Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Tupac Shakur - Ten Years Gone

Odd cult, that. Still is:
Tupac Shakur, born Lesane Parish Crooks in June 1971, was raised by Afeni Shakur, a radical Black Panther who represented herself in a murder case in the late 1960s and won. His mother renamed him Tupac Shakur after Tupac Amaru II, an Incan revolutionary.

...Besides his high-profile shooting, Shakur left his mark in music. He's listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling rap and hip-hop artist ever, selling more than 73 million albums worldwide. Most of Shakur's songs are about growing up around violence and hardship, ghetto life, racism and his public feuds with fellow rappers, including The Notorious B.I.G, who was murdered six months after Shakur in a similar drive-by shooting.

As a teenager, Shakur read Shakespeare and Machiavelli's The Prince. Many of the lyrics on his album "All Eyez on Me," which was released the year before his death, reference classic works.

"Now rule two is a hard one, watch for phonies," Shakur wrote. "Keep yo' enemies close ... Watch yo' homies."

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