20 Years Later, Tupac Shakur's Genius Still Haunts Us

Knights89

Knights89

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dope piece

I always look at him being 25 but living the life he did. Twenty five, such a young age, but left such a catalog, a topic of endless debates and other things to discuss. You talked about the image of Pac with the tattoos, the in your face personalty that many rappers have adopted but i think this is lost on all them
He was as naked an artist as I have ever known. No one had offered such access to his life
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that connection cant be replicated, its sorta natural. You have it or dont

the record I've been revisiting recently is


Another record that talked his death. Records like this highlight how young he was, his dreams that went unfulfilled. Interesting you brought up Nate Parker not being able to escape assault accusations because he says "aint no way in hell i could ever be a rapist." his legacy on that front remains unscathed even as the study of his life and music has increased and made its way into colleges, as well as social media and how Parker, Cosby were received.
 
The War Report

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A real honest view of Tupac. How different would Pac would of been if he never left Harlem and grew up there as an adolescent and a teenager? It sucks that Pac is not around today because he would of had a whole lot of shyt to say.



So what did happen to Ra Ra?



South East Queens had a lot love for Pac too.
 
Goatpoacher

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L@CaT said:
@Walt has always supported 2pac for as long as I can remember. Even when it was trendy for New Yorkers to shyt on Pac during the SOHH days Walt always had an objective opinion of Pac.

As usual your article really hits home. Pacs music is more relevant today than it was even when he was alive.

Pac was truly a unique and special human being. Even with all his faults
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The greatest ARTIST hiphop has created, one of the greatest in history overall.
 
MooseMouthMthafuga

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Pac transcended the genre because he was about humanity.I always called him the most humane artist hip hop ever produced.

In the collective body that we call hip hop, he was the heart/guts.His delivery was gutty, visceral.


And he came to truly serve, not to self aggrandize, or brag about riding a wave of material wealth.That wasn't his main mission.


Most rappers take simple shyt, add a bunch of metaphors/punchlines, and call themselves complex



Pac took complicated issues and simplified them.Brought a level of clarity that made it easy to "feel" where he was coming from.Straight to the point, head on.

I guess it's really not fair.The man had so much natural charisma, he could keep his subject matter "ordinary", and still shine more than most.

In hip hop, he's the master of connectivity.


Like Michael Jackson in Pop.....Bob Marley in Reggae


You have to be born with...gotta be in your essence.He was a natural & nobody's really come close since
 
LandryFieldsDad

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Walt said:
King of Pain: 20 Years Later, Tupac Shakur’s Problematic Genius Still Haunts Us

Some excerpts:

The aphorism goes, “Stars are born, not made.” I understood this twice in childhood: the first time I saw Magic Johnson on television, and the moment in Digital Underground’s “Same Song” video when a resplendent Tupac Shakur burst into the public consciousness on a chariot, wearing a dashiki and kufi, and holding a scepter that looked like it was fashioned out of black cool itself:

Now I clown around when I hang around with the Underground
Girls who used to frown, say I’m down when I come around
Gas me and when they passed me they used to dis me
Harass me but now they ask me if they can kiss me …


When I rewatched the video last week, it struck me that the men carrying the chariot looked like pallbearers. Even in his figurative birth as a star, his inevitably early demise winked at us. The two always moved hand in hand.

Scientific American says a star is born when atoms of light elements are pressured significantly enough to undergo fusion. The same article notes all stars are the result of a balance of forces; that once fusion is achieved, stars exert an outward pressure. As long as the inward and outward forces are of equal intensity, the star remains stable.

Tupac epitomized fusion—cultural fusion—and maybe because of that, his star was never a stable one. The intensity of society he absorbed at every stop and the intensity he projected back at it were rarely in step.

He spent the first decade of his life in Harlem, the next four years in Baltimore, and came of age in Oakland, Calif., before his celebrity put him in a state of constant transience, living on the road, in Los Angeles, and in a jail cell. He was at once everyone and no one; as rich in spirit as he was, he was also spiritually homeless. That made him quintessentially black in America.

He was and remains a Jesus figure for so many black men not because of his Makaveli album-cover art, but because he let himself belong to us. His love, his pain, his anger, his intensity, his generosity, his recklessness, his paranoia, his vulnerability … He put it all on display.

He was as naked an artist as I have ever known. No one had offered such access to his life, and the more titillating episodes made us wonder if he hadn’t entered a self-perpetuating cycle—it was tough to tell whether the music was being driven by his life experiences or was driving them. To some, he was hip-hop’s great method actor; to many others, he was the realest.

His energy was frenetic, his enthusiasm infectious. I could never figure out if he was running from or running toward something, but I knew I was willing to follow him wherever the journey took him, and me. The journey, in Taoist fashion, turned out to be the destination. In retrospect, I wish he would have kept more of himself for himself. It’s not coincidental that he hasn’t even been allowed his own death.

Everything about Tupac belonged to us in the end. In a very figurative sense, he died for the sins of our society and our culture of celebrity worship, violence, crass materialism and black death.

All these years later, Tupac is whoever we decide he is. He still functions as a funhouse mirror, and whatever we project onto him comes back to us in a larger, stranger reflection. He was a prophet, a player, a thug, a poet, a Panther, a prince. He navigated Nate Parker’s path of sexual assault, but came out largely unscathed in terms of public perception. Most of us were always willing to give Tupac the benefit of the doubt, partially because he was handsome, irrepressible and charismatic, but mostly because he was a black man who loved himself because of his blackness rather than in spite of it.

King of Pain: 20 Years Later, Tupac Shakur’s Problematic Genius Still Haunts Us
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you are such a fantastic writer. incredible wordsmith
 
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