@KwaziThabethe
In my own
lifetime, I’ve seen Rap/Hip-Hop culture produce numerous icons that have
impacted the world in various ways via the far reaching power of American media
and the raw emotion & power of their
lyrics. There’s Snoop Dogg, the rapper that even your grandparents would
recognize. There’s Eminem, Hip-Hop Culture’s favourite white boy. There’s Diddy,
the mogul whose financial success is the carrot at the end of the stick for any
ambitious entrepreneur. There’s Jay-Z, the greatest rapper ever (don’t dare
disagree with me on that). There’s Kanye West, probably the most immodest music
icon I’ve ever observed (and with much to be immodest about). And now there’s
Drake, the rapper-cum-singer who’s become the poster-boy for the mix-tape generation.
Those are just a few of the afore
mentioned “icons” and they’ve all attained theirs status using different approaches
but in my own opinion, there’s one icon whose legacy overshadows them all for reasons that go
beyond music or entertainment; Tupac Shakur!
Tupac stands out
not just because of the quality of his music, but also because of what he
symbolized to the constituency and class of people that are inundated with
Hip-Hop culture. Over the years, the image of rap has evolved into an industry
that seduces the minds of young (and mostly black) people by selling them an
opulent lifestyle that is beyond their means instead of addressing the
socio-economic conditions and challenges rap fans face every day of their
lives. Now I’m not saying that Tupac was above flaunting his wealth in lyrics
or music videos, but he certainly didn’t do it with the crassness and degree of
buffoonery that we often see from other rap artists. And when delve deeper into
his legacy, you’ll find that the Tupac songs that have stood the test of time
are the songs where the activist side of him is speaking rather than the
superstar side. But like I said, it’s not just his music that sets him apart;
it’s his whole life and family history. There’s an education that one attains
from just dissecting his adult life, his upbringing, his name, or his family
tree (One talk-show host remarked that “his family portrait could well be a
poster for America’s Most Wanted).
That education you get from examining Tupac the man helps you understand why
he’s such a champion of the collective struggle that millions of his fans face every
day around the world.
The first and most
obvious example of Tupac’s consciousness is in his name, “Tupac Amaru Shakur”. His
name is significant because almost every prominent figure in Hip-Hop culture
has a “squeaky clean” sounding legal name that they’d rather forget (Think
“Todd Smith”, “Jeffery Atkins”, “William
Leonard Roberts II” etc) and at some point that name is abandoned for some
other slick or tough sounding moniker that’s meant to garner street-cred or
inspire awe. In Tupac’s case, his real name was his stage name. Not only that,
his name aroused curiosity because it didn’t follow the black American trend of
having an English first name from your parents and English last name that some
racist slave-master had imposed on your ancestors. When you follow up on your curiousity about the
origin of Tupac’s name, you learn that he is named after a Peruvian
revolutionary that led an indigenous uprising against the war-mongering Spanish
empire. “Tupac Amaru” (the Peruvian) was a chief of one of the great tribes in
the Inca state of Peru. His anti-Imperialist stance led to him being executed
by the Spanish as part of their imperialist escapades. Tupac’s mother, Afeni
Shakur, was an educated and politically conscious black woman and thus decided
to give her son a name that paid homage to a figure whose story serves as an
inspiration to many of his fans around the world who are subjected to any sort of
domination by a foreign power. I’m almost certain that had it not been for my
own fascination with Tupac’s life story, the story of the heroic Inca tribes of
South America would’ve been lost to me because we are usually only exposed to
the kind of history that glorifies and romanticizes the imperialists and
colonists. This goes back to the point I made earlier about Tupac symbolizing
more than just rap music.
The attainment of
knowledge that comes from examining Tupac’s life is furthered when you learn
about his ties tied to the now defunct Black Panther Party. When you think of
the black struggle in America, the first iconic image that pops into almost
everyone’s mind is Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech or a Malcolm X
poster because the impact that those 2 men had and the fact that they died as
martyrs. But sometimes all the adulation they receive creates a situation where
the contributions of other significant figures are overlooked by those that
write the history books. If you look
into Tupac’s family, you learn that his mother was once a high-ranking member
of the Black Panther Party which played an important role in raising political
awareness amongst blacks during the 1960’s and 1970’s. For me personally, it
was this exposure to the Black Panthers that inadvertently educated me about
the black America’s fallen warriors like Huey Newton and Fred Hampton. It was
also through reading up on the Black Panther Party that I learned about Tupac’s
legendary step-father, Mutulu Shakur, and his Godfather, Geronimo Pratt, who
was also a renowned and respected figure in Black Panther circles. As someone
who considers himself to be a small-time activist, I have to say that it was a
privilege to stumble upon the legacies of these idols. If I wasn’t a fan of
Tupac, I might have not even have heard of them.
