I had a conversation with a reasonably intelligent person the other day who argued that Tupac was a better role model than Barack Obama because Tupac, in his view, had a greater connection to the struggle, as opposed to Obama, who has killed thousands of innocent people with drones. (His level of reverence reminded me of an old BGOL debate, reflected in the above quote, which prompted me to bring the conversation here.) I'd like to see what the BGOL consensus on this matter is.
That Tupac had an impact and influence is undeniable. But was it, on the whole, negative or positive? Is he a precautionary tale of unfulfilled potential corrupted or a positive model for youth worthy of emulation?
I've added some common points of contention as a reference point. There's no expectation that anyone read all the articles or watch all the videos but it's good to skim and just take a look at.
Ideology & Ideals
Background
"Imagine 2Pac's childhood and background. 2Pac was a '60's lovechild; however, 2Pac's Mother--Afeni Shakur--was an active member of the Black Panther Party. Right before Pac was born she was acquitted of over 100 counts of conspiracy against the United States Government. His Step-Dad was African royalty, or something, yet spent 10 years on the FBI's most wanted list. Imagine growing up like that. 2Pac was a real product of his environment, and his music reflects that."
Cultural Impact
Global legacy
"Go to Africa, you gonna find a Pac fan. Go to fucking somewhere in bumblefuck backwoods of Asia and you are GOING to find a pac fan. He's the closest to a hip hop version of Bob Marley. He represents some shit to people."Tupac song selected for Vatican playlist
By Jo Piazza, Special to CNN
December 4, 2009
(CNN) -- Music from late rapper Tupac Shakur has been included as part of the Vatican's official MySpace Music playlist.
The seat of the Catholic Church released a list of 12 songs onto the social networking Web site's streaming music service this week when the site launched in the United Kingdom.
Among selections from Mozart, Muse and Dame Shirley Bassey is the slain rapper's song "Changes," which was released two years after his shooting death on a greatest hits album in 1998.
"I see no changes
Wake up in the morning and I ask myself
'Is life worth living should I blast myself?'
I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black
My stomach hurts so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch
... And although it seems heaven sent
We ain't ready to see a black President
...
Some Things'll Never Change"
Vladimir Putin’s Top Aide Loves Tupac
Vladislav Surkov, top aide to Russia President Vladimir Putin, laughed off the sanctions imposed by the US and President Obama, saying the only thing that he has invested in America is his love for Tupac and he “doesn’t need a visa” to listen to rap music.
The US and EU imposed sanctions on several Russian and Ukrainian officials following the referendum in Crimea to become a part of Russia on Sunday (March 16). Crimea is an autonomous republic in Ukraine who just joined the Russian Federation yesterday (March 18). Surkov is one of the seven Russian officials that was apart of the sanctions and he told a Russian newspaper how much he cared about about the White House sanctions.
“The only things that interest me in the US are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg, and Jackson Pollock,” says Surkov “I don’t need a visa to access their work. I lose nothing.”
LA Weekly: AFRICAN REBEL SOLDIERS AND THEIR EERIE OBSESSION WITH TUPAC SHAKUR
BY PAUL ROGERS
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2011
"I only listen to 2Pac before going to shoot Gaddafi boys," said Hisham al Hady to a British journalist recently. Al Hady is a Libyan rebel battling the regime of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, but he's not alone. Shakur's influence on African fighters extends far beyond the current civil strife in Libya, and goes much deeper than just pre-battle pump-ups.
Militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo adopted knock-off Tupac T-shirts as de facto uniforms in the late 1990s, as did members of that country's regular armed forces. By 2002, rebels in Côte d'Ivoire were similarly clad in Pac-adorned attire.
But it was during the latter stages of Sierra Leone's hellish civil war in the early aughts that the rapper was most visibly iconized by African warriors. That conflict's principal rebel army, the Revolutionary United Front, started donning Shakur shirts en-masse in 1998. They mimicked Shakur's hairstyle. They wrote things like "Death Row," "Missing in action," and "Only God can judge" on their rag-tag vehicles, and danced to his music between firefights.
"The rebels take [Tupac's lyrics] very seriously and try to apply the lyrics," a Sierra Leonean refugee explained two years later.
One of the war's most outlandish militant groups, the West Side Boys, took their very name from Tupac's rhetoric. (His classic 1996 diss "Hit 'Em Up" includes the lyric "West Side bad boy killers.") The famously inebriated Boys -- who were also fond of wearing women's wigs and flip-flops -- would even scrawl "2Pac" onto their assault rifles.
