Tupac Shakur And Black Nationalism

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Tupac Shakur is widely regarded as one of the greatest rappers to ever live. According to Biography.com, he was born on June 16,1971 in New York to Afeni Shakur, a member of the Black Panther Party. During his childhood and adolescence, Shakur moved from city to city finally making his home in California after his mother moved him away from crime ridden Baltimore. In 1990, Tupac’s hip-hop career got started when he got a gig as a backup dancer with Digital Underground. After this, he landed a deal with Interscope records, not too long after his debut album 2Pacalypse Now hit stores and his fame skyrocketed. He came out with hit after hit and his legacy was cemented. During his career, Tupac was portrayed as a “thug” or “gangster”, but to Tupac this was just an illustration of the misrepresentation of …show more content…

Tupac was a Black Nationalist and it was confirmed in some of his music and poems. Black nationalism is defined as the political belief and practice of African-Americans as a distinct people with a distinct historical personality who politically should develop structures to define, defend, and develop the interests of Blacks as people (Karenga,1980). This idea of Black Nationalism came in full force with Tupac’s poem “How Can We Be Free”. Shakur writes, “We must be blind as hell 2 think we live in equality while Nelson Mandela rots in a jail cell Where the shores of Howard Beach Are full of Afrikan Corpses (Shakur,2009).” Here, