremated him the next day in Los Vegas and brang his ashes with her to Atlanta. The police continued the investigation about Tupac’s death. His death was relevant to a shooting that involved a Blood gang. Khalid Shah, ant violent activist, hopes that his death doesn’t reach an eruption of people regulating on each other for revenge of Tupac’s death.

Rogers, Patrick. "Prophecy fufilled. (death of rap singer Tupac Shakur)." People Weekly. 46.n14. (September 30, 1996). 79. Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 17 September 2008. http://find.galegroup.com
 

Isaiah Muhammad
Professor Sabir
Eng 201-B
09/22/08
On Wednesday, september 17th I took part in reading a article on a breif look at tupac and his words of poetry. Tupac born in 1971 in New York is the rap communities most well known and legendary artist next to rival Biggie Smalls also from the New York area. His mother Afina Shakur, a former Black Panther member, made it a most to teach him on having pride in the color of his skin giving him a deep passion for his people. At the same time he became torn between two identites, one that sang of making changes and lifting the spirts of black women and an identity that made songs on thug life and a “first come, first served mentality”. Even through all of the controversary there where some who looked past his turmoil and saw someone who had deep communication with himself. People in the artistic community recognize tupac because of his ability to ba able to touch on certain subjects and put deep emotion into it and because in the rap community, lyricaly he inspired a lot of artist to take up both of his identities whether its concousious like Common or it’s thug life like The Game.

Poetry is a way for a person to express him/her self in a way that it inspires other emotions in people whether it makes you feel joyful and free or makes you sad and depressed. The thing that Tupac did is he wrote a serious of poems that most feel to be incredible and one poem that he wrote called “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” which depicted a rose that was able to grow through concrete which say’s a lot about the world. Concrete, being hard and rough and sometimes unbreakable can hold a lot of things down from taking on what it was supposed to be. But, through sheer will even something as fragile as a rose can bloom in the most unlikiest of places; Which can say a lot about people when it feels like your being held in place, if a rose can break through you can.
 

Cheyenne Gould
ENGL 201A
1-2:50
“Article Summary”
Summary:

The article entitled "Rising Up” by Allison Samuels’s talks about the Documentary of Tupac’s life and death. She refers to the famous rappers mother, Afeni Shakur, when giving an interview on the documentary "Tupac: Resurrection," Afeni said that "This is such a bittersweet victory for me, to get this on the screen for everyone to see, and to finally understand my son's life fully. But it's so hard for me to watch, to see my child who is no longer here." Tupac’s life and legacy will live on because of this Documentary and the help of specialized sound technicians who have used their abilities to transform Tupacs voice to tell his own story. In this article the author also talks about the rappers connection with his manager, Suge Knight, and how Tupac is making more money now, and released more albums when he was dead then alive. His whole story and stages in his life are in this documentary. All the way from his mothers days in the Black Panther party, to his life with his mother on crack, and to his new family with Death Row Records. The documentary does not refer to Tupacs death as a big part of this production, according to the author it shows his rise to hip hop stardom and life struggles. Though his songs told his story and that of others, this one comes straight from the man himself. When making this movie Afeni hoped that this would give more perspective to everyone on whom he was as a person, not just a rap icon. Also that whomever tried to tell his tale they couldn’t, she stated "No one could tell his story the way he could.”
 

Edwin Taitague
English 201A
1-250PM


In The article that I read titled “Grabbing at a dead star” by JOHNNIE L. ROBERTS, It talks about how when Tupac Shakur was killed everybody was after money that Tupac didn’t even have at the time of his death. “Rap Star Tupac Shakur’s ashes had hardly cooled before the gold rush began.” “Yet Tupac was almost broke when he died” Almost immediately after Tupac’s death people who hardly knew him were standing in line for a piece of the pie. People like Tupac’s father who was almost never around him growing up or into his adult hood expected something from his decease son’s assets. "We call it the case of the deadbeat dad.” But before any money could be awarded since Tupac had no will before his death his mother Afeni Shakur and lawyer had to sue ceo who was incarcerated at the time of the suit Suge Knight of death row records and its lawyer David Kenner for massive fraud and conspiracy. Tupac’s mother was suing for more than $50 million dollars saying they owed him for charges to account that he hadn't incurred. There was also $16.6 million awarded in a lawsuit to a lady who was injured at a tupac concert that Tupac was never notified properly of the lawsuit until asked at a MTV interview after the judgment. This article is sad and brings what was in the dark on the record company to the light.
 

Coates,Ta-Nehisi A Tale of Two Mothers.

Copyright 2006 Time, Inc. Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda.17 Sept. 2008
Two mothers struck with the same tragedy, their only son gunned down in what the media calls a east coast west coast gang related shooting. If you look at the history of Biggie and Tupac you can see they were friends. Yes they had a falling out but not deep enough to cause a shooting between the two. Tupac was the type of person if he was mad at you he wouldn’t use violence he would take his words and beat you with them. Yeah Tupac may have said some not so nice things about biggie, but would they be stupid enough to throw a long term friendship down the drain. I believe not. Tupac’s mother Afini Shakur tries’s to “live in a world where her child is not.
Coates say that it was “Tupac who has emerged as the artist and/Biggie as a problem for the law enforcement”. That is totally a lie they were both artists one was just more recognized than the other. They both had their share of getting in trouble with the law.
Ms. Wallace Came from Jamaica as an immigrant trying to raise her son the best way she knew how being a single parent trying to keep him out of trouble. Afini Shakur a Black Panther Simi Single mother trying to raise a son the best that she could. Ms. Wallace Biggie’s mother is trying to find her sons killer, she needs to look at reality that that will never happen because the government killed him, and the government will only allow you to know what they want you to know. Afini says "until they find JFK, MLK, Malcolm X killer they probably can find her sons killer", but she won’t hold her breath.

English 201B
Tipton