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The gospel according to Tupac

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My kids don’t believe that Tupac Shakur wasn’t always a thug.

They’ve been blindsided by his immortalization on T-shirts, documentaries, handbags and compilations. They see a one-sided Tupac, which mass commercialism has fed them over the past 15 years, but for many of us, we know there was a multifaceted genius beneath the tattoos and head rags.

In many ways, I grew up a child of Tupac.

I remember seeing him for the first time as a dancer for Digital Underground. He moved with finesse and applied his background as a dancer-actor-musician to the tightest choreography while backing Humpty Hump. We didn’t know it then, but Tupac was well on his way to taking the industry by storm.

From the first moment we heard his voice stream across the airwaves of BET in 1991, he was ours. Those initial songs, especially from the “2Pacalypse Now” album, were scriptures that taught us how to be young men.

Tupac used his debut album as an opportunity to offer the same guidance and wisdom he received as a child of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Tupac’s father, Billy Garland, was a well-known New York-based Panther alongside his mother, Afeni Mutulu Shakur. His stepfather, led the Black Liberation Army, working alongside his sister Assata.

So, it was no surprise that the revolution was threaded throughout “2Pacalypse Now.” His lessons on police brutality, teenage pregnancy, poverty, drugs and racism sounded like a manuscript for survival in urban Black areas.

When he spoke through “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” we listened. Having written the song for a 12-year-old girl who threw her baby in a trash can, Tupac gave us several messages to feed on while focusing on the issue of young Black girls having sex and getting pregnant.

He brilliantly called attention to a historical societal label of Black women as “welfare queens,” which became a repetitive oppressive term used against members of the Black community.

“Brenda” also shed light on the absence of fathers contributing to a cycle of broken families, resulting in children raised with an inherently unfitting relationship to older men. Sons would search for that male figure in the streets, while daughters fell into relationships with men based on lowered expectations.

There were many other soul-shaking epistles throughout Tupac’s five years of releasing albums that helped to guide us through the early 1990s. “Dear Mama,” “Keep Ya Head Up” and the posthumous “Changes,” were some of the greatest examples of un-thug material that saturated the minds of young Black boys and girls.

His music, especially on the debut album, fell in line with earlier releases by Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and KRS One. In many ways, Tupac was one of our first tangible socially conscious West Coast rappers.

While his records were saturating the airwaves, Tupac’s presence on the silver screen was complementary. His background in theatre was displayed in his earliest appearances on television shows like “A Different World.” He was a product of Harlem’s 127th St. Repertory Ensemble, where he played in Shakespeare dramas.

I remember seeing Poetic Justice for the first time in 1993, and I was blown away by his performance in the lead role. Tupac managed to tell the story of many young Black men raised in urban areas like South Central, while adding an unmatched depth and brilliance to his character. He displayed the same artistic approach in “Juice,” “Above the Rim,” “Bullet,” and “Gridlock’d.”

I connected the way Tupac mastered his craft as an actor with his unshakable vocal delivery on records. Tupac, for me, was a return to Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka and Gil Scott-Heron–a spokesperson for the streets. However, he taught other rappers how to write about their conditional realities without glorifying the “thug” lifestyle.

Thus, Sept. 13, 1996, saw more than the loss of another talented artist–one of our very own prophets was taken from us. That was the very first time that our generation lost a social revolutionist, a drum major for change, a bullhorn for the ghetto.

Tupac was our Malcolm X.

While I don’t expect my kids to easily rid themselves of their 21st-century ideal images of Tupac as a “shoot-em up” gangster, they will learn to respect his genius as much more than a thug.

James B. Golden is a Los Angeles-based music journalist. He has edited the Hip Hop Think Tank Journal. Golden is releasing his second book of poetry, Afro Clouds & Nappy Rain, in November. He may be reached at www.JamesBGolden.com.

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