Here's a hidden fact: you want to be like Tupac. Not like Mike. Not like Shaq. Like Tupac. Another hidden fact: Tupac was not like Kobe, who has defenders willing to kill for him and the press giving him the benefit of the doubt. Tupac when compared to any other "rock star" didn't do anything wrong, and in his own very unique way was everything any of us would want to be, we just don't understand it.
The image of Tupac was one you were taught to hate early, taught to fear, and yet these days hip-hop's influence has grown to where millions both black and white wear giant platinum crosses or other jewelry, flashy clothes, and joke like they're "playaz and gangstas, or by saying whazzaaaaap around the office. He was ahead of his time, influencing style and advocacy of socio-political equality and libertarian freedoms. He simply liked partying too, and we don't like our revolutionaries doing that, preferring Gandhi's fasting and vows of abstinence to essentially letting a "rock star" act like one. Most of us don't want to live a pious life, and if you were famous, you would like to express yourself freely without being judged a criminal for how you look, and thus never being truly free.
Besides, he wasn't talking to you, he simply invited you to listen. He was talking to his people, and advocating change and success in the ghetto, often a lost land in American culture discussed in terms of perpetual karma.
So, what's up with the "gangsta" stuff? Why would he soil his image like that and fail to sell much of the press and middle-America? Why didn't he tone it down so more people would listen? Two answers: he was representing what America had made in the ghetto, and saying hell with it, we're celebrating anyway (i.e. "Thug Life"); and he simply wanted to, as a vain handsome man who styled exactly the way he chose for various reasons, and whose fans loved him for it. In a free country, for the most part he lived a legally and morally sound life, only getting really angry towards the end of his five years in public life when his cries for change in the ghetto were largely ignored, his credibility was unfairly destroyed, and his justified fears about dying made him paranoid. He never attacked whites in anger like Ice Cube or Public Enemy did, and never sold drugs like 50 Cent did. He had balanced views of women the way Snoop Dogg never did, and he never had sex with minors like R. Kelly or Roman Polanski did. He had a reason to get famous and a responsibility to use it the way no rapper and few artists have ever had, including Eminem.
I had recently had a nice discussion with a young lady, in her mid-20s and white, who
re-confirmed her strong opinion that Tupac was nothing but a gangster, and that any message he may have had was ruined because of it, and, by logical extension, his immoral behavior. I then asked her how much information she had on him to form a "strong" opinion, and she said very little. I then asked her why she had a "strong" opinion about something she knew almost nothing about, and she didn't know. This was not meant to be insulting, but rather enlightening, showing how we have predisposed views to look at an image and form strong opinions that stereotype black males, and will quickly default to those in the absence of any real evidence. This young lady was not a racist, but she was sure trained to be, and conceded a white rock star would be easier to forgive knowing almost nothing about them. My own views were similarly realized in seeing the film, as I found the negative press footage I'd been sold had clouded my judgment.
You don't have to like Tupac or his music, but you have a responsibility not to hate him on principle or for racist reasons, recognizing and defeating your own prejudices to make a better world.
I dare you to find someone complaining about the same in a future documentary of say, Johnny Cash. Look at the bigger picture, because by making the struggle theirs as opposed to ours, you are illustrating the exact problem Tupac gave his life trying to solve. So go and listen to his response in Tupac: Resurrection, and you'll see that despite what you think, at heart you and Tupac aren't that much different, and he wanted exactly what you wanted, to be free…
The image of Tupac was one you were taught to hate early, taught to fear, and yet these days hip-hop's influence has grown to where millions both black and white wear giant platinum crosses or other jewelry, flashy clothes, and joke like they're "playaz and gangstas, or by saying whazzaaaaap around the office. He was ahead of his time, influencing style and advocacy of socio-political equality and libertarian freedoms. He simply liked partying too, and we don't like our revolutionaries doing that, preferring Gandhi's fasting and vows of abstinence to essentially letting a "rock star" act like one. Most of us don't want to live a pious life, and if you were famous, you would like to express yourself freely without being judged a criminal for how you look, and thus never being truly free.
Besides, he wasn't talking to you, he simply invited you to listen. He was talking to his people, and advocating change and success in the ghetto, often a lost land in American culture discussed in terms of perpetual karma.
So, what's up with the "gangsta" stuff? Why would he soil his image like that and fail to sell much of the press and middle-America? Why didn't he tone it down so more people would listen? Two answers: he was representing what America had made in the ghetto, and saying hell with it, we're celebrating anyway (i.e. "Thug Life"); and he simply wanted to, as a vain handsome man who styled exactly the way he chose for various reasons, and whose fans loved him for it. In a free country, for the most part he lived a legally and morally sound life, only getting really angry towards the end of his five years in public life when his cries for change in the ghetto were largely ignored, his credibility was unfairly destroyed, and his justified fears about dying made him paranoid. He never attacked whites in anger like Ice Cube or Public Enemy did, and never sold drugs like 50 Cent did. He had balanced views of women the way Snoop Dogg never did, and he never had sex with minors like R. Kelly or Roman Polanski did. He had a reason to get famous and a responsibility to use it the way no rapper and few artists have ever had, including Eminem.
I had recently had a nice discussion with a young lady, in her mid-20s and white, who
re-confirmed her strong opinion that Tupac was nothing but a gangster, and that any message he may have had was ruined because of it, and, by logical extension, his immoral behavior. I then asked her how much information she had on him to form a "strong" opinion, and she said very little. I then asked her why she had a "strong" opinion about something she knew almost nothing about, and she didn't know. This was not meant to be insulting, but rather enlightening, showing how we have predisposed views to look at an image and form strong opinions that stereotype black males, and will quickly default to those in the absence of any real evidence. This young lady was not a racist, but she was sure trained to be, and conceded a white rock star would be easier to forgive knowing almost nothing about them. My own views were similarly realized in seeing the film, as I found the negative press footage I'd been sold had clouded my judgment.
You don't have to like Tupac or his music, but you have a responsibility not to hate him on principle or for racist reasons, recognizing and defeating your own prejudices to make a better world.
I dare you to find someone complaining about the same in a future documentary of say, Johnny Cash. Look at the bigger picture, because by making the struggle theirs as opposed to ours, you are illustrating the exact problem Tupac gave his life trying to solve. So go and listen to his response in Tupac: Resurrection, and you'll see that despite what you think, at heart you and Tupac aren't that much different, and he wanted exactly what you wanted, to be free…
