Tupac Amaru Shakur was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 16, 1971. His mother, Afeni Shakur, was pregnant with Tupac while serving jail time for bombing charges. Early in his life, Tupac attended The Baltimore School for the Performing Arts. He was an astounding student and showed great potential. This is where he wrote his first rap song under the name MC New York. Unfortunately he was forced to quit when his family moved to Oakland, CA. In California, Tupac began hanging with the wrong crowd and started to sell drugs. He joined the Rap group Digital Underground as a roadie, dancer, and rapper. Not long after he did that, 2Pac released his own album, 2pacallypse Now. The single Brenda's Got a Baby and the motion picture Juice put Tupac in the spotlight.
Later, he released the album Strictly for my Niggaz which was even more successful, and the role he landed in Poetic Justice quickly made Tupac one of the most famous rapper/actors of the time. This talented young man would soon appear in many more movies and release a lot more albums.
In the prime of his career, while working on his role in the movie Above the Rim, and his album Me Against The World, he was charged with sexual assault by an acquaintance he met in a night club. Although claiming his innocence, he was found guilty. Tupac was released at bail totalling over $1 Million.
After his bail, he released his greatest album ever, All Eyez On Me. The double CD sold over 6 million copies and that number is still rising. His talent as a rapper/actor was still being admired, for he completed work in 2 more movies.
Tupac was an amazing man to have accomplished so much in his 25 years. In his life, he overcame many obstacles. He had been arrested, jailed, involved with gangs, and shot twice. He had tried to disengage himself from this lifestyle.
In the last radio interview Tupac gave, he says, "What I learned in jail is that I can't change. I can't live a different lifestyle...this is it. This is the life that they gave, and this is the life that I made. You know how they say, 'You made your bed, now lay in it?' I tried to move....can't move into some other bed. This is it. Not for the courts. Not for the parole board. Not for nobody. All I'm trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me. I'm just trying to make something good out of that. It's like if you try and plant something in the concrete...if it grows and the rose petals got all kinds of scratches and marks, you're not gonna say, 'Damn, look at all the scrathces on the rose that grew from concrete.' You're gonna say, 'Damn! A rose grew from concrete?' Well, that's the same with me...Folks should be sayin', 'Damn! He grew out of all that?'....that's what they should see."
Not long after, Tupac was shot 5 times, in September of '96....the rose that grew from the concrete has died....
June 16, 1971 - September 13, 1996
Copyright 1999
