The U.S. Civil War ended 131 years ago, but New York is at war with California today.

At least, rap musicians are at war. New York rappers, led by Brooklyn’s Notorious B.I.G., and California rappers, most notably Los Angeles-based Tupac Shakur, recently have been duelling each other in their songs — and now, on the streets.

Several employees at both men’s record labels have died in mysterious fights in recent years. Now, in a grisly tribute to the power of words, the rappers themselves are in the line of fire — apparently for the taunts they have made in their songs.

Although much of this war has been conducted in the media and on nasty, even slanderous, songs, real bullets flew last week, when Shakur died Sep 13, six days after being hit by gunfire from a passing car in Las Vegas. Marion ‘Suge’ Knight, owner of Shakur’s record company Death Row, was also injured in the attack.

Shakur took four bullets to his head and chest on Sep 7, and remained in critical condition for a week, losing one lung before dying last Friday.

Immediately after the shooting, Lieut. Marc Matson of the Las Vegas police announced, “With all the folks in his group, there should be some good eyewitnesses.” But a few days later, the police noted with frustration that, although Shakur was shot in front of a ten-car entourage, no witnesses had stepped forth, and most denied having seen anything.

The apparent murder is the second time in two years that Shakur, also known as ‘2Pac,’ was shot. He was briefly confined to a wheelchair in 1994 when he was shot repeatedly in what police described as a robbery attempt in New York City.

Shakur claimed at the time that the shooting was part of an increasingly violent rivalry between him and the Notorious B.I.G., both of whom shot to fame with lurid tales of drug-dealing, violent ghetto life and easy women. Shakur added to his celebrity by starring in movies like Erenst Dickerson’s ‘Juice’ and John Singleton’s ‘Poetic Justice.’

In any case, the Las Vegas shooting has convinced many observers of the rap world that the competition between the two young rappers and their respective record labels — California’s Death Row, managed by Knight, and New York’s Bad Boy, managed by Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs — has become deadly.

The competition started innocuously enough, with the traditional bantering between Californians and New Yorkers over whose style is better.

New York could boast of being the birthplace of hip-hop music, and of its history of providing the world’s most famous rap stars. But California has bragged of being the more financially successful rap centre in recent years, as listeners flocked to its more laid-back music and spooky, violent narratives.

The 2Pac-B.I.G. rivalry also started out in a seemingly low key, as Shakur complained to the press that B.I.G. had become famous by copying Shakur’s own deep-toned, gruff vocalising.

Soon, the Death Row and Bad Boy camps were scuffling wherever they met — at award shows, record industry conferences, and concerts.

During that same time, Shakur’s own bad-boy reputation landed him in trouble as he was convicted of raping a young New York woman. It was, in fact, during his rape trial that Shakur was shot, and he spent several months in an upstate New York prison serving part of his minimum one-and-a-half year sentence for sexual abuse.

The rape charge, however, only seemed to add to Shakur’s image as a tough ‘gangsta’ — and his record sales went up. Boosted by his newfound popularity, Shakur stepped up his invective against B.I.G., boasting of winning the attraction of his nemesis’s wife, singer Faith Evans. 2Pac’s latest album, ‘All Eyez on Me,’ put that taunt in its crudest form.

A week before the shooting, Shakur and other Death Row employees scuffled once again with Bad Boy members at an awards ceremony hosted by the music channel MTV. Following the slight tussle, Shakur told MTV, “We’re businessmen … but we’ll bring it on (fight) like only Death Row can.”

Following his taunts, there was little surprise that, after Shakur and Knight left a boxing match in Las Vegas to ride to a nightclub in a ten-car convoy, an unidentified car drove next to Knight’s and opened fire on Shakur, who was sitting on the passenger’s side.

Whether anyone has learned the lessons of the Death Row-Bad Boy war is open to question. The Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York politician, said he hoped Shakur’s death would teach children that nothing is to be gained from violence and rivalry.

Yet in New York, there are few entirely sympathetic ears for 2Pac. One of the most common comments after his death was announced was simply, “He got what he deserved for acting tough.”

By IPS Correspondents
MANILA, Sep 9 1996 (IPS)

With each literary award he receives, Filipino writer Nick Joaquin is troubled by the same, constantly recurring thought: “This is hubris, this is hubris, you’ll end up kaput.”

That warning raced through Joaquin’s head again recently when his 60-year writing career was crowned with the bestowal of the 1996 Ramon Magsaysay award for journalism, literature and creative communications arts — Asia’s version of the Nobel prize.

Receiving it at a ceremony on Aug. 31, the 79-year-old writer quipped: “Well, I may end up kaput — but what the heck: at the moment I find myself on still another high. Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be! Whoever said that must have been a previous me.”

