BOOKS: Tupac Shamur – “Rebel for the Hell of It’

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Nov 4 1997 (IPS) - Asked a few weeks before his death what was his main failing, U.S. rap singer Tupac Shakur responded with his typical bluntness: “My big mouth.”

Shakur, who died on Sept. 13, 1996 – seven days after he was shot by unidentified gunmen – was a paradox to his audiences. He was both a tough-talking rap star and actor, and a wry, frequently sensitive black youth.

The revelation of music critic Armond White’s new book, ‘Rebel for the Hell of It’ (available from Thunder’s Mouth Press for 15 U.S. dollars), is that the latter aspect of the rapper known as “2pac” was so prominent. White notes that, even when Shakur was a boy growing up in Brooklyn, he stated his aspirations in no uncertain terms to the Rev Herbert Daughtry: “I want to be a revolutionary.”

The son of former Black Panther activist Afeni Shakur, Tupac was raised to respect the Panther’s black nationalism and community- based ethos. At the same time, White contends, Shakur was affected by his acute knowledge of just how isolated and fragile the existence of the small black middle class was. One high school friend recalls that Shakur, when acting for a school production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, was particularly fond of Shakespeare’s lines, “Oh, I have bought the mansion of love,/ But not possessed it, and though I am sold,/ Not yet enjoyed.”

Those words, needless to say, are a far cry from the ‘gangsta’ lyrics of much of 2pac’s ouvre, bearing such titles as ‘Me Against the World’, ‘2 of America’s Most Wanted’ and ‘Hit ‘Em Up’. But ‘Rebel for the Hell of It’ ties Shakur’s frequent feelings of isolation as a middle-class black youth, and his awareness of the neglect most African Americans face, to the mixture of anger and sensitivity that pervade his best work.

As Shakur told an interviewer after he had become perhaps the most popular rapper-actor of his generation, “There are no black people who are as rich as me.” He was upset to be living in the largely white community of Sherman Oaks, California, he said — but Shakur was also aware that, once rap music had made him richer than the vast majority of African Americans, he could no longer live peacefully in the black communities in which he was raised.

That dilemma, White implies, helped account for 2pac’s popularity as the most vulnerable of the gangsta rappers — the sort of person who would on the one hand have the words ‘THUG LIFE’ tattooed on his chest, but would muse in his hit ‘Keep Ya Head Up’, “I wonder…why we rape our women/ Do we hate our women?”

He was also the sort of rapper who, after a year in which he was convicted of sexual assault and survived a shooting, could come out with a sweet rap ballad, ‘Dear Mama’, that paid tribute to Afeni Shakur.

White, who compares Tupac’s lyrics to everything from other rap songs to works by country star Merle Haggard and pop singer Morrissey, devotes an entire chapter to analysing ‘Dear Mama’ — which mixes both a touching portrayal of growing up in the ghetto with such awkward lines as “Even though you was a crack fiend, Mama/ You always was a black queen, Mama.”

One of the strengths of White’s book is that he is refreshingly clear-eyed about Shakur’s actual artistic merits. During his brief career, 2pac inspired two basic reactions: hatred among (predominantly white) critics who disparaged him as violent and nihilistic; and often uncritical admiration among supporters who believed he depicted ghetto reality.

For all his importance, however, Shakur was often a mediocre rapper, White argues — and his charisma as an actor was barely explored, in such films as 1992’s ‘Poetic Justice’ and this year’s ‘Gridlock’d’, before his death. He was as capable of the silly cliches of rap, such as the thuggish numbers on much of his last album, ‘All Eyez on Me’, as he was of perceptive songs like ‘Keep Ya Head Up’.

In part, the portrait in White’s book shows a young, often confused, man in love with double identities. Even the name 2pac shows a fondness for duality, as does Shakur’s adoption of the pseudonym ‘Makaveli’ – reflecting his fondness for the cynical, political philosophies of Niccolo Machiavelli – for his ultimately posthumous album.

The strangest thing about Tupac Shakur, which emerges clearly from ‘Rebel for the Hell of It’, is that, regardless of his raps and movies, his most appealing work of art was his presentation of his own conflicted identity which, like those of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, already has started to loom larger after death.