All my Mobb Deep threads would get tossed in the bushes
Today marks the 20 years passing of the GOAT
- Thread starter Nomad1
- Start date
the cac mamba
Veteran
even if you dont like dude, you can still stay the fukk outta the thread 
AJtheOne
Nets/Giants/Yankees
When rapper Khaled M. visited his ancestral Libya after the fall of dictator Moamer Kadhafi, he was startled to see the likeness of Tupac -- as well as another late music legend, Bob Marley -- plastered on the walls, even in a country far removed from English-language pop culture.
Twenty years after his death, Tupac still reigns. Other rappers have succeeded him in stardom, and promotional efforts around Tupac have been haphazard, but the artist who died at age 25 on September 13, 1996 maintains a hold that is among the most enduring in recent times.
"He represented, more than anything, just that angst for people who felt oppression and poverty or who felt marginalized," said Khaled M., the US-raised son of Libyan dissidents who has gone on to a rap career.
"He was the voice of the voiceless," he said. "Up until this day, I don´t think we have a hip-hop artist being able to replicate all of his voice, or his depth and passion."
His emotional directness and range -- from prophetically warning of his violent death to making maternal affection acceptable for a gangsta rapper -- helped transcend borders.
Global artists who have cited Tupac´s influence include DAM, the pioneering political Palestinian hip-hop group, to rappers in Iran, sub-Saharan Africa and eastern Europe.
His influence was not always a positive force; during Sierra Leone´s brutal civil war, guerrillas donned Tupac T-shirts as fatigues and took his aggressive "Hit ´Em Up" as an anthem.
- More complicated than gangsta -
Tupac was shot on September 7, 1996 in Las Vegas, dying of his injuries six days later. His murder officially remains unsolved and his fate has fascinated conspiracy-minded fans, with a photo going viral just last month of a man in South Africa who internet users insisted was the long-lost rap messiah.
The Los Angeles Times in a lengthy but controversial investigation in 2002 tied Tupac´s killing to the Crips gang. His death came at the height of a vaunted rivalry, egged on by promoters, between East Coast and West Coast hip-hop, with leading New York rapper The Notorious B.I.G. slain six months later in Los Angeles.
Tupac was born in New York and raised in Baltimore but became one of the most identifiable figures in the West Coast scene centered around Suge Knight´s Death Row Records.
He had repeated brushes with violence and went to prison in 1995 on sexual assault charges, with his "Me Against the World" becoming the first number one US album by a serving inmate.
Yet Tupac´s identification as a gangsta rapper came late in life. The future icon entered the hip-hop world not as a tough guy but as a cheery back-up dancer for the sensual Digital Underground and, despite the assault allegations, was a rare rapper to condemn violence against women.
As his career boomed in 1990s he was a successful actor, starring across Janet Jackson in "Poetic Justice" and playing a conflicted gang member in "Juice." He also gave long, introspective interviews, one of which was sampled at the end of Lamar´s acclaimed 2015 album "To Pimp a Butterfly."
Tupac -- whose mother Afeni was active in the Black Panther movement and named him after Tupac Amaru, the 18th-century indigenous revolutionary in Peru -- also raised issues facing African-Americans from police brutality to mass incarceration.
The message was not in itself groundbreaking -- artists such as Public Enemy, N.W.A. and KRS-One brought politics into hip-hop from the 1980s.
But Michael Jeffries, an associate professor of American Studies at Wellesley College, said Tupac possessed a dramatic flair and emotional energy like few other rappers in history.
"You don´t have to speak the language fluently to understand the narrative," he said.
Tupac also emerged at a propitious moment, Jeffries said. Hip-hop had just gone mainstream and, with the music industry´s downturn still several years away, record labels were investing heavily in artists.
"He is uniquely positioned to capitalize on it, not only because he´s a talented rapper but because he´s a gifted actor as well. He becomes a true crossover celebrity precisely at the time that money is flowing into the business," he said.
- Questions for future legacy -
Tupac was "resurrected" in 2012 at Coachella, one of the world´s pre-eminent music festivals, where he performed in one of the first concert holograms alongside former associates Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.
Yet despite his global persona, few formal tributes exist for Tupac, whose mother said she spread his ashes on her North Carolina farm.