But just as Joaquin has churned out masterpieces after winning his past laurels — including National Artist of the Philippines — so will he after this latest one.

“I never stop writing,” the writer once said. “I am writing all the time. Even if I haven’t got a pencil or pen in my hands, I am writing.”

Poetry, plays, novels, short stories, historical and biographical essays and reportage have flowed from his pen. Joaquin says he will continue writing until he is “ready to be carried out feet first”.

Often called the most distinguished living Filipino writer in English, Joaquin was lauded by the Magsaysay Foundation “for exploring the mysteries of the Filipino body and soul in sixty inspired years as a writer”.

This he has done by being both journalist and creative writer, disciplines whose paths are not supposed to cross and are often said to be death of the other. But with his gift, Joaquin is able to make a creative brew out of journalism and literature.

In his teens Joaquin, who dropped out of high school and took on odd jobs to help his family, worked as a typesetter for a chain of publications and began writing poems and short stories. He lists his odd jobs as “stevedore, baker, karetela (horsecart) driver, road builder”.

His first poem was published in 1935, when he was 17. He later worked his way up from proofreader at a leading local magazine called the ‘Philippines Free Press’, to associate editor in two decades. Today he is editor-in-chief of ‘Philippine Graphic’ magazine and a columnist for newspapers.

Filipino students inevitably cross Nick Joaquin’s path in their literature courses, discovering nooks of the Filipino psyche in prose or poetry written in what is for many an alien tongue, but which is still a Filipino language — English.

Joaquin also wrote various short stories in a brand of journalism “as creative as any poem or novel” — ahead of the similar ‘New Journalism’ style used by American writers like Truman Capote.

He has written two novels. The last appeared in 1983. He has written little fiction since. Joaquin has been quoted as saying he was “through with fiction”.

Since then Joaquin has focused on writing biographies and true- life stories, pioneering in ‘oral history’ of the type found in ‘Quartet of the Tiger Moon: Scenes from a People Power Apocalypse’ on the 1986 Revolution that booted Ferdinand Marcos our of power, and ‘oral biography’ that chronicles the lives of prominent or interesting people.

It is “more fun” to be camera capturing people’s lives in print, he says. These works of journalism he signs as ‘Quijano de Manila’, a nom de plume he assumed in the fifties for his works of reportage.

Joaquin believes the Magsaysay award honours both his identities — Quijano de Manila as journalist and Nick Joaquin as litterateur.

“I say this because many think I am sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” he said at a lecture last week to laughter from the audience. “Some say that as creative writer I’m all right but that as journalist I’m strictly potboiler, others opine that it’s the newsman in me who’s the true writer because the supposed artist is a fake.”

But Joaquin now says he sees no feud between journalism and literature: “The two rivals are now more or less on even terms. If journalism has been upgraded to literature, literature is being reinvented as a species of reportage.”

While readers all around the globe are looking for information — “facts and not fancies” and information instead of imagination — and poetry and fiction are getting edged out in newspapers and magazines, Joaquin believes he has found a way to make his journalistic discipline improve his literary work.

Mused Joaquin: “In the decades I have been in journalism, those are the developments that I find most moving — because my own writing career has moved in the same direction: from fiction to reportage, and from reportage to non-fiction as literature.”

Joaquin has come under criticism for doing books commissioned by foundations and political figures, but maintains these are unappreciated and even less understood as works of literature.

“Actors say there are no small parts, there only small performers. So I say: there are no hack-writing jobs, there are only hack writers. If you look down on your material, if you despite it, then you’ll do a hack job,” he pointed out.

And because journalism has taught him to “respect” all assignments, he has no hang-ups about writing on topics as diverse as local movie stars to the history of prominent families to the story of the Philippine Women’s University, the first university for women in Asia put up by Asians.

Joaquin, who types on his 50s-vintage Remington, is also a scathing critic of modern-day flaws — be they writers in the local press “who cannot even get the gender of their pronouns right”, the dawning of a ‘new illiteracy’, or the danger that the flaws of printed press will drive disgusted readers into the embrace of electronic media.

“Television,” he spat out in a rare press conference recently, “is my sworn enemy.”

This elder of Philippine literary circles also says he has never had writer’s block — and that he has never written anything that is short of a masterpiece.

Moreover, writing and drinking beer are part of the same process for Joaquin. “When I have a bottle of beer beside my typewriter, the writing just flows,” he quipped. “And I never suffer from writer’s block. That’s why I don’t understand these ‘agony writers’ who cannot write a word unless it is completely quiet, no telephones ringing, no sound at all.”

“And nothing I have written is bad writing,” he declared. As long as the beer, preferably the Philippines’ own San Miguel brand, keeps flowing, so will the words from Joaquin’s pen.

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