Tupac Amaru
Shakur
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."
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