November 9, 2003

Tupac Shakur: Dead Man Talking

T has been seven years since the rapper Tupac Shakur was killed at age 25 in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, and one can confidently say that he has never been more popular. More than 15 books, four documentaries, three college courses, a play and countless Web sites have explored his brief life and undying legacy.

Prolific still, Shakur has released more albums dead than alive (four while breathing, six posthumously). Bootlegs of his work abound — "Rap Phenomenon," an unauthorized mix tape of Shakur's work, was this fall's hip-hop must have. He has a hit song, "Running (Dying to Live)," produced by Eminem, on the radio. And Forbes recently ranked him No. 8 on it's Richest Deceased Celebrities list, with Shakur raking in $12 million from June 2002 to June 2003, $5 million more than his 2001 take-home pay. The new documentary "Tupac: Resurrection" (opening on Friday), and the accompanying book and soundtrack, will undoubtedly enhance Shakur's legend as one of music's most electrifying and endlessly fascinating artists.

Directed by Lauren Lazin, with Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mother, as an executive producer, "Resurrection" explores Shakur's spectacularly complicated life. Without a narrator or secondary interviews, Ms. Lazin relies solely on film, photos, old interviews and journal entries by Shakur. Since he does all the talking, this documentary, which was five years in the making, has an intensely autobiographical feel, and viewers are given the (false) sense that Shakur had an active role in the creation of the film.

"The way I wanted to tell this story was from Tupac's point of view," said Ms. Lazin, an executive producer at MTV. "He has such a strong voice. I didn't need other people talking about him. No one can speak for Tupac better than Tupac."

But why the enduring interest in Tupac Shakur after all these years?

On the surface, the reasons seem fairly simple. It is not uncommon for even lesser artists to have a surge of nostalgia-fueled popularity shortly after their deaths. And in the public imagination artists cut down in their prime — Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly — are forever frozen in their perfect states, never aging or fading in beauty, diminishing in talent or stature. Still, since Shakur's murder, the mystique surrounding him has swelled to near Elvis-like proportions.

"If Tupac had a Graceland, there would be people camping outside of his house right now," said Elliott Wilson, editor-in-chief of XXL, a hip-hop magazine.

Born to a Black Panther mother, Tupac Amaru Shakur was introduced to issues of race and politics early in life. Just one month before his birth, his mother was acquitted of conspiring to bomb several New York public buildings. Though much of his youth was spent in poverty (as Ms. Shakur battled a crack addiction), Shakur had a wealth of experience in the arts. He began performing at 12 with a Harlem acting troupe and then, at the Baltimore School of Arts, he picked up violin and ballet, fell in love with the paintings of Van Gogh and ultimately discovered his calling: rapping. He was 20 when "2Pacalypse Now," his debut, was released in 1991.

With that album, Shakur demonstrated an emotional honesty that was both palpable and intoxicating; each of his songs acting as a sonic diary of sorts. The contents weren't always pretty. In Shakur's world, gun-toting, drug-slinging gangsters were glorified and "hoes" — his word for women at times — were victimized. "Homies" and police officers alike met with untimely deaths. Lines like "Tired of being trapped in this vicious cycle/ if one more cop harasses me I might go psycho," from the song "Trapped," about stifling ghetto life, did not sit well with the likes of Dan Quayle, who argued that Shakur's music "has no place in our society." Critics labeled him a misogynist and a purveyor of violence. C. Delores Tucker, at the time chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee's Black Caucus and Shakur's arch nemesis, pronounced his music "pornographic smut." Fans, however, continue to argue that Shakur, while flawed, was an ambassador of the dispossessed, a man who, like Bob Marley and Bob Dylan before him, used politically charged couplets to speak for those society rendered invisible. Echoing the ideology of the Black Panthers, Shakur encouraged the downtrodden to take up arms. "We are being wiped off the face of the earth at an extremely alarming rate/ and even more alarming is that we are not fighting back," he rapped on "Words of Wisdom." "2Pacalyse's" biggest hit, the poignant "Brenda's Got a Baby," told the story of a single mother selling her body to survive.

The problems that existed in the inner city at the time of Shakur's emergence still exist, argues Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of humanities at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur," and this makes Shakur's words as relevant today as they were more than a decade ago.