His mother had sought to direct his legacy through a youth art school near Atlanta, funded through the seven albums from the prolific Tupac that were released posthumously. But the school -- with its bronze statue of Tupac -- has shuttered and Afeni died in May this year.
Travis Gosa, an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, voiced concern for the future of the defiant rapper´s legacy in an era when tickets for the hip-hop musical "Hamilton" fetch hundreds of dollars.
"One thing that is ironic about Tupac 20 years after his death is that you can go to a Starbucks coffee shop and hear Tupac playing on the speakers," he said.
He said that Marley´s example showed the need for caution. Marley, whose music was driven by messages of uplift and pan-African resistance, since his death in 1981 has been relentlessly commodified in T-shirts, posters and even marijuana brands with little connection to his causes.
His mother "did the best while she was alive to really use the branding cachet of Tupac´s name to do something that goes beyond just generating money. Now that she´s gone, I´m not sure what´s going to happen," Gosa said.
"People are able to rent out their own Tupac hologram now. I think we need to be vigilant about what the Tupac brand is going to be 10, 20 years from now."
20 years on, Tupac reigns as potent global force
Twenty years after his death, Tupac still reigns. Other rappers have succeeded him in stardom, and promotional efforts around Tupac have been haphazard, but the artist who died at age 25 on September 13, 1996 maintains a hold that is among the most enduring in recent times.
"He represented, more than anything, just that angst for people who felt oppression and poverty or who felt marginalized," said Khaled M., the US-raised son of Libyan dissidents who has gone on to a rap career.
"He was the voice of the voiceless," he said. "Up until this day, I don´t think we have a hip-hop artist being able to replicate all of his voice, or his depth and passion."
His emotional directness and range -- from prophetically warning of his violent death to making maternal affection acceptable for a gangsta rapper -- helped transcend borders.
Global artists who have cited Tupac´s influence include DAM, the pioneering political Palestinian hip-hop group, to rappers in Iran, sub-Saharan Africa and eastern Europe.
His influence was not always a positive force; during Sierra Leone´s brutal civil war, guerrillas donned Tupac T-shirts as fatigues and took his aggressive "Hit ´Em Up" as an anthem.
- More complicated than gangsta -
Tupac was shot on September 7, 1996 in Las Vegas, dying of his injuries six days later. His murder officially remains unsolved and his fate has fascinated conspiracy-minded fans, with a photo going viral just last month of a man in South Africa who internet users insisted was the long-lost rap messiah.
The Los Angeles Times in a lengthy but controversial investigation in 2002 tied Tupac´s killing to the Crips gang. His death came at the height of a vaunted rivalry, egged on by promoters, between East Coast and West Coast hip-hop, with leading New York rapper The Notorious B.I.G. slain six months later in Los Angeles.
Tupac was born in New York and raised in Baltimore but became one of the most identifiable figures in the West Coast scene centered around Suge Knight´s Death Row Records.
He had repeated brushes with violence and went to prison in 1995 on sexual assault charges, with his "Me Against the World" becoming the first number one US album by a serving inmate.
Yet Tupac´s identification as a gangsta rapper came late in life. The future icon entered the hip-hop world not as a tough guy but as a cheery back-up dancer for the sensual Digital Underground and, despite the assault allegations, was a rare rapper to condemn violence against women.
As his career boomed in 1990s he was a successful actor, starring across Janet Jackson in "Poetic Justice" and playing a conflicted gang member in "Juice." He also gave long, introspective interviews, one of which was sampled at the end of Lamar´s acclaimed 2015 album "To Pimp a Butterfly."
Tupac -- whose mother Afeni was active in the Black Panther movement and named him after Tupac Amaru, the 18th-century indigenous revolutionary in Peru -- also raised issues facing African-Americans from police brutality to mass incarceration.
The message was not in itself groundbreaking -- artists such as Public Enemy, N.W.A. and KRS-One brought politics into hip-hop from the 1980s.
But Michael Jeffries, an associate professor of American Studies at Wellesley College, said Tupac possessed a dramatic flair and emotional energy like few other rappers in history.
"You don´t have to speak the language fluently to understand the narrative," he said.
Tupac also emerged at a propitious moment, Jeffries said. Hip-hop had just gone mainstream and, with the music industry´s downturn still several years away, record labels were investing heavily in artists.
