|
By Cathy Scott
Tupac Shakur
was not only a talented rapper and lyricist, but a man with an intellectual and
spiritual side. That's what a new documentary directed by Shakur's mother, Afeni,
shows: a softer side than previously portrayed.
But the film, Tupac: Resurrection, also - for the first time since his
death - tells in Shakur's own words who his beefs were with and who his enemies
were. Producer and director Lauren Lazin gleaned enough material from
recordings, videos, letters, journals, home movies and family photos to let
Shakur narrate his own history. "This is my story," Shakur says.
Even though he talked about his death - not unusual for a kid who grew up
falling asleep each night to the sound of gunfire in the ghetto - he says he was
surprised when he was shot in 1994 while walking into a recording studio in
Manhattan's Times Square. Shakur ultimately was cut down in a hail of gunfire in
September 1996 near the Las Vegas Strip.
"They shot me, straight up," he says about the '94 hit. "They did it. I know how
it's going to happen when I die. I'm going to fade out."
The New York shooting made Shakur angry and, at times, paranoid.
"I always felt like I'd be shot," Shakur tells a reporter. "Somebody's always
trying to do me harm. I felt like a target. But I didn't think it was going to
happen at that particular time." He blamed a former friend, rapper Biggie
Smalls. And, some say, retaliation shootings have occurred on the streets ever
since.
Shakur came up from the ghetto, raised by a Black Panther leader. At 12, he was
given a chance to attend a prestigious performing arts school in Baltimore. He
knew then that all he wanted to do was perform. When Shakur's mother lost her
job and began doing drugs, he moved out and started dancing and rapping with the
group Digital Underground. It was his first real break.
But it wasn't until he landed a role in the film Juice, co-starring Omar
Epps, that Shakur began taking on the persona of a thug. Just like his character
Bishop in the 1992 film, "I started staring people down more," he says. Shakur
admits that he got caught up in the hype. "I was immature," he says, "and my
image was out of control. ... I've got a big mouth. I was young and dumb."
Still, he persisted in perpetuating the image, what he termed a new civil rights
movement. "Thug life is a new kind of black power," he says, "the new African
Panthers." In 1993, he told a crowd, "We thugs and we niggas until we get it
right."
It was the bad-boy thug image Shakur developed for himself that got him in
trouble. As Shakur later explained: "I didn't create thug life," he says. "I
diagnosed it."
Later, he tried to back away from it, making his actions, words and lyrics a
contradiction. He explains to MTV that he wasn't necessarily advocating
violence.
"The code of thug life [is] a code to fix violence on the street," he says.
"Shooting and drive-bys on the street, we're against it. I just try to speak
about things from the street. My ear is to the street. It's like my battle cry
to America."
He recanted the tough-guy image. But it was too late. The image was already
firmly established.
The odd thing, Shakur says, is that he didn't have a police record "until I made
a [music] record."
Shakur talks about rapper Biggie Smalls and Sean "P.Diddy" Combs (then known as
Puffy) and what he thought their roles were in the '94 attempt on his life. The
film leaves viewers with the sense that the director believes Smalls and Combs
had something to do with Shakur's killing.
The film details the events leading up to Shakur's murder by telling about the
East Coast-West Coast rap wars. In doing so, it all but points a finger at Combs
and Smalls as masterminding the 1994 shooting. Also by doing so, it leaves
viewers with the feeling that Biggie and Combs had something to do with Shakur's
final demise in 1996.
Smalls, who performed as the Notorious B.I.G., denied any involvement up until
his own death six months later. Combs, too, has adamantly denied having anything
to do with Shakur's death or the 1994 shooting.
Also in the documentary, Shakur names the police as his enemy. New York Police
Department detectives, he says, did not want to solve the 1994 attempt on his
life. "The police don't want to find out who shot me," he says. "They happy."
The 25-year-old Shakur was cut down before his potential was reached. Today, his
name is synonymous with legends before him - on the music side, Elvis, and on
the revolutionary side, Eldridge Cleaver.
Tupac Shakur lives on in his music, but his death has taken on a life of its
own. There's no doubt that there is forever a place for this phenomenon in
cultural and musical history. But after seeing Tupac: Resurrection, fans
are still left wondering exactly who did him in. And there is no closure, no
aftermath or reaction from fans still looking to make sense of Shakur's death.
And there are those fans on the East Coast looking for the same with Smalls'
death.
Smalls was gunned down in a similar drive-by shooting six months after Shakur's
death. It is widely believed that Shakur and Smalls were killed by different
subsets of the Crips. Exactly who was behind the killings is up for debate. What
is known is that the blood bath that began with Shakur's fatal shooting
continues today on the streets of Compton, Calif., home to the rival Crips and
Bloods street gangs.
Tupac: Resurrection leaves viewers with one final statement from Shakur:
"There's no religion about getting shot. I'm not looking for any converts."
Indeed.
Cathy Scott, a freelance journalist and author, wrote the books The
Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls.