"[Tupac's] music articulated a set of experiences that a lot of people around the world, and particularly in Africa, have perceived as a kind of shared experience," says Jeremy Prestholdt, a professor of African history at UC San Diego. "Marginalization; poverty; angst; and a sense of powerlessness that can be converted into a sense of personal empowerment."
To those youth involved in African conflicts after his 1996 death, his resonance became increasingly exaggerated.
During the Sierra Leone conflict -- a war almost devoid of ideology -- Tupac's projection of a justified sense of revenge offered often-conscripted combatants some sort of meaning to the violence they were witnessing and perpetrating. In Shakur they perceived a sympathetic voice for their otherwise incomprehensible experiences and unjustifiable actions.
"Tupac offers a kind of psychological solace in the midst of this chaos," Prestholdt explains. "In a lot of different contexts, certainly not only Sierra Leone, Tupac offered this image of resilience, invincibility, bravado, and hyper-masculinity."
Shakur's murder in September of 1996 came at a critical point in Sierra Leone's civil war. The following May, the Revolutionary United Front and mutinous army soldiers sacked the country's capital, Freetown. Amidst this orgy of looting, rape and murder, many fighters looked to the rhymes of their now mythologized hip-hop hero for some vague comprehension of their situation.
Lyrics like "Witnessin' killins, leaving dead bodies in abandoned buildings," from "Me Against the World," suddenly seemed almost prophetic to some of the very young -- and habitually drugged -- gunmen. The Pac-worshipping West Side Boys emerged near Freetown in 1998.
Across large swathes of Africa, Tupac now rivals the importance of Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley as a pop cultural icon. And while other hip-hop stars - including Kanye West, 50 Cent and Eminem - are also widely idolized on the continent, none seem to have the emotional purchase of Tupac's legacy.
In fact, when the besieged Colonel Gaddafi recently started hearing "Me Against the World" booming from rebels' advancing vehicles, one suspects he might have identified with the track himself.
NPR: Tupac Encouraged The Arab Spring (Audio available by clicking link)
MARCH 20, 2013
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: First, we want to talk more about the Arab Spring. That's the wave of demonstrations that swept across North Africa and the Middle East two years ago and unsettled several longstanding regimes.
Now, you've probably heard about how Twitter and social media played an important part of the Arab Spring, especially for young people, but what you might not have heard is that music, especially rap music and one rapper in particular, was also a big part of the story for young people, bringing them encouragement.
I'm joined now to hear more about this by Khaled M. He is a Libyan-American hip-hop artist. He says that Tupac Shakur inspired him and countless other people during the Arab Spring and he's with us now... So how big is Tupac in Libya?
M: I would say that Tupac is, still to this day, the biggest western music artist in Libya, maybe along with Bob Marley, but the two are definitely neck-and-neck.
MARTIN: Give me an example of, like, how I would experience that if I were to go.
M: It's everywhere. I mean, I was shocked because I grew up listening to Tupac over here and, you know, my first time ever going to Libya in my life was last year, and I was shocked. I mean, visually, you see it everywhere. You see graffiti, RIP Tupac. Just riding around in the streets, you still see people playing his music from the '90s to this day, and I'm talking about kids that are 18, 19 and 20 years old that may not have been around when he was making music, but his influence is huge. I mean, he's still the premier hip-hop artist in Libya.
MARTIN: Not just hip-hop artist, but artist who represents, kind of, the soundtrack of what young people are listening to. Does that...
M: For sure.
MARTIN: ...sound about right? Why do you think that is?
M: I think he made music that's very relatable. I think Tupac really represented a struggle. He represented trying to come up out of your environment and be something bigger, exceeding expectations and, you know, that's something that all of the youth in Libya can relate to.
MARTIN: I just want to play one of Tupac's songs now. I want to play "Only God Can Judge Me." Let's hear some of that and maybe you can talk a little bit about how, why a theme like this would resonate. Here it is.
TUPAC SHAKUR: (Singing) Dear Mama, can you save me? (BLEEP) peace 'cause the streets got our babies. We got to eat. No more hesitation. Each and every black male's trapped and they wonder why we suicidal running 'round strapped. Mr. Police, please try to see that it's a million (bleep) stressing just like me. Only God can judge me.