After moving past
his symbolic name and remarkable family history, there’s the knowledge that’s
to be found in listening to the words of the man himself… With every Tupac documentary that I’ve seen,
I got the sense that I was observing a young man blessed with wisdom and
an understanding of the world that was far beyond his years. One example of
this was in the documentary Tupac
Resurrection… In the middle of addressing black America’s poverty cycle, he said “You
have to remember that this country had a man named J Edgar Hoover, whose job it
was to destroy the credibility of any black man coming up”. He didn’t elaborate
further but the bluntness of that statement made me do some research on this “J
Edgar Hoover” character and I came across some disheartening realizations about how the American government spitefully
sabotaged the efforts of black public figures to uplift the social and economic
conditions of their people. Hoover was the Chief Director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) for over 40 years and throughout that period, with the full
backing of the suits in Washington, he harassed influential black men like Marcus
Garvey, Malcolm X, Bob Marley, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Fred
Hampton. Hoover’s FBI planted divisive
moles in every major black organization, including The Nation of Islam, The
Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panthers, and these moles created an
atmosphere of hate that led to the downfall of many black figures. Of course
none of this was brought to light when a movie about J Edgar hoover was
released in 2011 and I probably would’ve
known very little about Hoover and the FBI’s war on black America had it not
been for that one unapologetic statement from Tupac.
As a music artist,
Tupac has some timeless classics that are dear to the hearts of many people because
he’s championing their cause or raising awareness about their predicaments.
When you listen to “Brenda’s got a baby”, you see that Tupac is painting you a
picture that demonstrates how the ills of the ghetto manifest themselves and
how those ills lead to the sufferings of innocent people. In the song ”Keep Ya
Head Up” he pays a glowing tribute to virtuous women that are subjected to
poverty, abuse and crime whilst also calling for men to clean up their acts
with regards to how they treat women. Tupac’s sense of duty to his community
was visible in the way he’d sometimes step outside the unspoken understanding
within Hip Hop culture that women are to be treated as objects and not as
equals who deserve to have their story told and their plight addressed. And then there was also “Thugz Mansion”…. My
God what a hauntingly deep track! The imagery he uses to describe his idea of
heaven is enough to put you in a trance. That song also illustrates how Tupac
(along with many of his fans) longs for a sense of belonging somewhere because
they feel trapped and enslaved by the society that surrounds them. Thugs
Mansion is Tupac’s interpretation of the Utopia that his fans long for. Aside
from the above mentioned selections, there are many more Tupac songs that go
beyond entertaining you as a listener but also educate you about the racism,
violence, and hardships faced by so many who are the victims of the social,
political, and economic order that’s
found not only in America, but the world at large.
There’s a whole
lot more that I could say about what Tupac stood for and the empowerment he
brought to the lives of those of us who have been lucky enough to be touched by
his legacy but even with the little that I’ve touched on thus far, I can’t help
but feel that the man’s potential was bigger than rap. I think that although
being a music artist provided him with a platform to reach the masses of people
that need leaders like him impacting their lives and maybe even saving them
from a path of waywardness, his untimely death at the tender age 25 robbed the
world of the greater man that he surely would have matured into as he grew older
and even wiser. Quincy Jones touched on
this same point when he remarked: ”If we had lost Oprah Winfrey at 25, we
would’ve lost a relatively unknown, TV anchorwoman. If we had lost Malcolm X at
25, we would have lost a street-hustler named Detroit Red. And if I had died at
25, we would have lost a trumpet player and aspiring composer- just a sliver of
my eventual life potential”. Sadly, we don’t know what Tupac would’ve evolved
into but I have a feeling that if he were alive today, he’d somehow be further
educating and empowering millions of lost souls through social work, politics,
entertainment, or all 3. His
contribution to the world is surely too important for history to remember him
as just a rapper. For me, he’s a fallen soldier in the struggle for social
justice and may his memory always be celebrated as nothing less than that!