"He is uniquely positioned to capitalize on it, not only because he´s a talented rapper but because he´s a gifted actor as well. He becomes a true crossover celebrity precisely at the time that money is flowing into the business," he said.
- Questions for future legacy -
Tupac was "resurrected" in 2012 at Coachella, one of the world´s pre-eminent music festivals, where he performed in one of the first concert holograms alongside former associates Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.
Yet despite his global persona, few formal tributes exist for Tupac, whose mother said she spread his ashes on her North Carolina farm.
His mother had sought to direct his legacy through a youth art school near Atlanta, funded through the seven albums from the prolific Tupac that were released posthumously. But the school -- with its bronze statue of Tupac -- has shuttered and Afeni died in May this year.
Travis Gosa, an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, voiced concern for the future of the defiant rapper´s legacy in an era when tickets for the hip-hop musical "Hamilton" fetch hundreds of dollars.
"One thing that is ironic about Tupac 20 years after his death is that you can go to a Starbucks coffee shop and hear Tupac playing on the speakers," he said.
He said that Marley´s example showed the need for caution. Marley, whose music was driven by messages of uplift and pan-African resistance, since his death in 1981 has been relentlessly commodified in T-shirts, posters and even marijuana brands with little connection to his causes.
His mother "did the best while she was alive to really use the branding cachet of Tupac´s name to do something that goes beyond just generating money. Now that she´s gone, I´m not sure what´s going to happen," Gosa said.
"People are able to rent out their own Tupac hologram now. I think we need to be vigilant about what the Tupac brand is going to be 10, 20 years from now."
20 years on, Tupac reigns as potent global force
“The way we collectively remember Tupac Shakur continues to evolve. He's literally become a legend, a notorious folk hero, and a Guevara-like idol in the two decades since his untimely death in 1996.
“Active attempts to keep him in the public consciousness by artists, authors, scholars, educators, music appreciators, and – yes - record companies have all been highly successful. I find it interesting and heartening that not one college student today remembers a world in which Tupac was alive (this year's freshman class was born in '98), and yet they all seem to know his name, if not a song or two. To me, that's proof his life and work will be studied for decades to come.”
http://newswise.com/articles/tupac-is-legend-folk-hero-and-a-guevara-like-idol
“Active attempts to keep him in the public consciousness by artists, authors, scholars, educators, music appreciators, and – yes - record companies have all been highly successful. I find it interesting and heartening that not one college student today remembers a world in which Tupac was alive (this year's freshman class was born in '98), and yet they all seem to know his name, if not a song or two. To me, that's proof his life and work will be studied for decades to come.”
http://newswise.com/articles/tupac-is-legend-folk-hero-and-a-guevara-like-idol
Tupac Shakur was an enigma — a puzzle many of us could never piece together, but enjoyed trying, a confusing amalgam of profound art and troubled reality. But he was ours. He presented himself like a gift offering: no ribbons, no bows, no paper. He came in a plain box and he came opened — Me Against The World. And I think we embraced him for that, much in the same way we embraced James Dean and Nina Simone and Miles Davis, wild and free and honest — cultural icons with startling contradictions who not only narrated the wonders and the woes of our world; they literally changed it.
We were both born at the inception of rap music, amidst the rampant racism and police brutality of 1970s New York City. Hip-hop was young people's resistance. It gave us words and beats to better understand the world, ourselves; to turn pain into joy, chaos into community. These were the times that birthed Tupac. And by the early '90s, when rap music was exploding, he was primed to become its most charismatic and contradictory spokesperson.
His was a short life, with a long, complex legacy left behind. But leaving doesn't always mean you're gone. I visit schools every week, and when I ask students to name their favorite rapper, some say Kendrick Lamar, a few say Eminem — but many say Tupac. They quote lyrics from "Letter 2 My Unborn" and "California Love." They've seen Juiceand Poetic Justice, his breakout movies, where he seemed to own the camera so brilliantly that it became hard to know where the characters ended and Tupac began. "The unwillingness to let go of Tupac Shakur," says Kierna Mayo, former editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine, "rests not so much in the tragedy of his sudden death, but in the very significance of his tumultuous life."