MARTIN: So talk a little bit about - if you would - about how you feel some of these themes kind of dovetail with what's on people's minds.
M: I mean, the situation that he's speaking of is something that, you know, Libyans can relate to, kind of an oppressive, authoritative figure, whether it's police, whether it's Gaddafi's military guards, kind of rebelling against them and responding to that with, you know, only God can judge me and, you know, God knows what our true value is as human beings.
MARTIN: You know, it's interesting that I think, if people think about it, they might think about how music has played a role in social movements lots of places around the world. I mean, in the United States, for example, in the civil rights movement, nobody would think about the civil rights movement without thinking about the music that people used to inspire them. I mean, there are many, many stories about people who were imprisoned singing to give each other courage and strength.
And it was also a way for other people to know that you were alive and I know you were in the U.S. during much of that time, but how do you think this music was actually used during this period?
M: I mean, it was twofold. I stayed in the U.S. I had actually wanted to go to Libya during the revolution and they told me, no, stay there. You know, what you're doing is more valuable. You're more valuable to us in the media doing interviews, making music, doing shows and raising money than you would be to us on the ground.
I think, first of all, for me especially because my song was in English, it raised a lot of awareness to the western world when we released "Can't Take Our Freedom." But, second of all, it really inspired Libyans inside. All the music that you saw coming from artists in Libya was meant to offer a voice to people who never had a voice before, who were never allowed to be journalists, who were never allowed to be on television or write newspapers and offered them a voice and let people know that others were standing with them.
MARTIN: Hold on a second. Let me just play a clip of the song that you just mentioned. This is your song, "Can't Take Our Freedom," and I will mention that the government actually blocked the song online because of...
M: Oh, yeah.
MARTIN: ...the impact that it was having on people and because of the message. Let's play a little bit. Here it is.
M: (Singing) In the darkest hour when the world has turned away and no one's watching, when the sky has turned to gray and you have no options, when your voice is illegal. Only choice for the people is to stand up proudly in the face of death. It ain't a waste of breath when you speak up loudly on behalf of the kids in the street with no pot to piss in, living on the young 'cause their pop is missing. Don't know if he's dead or if he's locked in prison. Disappeared, they consider him the opposition and now I'm having visions of dreams I shouldn't see. And could we be this close? Nah, couldn't be, but if the people in Egypt and Tunis can do this, decide their fate, then why wouldn't we? More than 40 years...
MARTIN: Talk a little bit about - how did you figure out that the government was blocking your music and what was the work around, if you don't mind my knowing that?
M: We actually linked up with Anonymous, who are known to be activists for anybody that isn't familiar. And Anonymous worked around and did their internet magic and even actually helped us shut down some of the Libyan government's websites and online presence for a little bit.
MARTIN: I did want to ask, you don't mind sharing this, that I mentioned that you're a Libyan-American, but this is not all hypothetical, just for people who are wondering. This is not all information that's gathered from a distance.
M: Sure.
MARTIN: Do you mind sharing some of your personal experience with the regime of Muammar Gaddafi?
M: Sure. I mean, the revolution started long before February 17th. My father was thrown in jail in 1973 for being part of a student protest against the government and he was tortured every day in jail. He shared a jail cell with his father, actually, and eventually my father escaped jail after five years before he was supposed to be executed. I also have two uncles that were killed in 1984. They were part of an assassination attempt on the regime.
So, after '84, my whole family, every male on my father's side of the family, was thrown in jail, some of them not getting out until 2002 and, sadly, my family is just one example of the many. We spent the first few years after my father escaped, living country to country, on the run. You know, I didn't find a place to live really permanently until I was about four years old. We moved to Lexington, Kentucky. Before that, we were in Sudan, Chad, Algeria, Iraq, London, Egypt.
And Kentucky, which sounds random, sort of became the pseudo headquarters for the opposition movement, so you find a lot of Libyans in Kentucky and people who have been working against the regime, you know, since the late '70s and early '80s.
MARTIN: Now that Gaddafi is gone, I mean, obviously, Libya still faces many trials. I mean, I'm just interested in what it's like for you as an artist.
M: You know, for me, obviously being blessed to grow up here in America, we've always been outspoken. We've always been at every protest, every demonstration, from D.C. to New York. We used to spend our last pennies to just get gas money and drive up there. But it's really, really amazing to see people inside Libya who are speaking freely now. The music scene has flourished and not just musically, but individuality has flourished, I mean, from journalists to break-dancers to painters to writers. It's really, really amazing to witness it all firsthand.
