Can you believe today marks 20 years since the passing of the great Tupac Shakur? Wow, I can still remember where I was at when I heard the news. I was just 13 at the mall in Charlotte, NC with a friend, at Clarie’s to be exact when it was announced on the radio. I was shocked, it was a day I will never forget, his music even at such a young age spoke to me, he was my celebrity crush and I was hurt. While I loved his music and acting, it wasn’t until I got older that I really understood just how deep Pac was. He accomplished so much before his murder at just the age of 25. He dealt with great obstacles such as homelessness and hunger amongst other situations during his youth. Performing arts provided the hope that would seed the expression that would one day influence generations worldwide. At an early age, he wrote and organized family productions, casting himself as the lead and his older cousins in supporting roles. Tupac formally trained at the 127th Street Ensemble and Baltimore School for the Arts. At the age of twelve, he experienced his first formal stage role as the character “Travis” in the stage play ‘Raisin In the Sun’ at the prestigious Apollo Theatre in Harlem.
Tupac is proof that we should never judge a book by its cover! How he was raised and where he was grew up made it hard for him to be heard. He used his voice, his words, simple poetry to tell the story of his communities’ lifestyle to display what was actually happening, even today in many black communities.
Today, 20 years after his physical departure, he is one of the top selling Hip-Hop artists of all time. His gift- his words and creative talent- continues to inspire others around the world, but few know just how much he did behind the scenes to give back too. I share with you some feel good things that Pac did for others and are not often talked about. I celebrate his legacy, his music and his giving, RIP Tupac!
In 1993, Tupac received a letter from the parents of a dying boy, named Joshua. They said it was Joshua’s last wish to meet Tupac. Joshua Torres was an 11-year-old kid, and avid Tupac fan, who was dying from complications of muscular dystrophy. As a way to lift his spirits, Joshua’s mother phoned a local radio station and inquired how she could get Tupac to phone in and talk to her son. Shakur not only phoned in, he also flew into Maryland and paid a visit to Joshua Torres and took him to a basketball game. Two hours after his visit, Joshua passed away according to the Baltimore Sun Soon after Joshua’s death Tupac renamed his publishing company from Ghetto Gospel Music to Joshua’s Dream.
According to AllHipHop.com before his death, Tupac was in the works of developing a Celebrity Youth Football League. Each celebrity involved would sponsor a youth sports team, by buying uniforms and hiring a staff of coaches.
During a promo tour stop in Washington, DC, as Tupac was on his way back to the airport, he heard on the radio about a young girl who was in the emergency room after being attacked and mauled by a dog. Tupac told the driver to turn around and take him to the hospital where the young girl was located. He stayed with her and her family until she fully recovered.
Tupac once put together a benefit concert to help a growing non-profit organization, A Place Called Home, to raise money for a new building. Founded in 1993, A Place Called Home is a safe haven in South Central LA where at risk youth are empowered to take ownership of the quality and direction of their lives through programs in education. The good news is it’s still in existence today.
Through his bodyguard, Tupac heard about a 14-year old girl who was paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair after a terrible car accident. Tupac called the Make-A-Wish Foundation to inquire about this little girl. During the phone call, Pac learned the girl was scheduled to meet her celebrity idol, but the celebrity canceled just before the meeting date. Tupac stepped in and flew the girl and her aunt to California to join him on the set of “Gridlock’d.” Afterwards he took them to the recording studio and later hosted a personal BBQ cookout at his house in honor of her. Tupac later donated a brand new audio system to her school.
In his early teens, Tupac solicited people to sign a petition to keep a community recreation center open. After accumulating a significant number of signatures the building was torn down anyway in spite of his efforts. This experience helped cultivate Tupac’s vision for a center that would provide a positive environment where young people could learn skills and performing arts. He wanted to call the center Thug Mansion. After his early death, his mother, Afeni Shakur, maintained the vision by opening the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Afeni formed the Foundation as a way to bring quality arts training to our young people. A broad range of training was offered via the Annual Performing Arts Day Camp. Disciplines included creative writing, vocal technique, acting, stage set design, dance, poetry & spoken word, and the business of entertainment. Sadly the center closed three years ago before his mother’s death.
One of the greatest ways TuPac gave to us was through his music, he was one of the most conscious artists ever to do it. Here are my top three favorite songs with a few of the lyrics and the video to my favorite TuPac song ever, Keep Ya Head Up, enjoy!
Brenda’s Got a Baby! When asked about this song, Tupac admitted to the song being a political statement and said “When this song came out, no male rappers at all anywhere were talking about problems that females were having, number one. Number two, it talked about child molestation, it talked about families taking advantages of families, it talked about the effects of poverty, it talked about how one person’s problems can affect a whole community of people.”
“I hear Brenda’s got a baby/ But Brenda’s barely got a brain/ A damn shame The girl can hardly spell her name/ That’s not our problem, that’s up to Brenda’s family/ Well let me show ya how it affects the whole community.”
Unconditional Love! I think Tupac would be proud of Obama’s recent work reducing mass sentencing that affected hundreds of thousands of black men and boys.
“Come listen to my truest thoughts, my truest feelings / all my peers doing years beyond drug dealing / how many caskets can we witness / before we see it’s hard to live this life without God / so we must ask forgiveness.” Other lyrics include, “this fast life soon shatters / cause after all the lights and screams / nothing but my dreams matter / hoping for better days / maybe a peaceful night, baby don’t cry / cause everything gonna be alright.”
Keep Ya Head Up! Whenever I hear this song I think to myself, wow if men would just listen to these words, could we build our black families up? Where’s the respect for women these days, to me it gets no better than this.
“You know what makes me unhappy/ When brothers make babies, and leave a young mother to be a pappy/ And since we all came from a woman/ Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women/ Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?”