Michael Datcher, a writer in Los Angeles, and I edited an anthology about the life of Tupac. We called it Tough Love, because we were passionate about his brilliance, but clear-eyed in our understanding of where he fell short. "He was in part playing out the cards dealt to him, extending and experimenting with the script he was handed at birth," writes Michael Eric Dyson. "Some of his most brilliant raps are about those cards and that script — poverty, ghetto life, the narrow choices for black men, the malevolent neglect of a racist society."
Writing about his problematic relationships with women (Shakur served nine months in prison for sexual assault). Tupac walked a tightrope — between rampage and reflection, between bane and beauty. He was the seventh son, living what W.E.B. Dubois called a double consciousness: one day, nihilistic rampage, the next, compassionate reflection.
Tupac Shakur captivated me, us: his voice, his rebelliousness, his confidence, his poetry. I spent a weekend with him, in 1992 — Charleston, S.C. I fashioned myself a concert promoter; Pac was my first booking. On the way to the venue, my teenage, wannabe-rapper brother, Ade, played his demo tape for Tupac. Way past cool and hyped for the big show, Tupac patiently listened and then extolled the virtues of education over the music business. Stay in school, little brother, he said, with that infectious smile. Be a black genius.
If only Tupac Shakur had lived long enough for us to see more of his.
We were both born at the inception of rap music, amidst the rampant racism and police brutality of 1970s New York City. Hip-hop was young people's resistance. It gave us words and beats to better understand the world, ourselves; to turn pain into joy, chaos into community. These were the times that birthed Tupac. And by the early '90s, when rap music was exploding, he was primed to become its most charismatic and contradictory spokesperson.
His was a short life, with a long, complex legacy left behind. But leaving doesn't always mean you're gone. I visit schools every week, and when I ask students to name their favorite rapper, some say Kendrick Lamar, a few say Eminem — but many say Tupac. They quote lyrics from "Letter 2 My Unborn" and "California Love." They've seen Juiceand Poetic Justice, his breakout movies, where he seemed to own the camera so brilliantly that it became hard to know where the characters ended and Tupac began. "The unwillingness to let go of Tupac Shakur," says Kierna Mayo, former editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine, "rests not so much in the tragedy of his sudden death, but in the very significance of his tumultuous life."
Michael Datcher, a writer in Los Angeles, and I edited an anthology about the life of Tupac. We called it Tough Love, because we were passionate about his brilliance, but clear-eyed in our understanding of where he fell short. "He was in part playing out the cards dealt to him, extending and experimenting with the script he was handed at birth," writes Michael Eric Dyson. "Some of his most brilliant raps are about those cards and that script — poverty, ghetto life, the narrow choices for black men, the malevolent neglect of a racist society."
Writing about his problematic relationships with women (Shakur served nine months in prison for sexual assault). Tupac walked a tightrope — between rampage and reflection, between bane and beauty. He was the seventh son, living what W.E.B. Dubois called a double consciousness: one day, nihilistic rampage, the next, compassionate reflection.
Tupac Shakur captivated me, us: his voice, his rebelliousness, his confidence, his poetry. I spent a weekend with him, in 1992 — Charleston, S.C. I fashioned myself a concert promoter; Pac was my first booking. On the way to the venue, my teenage, wannabe-rapper brother, Ade, played his demo tape for Tupac. Way past cool and hyped for the big show, Tupac patiently listened and then extolled the virtues of education over the music business. Stay in school, little brother, he said, with that infectious smile. Be a black genius.
If only Tupac Shakur had lived long enough for us to see more of his.
Homeboy Runny-Ray
From Around The Way
Big Daddy
Fight or die fighting, no surrender.
AJtheOne
Nets/Giants/Yankees
Vic Damone. Jr
Don't support the phonies, support the real
One of my fav Pac interviews
"Can I tell em right now?"
"Oh alright"
"I got a song with Faith. *pauses for a sec* Ahahaha"
"If bytches take the song wrong,it's all Nate fault."
"I just wanna tell you, ahaha,you missed muthafukka!"....... 
"But in California nikka,that's where the g'z ride."
"Can I tell em right now?"
"Oh alright"
"I got a song with Faith. *pauses for a sec* Ahahaha"
"If bytches take the song wrong,it's all Nate fault."
"I just wanna tell you, ahaha,you missed muthafukka!"
....... "But in California nikka,that's where the g'z ride."