Shortly after the release of "2Pacalypse," Shakur starred in the urban drama "Juice," playing a trigger-happy high school student. Next came a role opposite Janet Jackson in "Poetic Justice." But the on-screen presence of Tupac the actor and the observations of Tupac the "pavement poet" were often overshadowed by the antics of Tupac the outlaw or thug, as he referred to himself. The year 1993 brought: an arrest for fighting with a limo driver; a 10-day stint in jail for supposedly beating up a rapper in Michigan; and yet another arrest for shooting two off-duty police officers in Atlanta (charges were dropped). Shakur was also accused (and later convicted) of sexually assaulting a girl he met in a New York nightclub that same year. His bad-boy behavior came to a temporary halt in November 1994 when Shakur, on trial at the time for the sexual assault and weapons violations, was robbed of $40,000 worth of jewelry and shot five times in the lobby of a Times Square recording studio. As he flouted both death and the law, Shakur's street credibility soared; his reputation as a mythical figure was sealed.

"So many fans around the world feel he was the perfect embodiment of rebellion against orthodoxy," said Professor Dyson, who added that in death Shakur has become a "ghetto saint."

Shakur's luck ran out on Sept. 6, 1996, when, sitting in the passenger seat of a BMW sedan — with the Death Row Records founder, Suge Knight, beside him — Shakur was shot four times. He died seven days later, on Friday the 13th; his murder remains unsolved.

Shakur lives on not just in popular culture, but also in academia. Scholars across the country have begun examining his brief and tumultuous career, combing through his music for insights about everything from inner city life to the inner workings of the black male psyche. Harvard has offered "Modern Protest Literature: From Thomas Payne to Tupac." The University of Washington currently presents "The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur," a course that uses books like Sun Tzu's "Art of War" and Machiavelli's "Prince" to explore the literary influences in Shakur's work.

Today's biggest rappers have also done their part to keep Tupac alive. Eminem has often named Shakur his favorite. In his hit song "In Da Club," the rapper 50 Cent, who also was shot but lived to rhyme about it, declares, "I want them to love me like they love Pac." Ja Rule has sampled Shakur's music and style. Even Nas and Jay Z, who were dissed by Shakur, have made use of his catalog; Jay Z's recent song "Bonnie and Clyde" samples Shakur's hit "Me and My Girlfriend."

"There are a lot of better rappers than Tupac, but it's his passion and his conviction that they all admire," Mr. Wilson of XXL explained. "They want to grab a piece of him because they all want to be him."

The rapper Nas, who joined Shakur on a posthumous remix of Thugz Mansion, said: "He was our Malcolm X. And it's important that we keep him alive as much as we can."

It is no secret, though, that Tupac makes for good business. "Every time we put him on the cover it sells out," Mr. Wilson said.

Genuine adoration or blatant exploitation?

The former, says Ms. Shakur, a thin, smiling woman with loads of charm and a towering presence. As executor of her son's estate, it is she who decides what of his sizable archive will be shared. "His fans seek us out, and we are obligated to fulfill their desires," she wrote in an e-mail message after a recent interview in New York. "We are not exploiting my son's legacy for personal financial gain. Monies from all our endeavors are going toward the fulfillment of his long list of dreams: the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, the Tupac Amaru Shakur Performing Arts and Cultural Center, development of motion pictures with his Lumberton Films company, the Organic Farm, which will create commerce and also feed those less fortunate than us."

Like most gangster rappers, Shakur was obsessed with his mortality. Though "Will They Mourn Me," "Letter 2 My Unborn" and "Death Around the Corner" are only some of the dozens of Tupac songs on the subject, few ever expected the rapper to die early, as he had predicted. "Prophesying your own death was pretty new to the hip-hop community, and people thought he was just crazy at first," Mr. Wilson said. "It wasn't until he was gone that people realized how strongly he felt his time on earth was limited. That's why he was such a workaholic."

One of the more popular conspiracy theories holds that Tupac, following the teachings of Machiavelli, faked his own death to escape his enemies (of which there were many at the time of his death because of an East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry), and now lives in Cuba.

While sympathetic, Ms. Shakur called such musings "strange." She said she had no interest in finding her son's killer — "That won't bring him back" — and suspects the case will never be solved. "Are they not still trying to figure out who killed J.F.K.?" she asked.

In the 1995 song "Me Against the World," Shakur wonders, "After death/ after my last breath/ when will I finally get to rest?"

The answer is not any time soon. Makaveli, his men's sportswear line, will hit stores in December. And look for the next Tupac Shakur album in February.