MARTIN: Before we go, what should we go out on? Do you have a favorite Tupac track?
M: I think the first song that my mom let me listen to IN THE HOUSE was "Dear Mama." She knew I loved Tupac. She would never let me listen to him in the house because I guess it was kind of explicit, but "Dear Mama" - all the Libyans relate to it. You still hear it blasting to that day. In Islam, we have a saying that says heaven is under your mother's feet. You know, it's very big culturally to always almost idolize your mother and take care of her and "Dear Mama" just hits the soul.
Foreign Policy Magazine:
Strictly 4 everyone: Why do Kremlin apparatchiks, African rebels, and the Vatican all love Tupac?
BY JOSHUA KEATING
DECEMBER 19, 2012
Tom Friedman’s column today reveals the Vladislav Surkov, the deputy prime minister and political strategist known as "Putin’s Machiavelli," is actually more of a "Makaveli":
Surkov, once described as Putin’s Machiavelli, is impressive, and his plans to stimulate innovation in Russia sounded real to me. But I couldn’t resist noting that innovative cultures don’t do things like throw the punk band Pussy Riot into prison for two years for performing a “punk prayer” in a cathedral. That sends a bad signal to all freethinkers. Surkov, who also keeps a picture of the American rapper Tupac Shakur behind his desk, pushes back. “Tupac Shakur is a genius, and the fact that he was in prison did not interrupt either his creative juices or the innovative development of the United States.” Pussy Riot is no Tupac Shakur, he added. “Being orthodox myself, I feel really sorry for the girls from Pussy Riot, but [their situation] has no implications for the innovative developments of Russia.”
Surkov is the second prominent cultural conservative to out himself as a Tupac fan in recent days, after Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who told GQ that "Killuminati" is one of his favorite songs and laments that modern hip hop has "crossed over and sort of become indistinguishable from pop music in general."
Think it’s odd that these two men share devout Christianity, culturally conservative views, and a fondness for West Coast gangsta rap? Consider the fact that the Vatican included the slain rapper’s posthumous hit "Changes" on its Myspace playlist in 2009.
American conservatives may still like to take shots at hip hop now and then — witness last year’s fracas after the decidedly PG-13 rated "conscious" rapper Common was invited to the White House — but I imagine this will mellow with the ascendance of figures like Rubio and Surkov — both in their 40s — who grew up listening to it. (Even Vladimir Putin has been known to attend a rap battle now and then.)
But what’s interesting about Tupac in particular is that he seems to appeal to both the world’s most powerful people and its most marginalized. As Sean Jacobs wrote last year, Tupac’s status as an icon among urban African youth today has eclipsed older figures like Bob Marley. Jacobs links to a 2003 Wilson Center report that attempts to explain the reasons for the rapper’s continued appeal:
A popular T-shirt has a black background, showing Tupac (spelled “2Pac”) looking alert, with U.S. dollar signs ringing the collar and his most popular slogan, “All Eyez on Me,” across the bottom. “All Eyez on Me,” INDEED—Tupac’s lyrics expressing his alienation, fury, and his conviction that his quest for revenge is thoroughly justified, the police sirens in the background of many of his songs, the belief that he was not really murdered but is still alive (often proclaimed in “Tupac Lives” graffiti), all conjure an image of a defiant, proud antihero, and an inspiration for many of Africa’s young and alienated urbanites.
Tupac — whose Black Panther parents named him after an indigenous Peruvian rebel leader and folk hero — has also been adopted as an icon by rebel groups in Congo, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, and elsewhere. The largest rebel faction in Sierra Leone’s civil war, the Revolutionary United Front, commonly wore Tupac t-shirts and took on his lyrics as mantras. As Paul Rogers notes, as recently as 2011, a Libyan rebel fighter told a British journalist, "I only listen to 2Pac before going to shoot Gaddafi boys."
Compared to other global icons like, say, Michael Jackson, Tupac is a figure very much associated with a geographic region (California, city of Compton, etc.) and the tragically short era in which he was active. So it’s a bit surprising that his appeal has turned out to be universal enough that everyone from Kremlin political technologists, to Tea Party senators, to African rebels, to Haitian gang leaders to rural Chinese teenagers can find something to identify with in his work.
Religion
Battles with law enforcement
"I remember in '91, the police whipped 2Pac's ass for Jaywalking and 2Pac sued the police for millions of dollars. A year later the police blamed a rap he wrote on the killing of a cop. A year after all of that, 2Pac was charged for shooting an off duty police officer. Is that series of events and his lyrical content a coincidence? 2Pac was real. He wrote about what he lived, and he was honest when he did it. I truly believe that only one who commits an error in reasoning can conclude otherwise, considering 2Pac's childhood and background."
Defeatism
On "Changes":It's a wonderful song, but in a way it's also an example of the attitude of defeatism that is very prevalent among some blacks.
This song isn't that old and I just find it amazingly ironic the way he talks about the country not being ready to see a black President and the entire song is about hopelessness and how some things will never change and about ten years later we have a strong black candidate for President running and winning with a campaign based on hope and change.
There's no doubt that a lot of people identified with the sentiment expressed in this song... I just offer it up as a small testament to the meaning of Obama's campaign and the importance of his ability to inspire. Tupac resonated with a lot of people, for whatever reasons, and rap music's constant negativity and defeatism-- expressed in a million different songs from 2Pac to 50, who says he's not voting Obama because he thinks he'll be killed (talk about defeatism)-- has influenced a lot of younger black people. I think listening to this voice from about ten years ago from today's perspective lends insight to just how Obama's candidacy and potential presidency can inspire people and change people's entire mindsets and view of what is possible.
Phoniness, hypocrisy & affinity for gangsterism, destruction and ignorance
The (1995 Phone Conversation w/ Monster Kody Sanyika Shakur) "makes him even MORE of a phony to me. As it's always been said by cats he grew up with-- people he was in jail with and other inmates. Dude was a peaceful dude who wanted unity. But INSTEAD used his 'platform' to divide brothers like nothing had Before in music history. He wanted to use it for unity but when it came time to do it he destroyed and divided."
"When he said he started up in the movement and then got involved in the gang shit. A lot of wasted talent. It's like a streetball legend who never does anything with his talent. At the end of the day, talk is cheap. Instead of uniting he did a lot of dividing."
"How would you feel about a preacher who was preaching one thing from the pulpit, but out fuckin around and smoking weed? ... You have this lower standard for Tupac that you wouldn't have for anyone else."
"This conversation PROVES that he knew better but chose to destroy. All Eyes on me sold the most copies he ever sold and be followed that with an equally violent and divisive Makaveli. He became a superstar from that, there is no denying that. The numbers show it. Praising dude for what he planned to do is like praising Harriet Tubman for talking about starting the railroad but while she was alive she snitched on slave revolts."
"Cat was there after he played Bishop. Pac was a smart cat who wanted to embrace the streets: Thug Life. Shit happens all the time. Smart cats in the city and the burbs fall into the trap. Some get shot and survive. Some end up dead. Some catch cases -- whether guilty or not... Pac had every opportunity to be like Will Smith but being 'street' was too important. No excuses for a cat who starts to wild out AFTER turning 18."
Sold out
"He KNEW (his being shot) wasn't (because of) Biggie or Puffy who shot him, not had anything to do with it, yet for some reason in magazines and on wax he spoke on it like it was the other way around. He started an east coast vs west coast war, got himself and Biggie killed. Biggie was an innocent in all of this. A plot to sell fucking records.""Pac was a smart dude and extremely fucked up too. He 'could' have lead a positive movement one day. But the reality is that he lead a negative one (even after he knew better). I think the biggest problem is that he was surrounded by death. When Suge Knight got him out of jail, he pretty much did a deal with the devil. He had a lot of potential man. I think that's the bigger story...in that his (idols) had to be guys like Monster Kody. And that's not to say anything is inherently wrong with Monster Kody... but Pac probably needed a strong father and a stable environment that could have kept him out of the game in the first place...
I respect Pac for his knowledge,etc as such an early age. I love his music and some of his music is some of the most powerful every created. You can make the connection between him and a young Malcolm X before he made the leap to positivity. However, in a practical/realistic matter Pac was extremely destructive. Maybe he could have eventually gone in the right direction and maybe he did have a bigger view... but he certainly cooked up negativity and violence in public."
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Why are you getting so upset with all the name calling buddy? I cared enough about the subject to let you know that 28 seconds is all you needed to describe that thug. Hitler, Bin Laden, Mao Zedong all influence people around the world. I guess in your eyes they're role models as well. Tupac live by the lyrics in his songs and it caught up with him.
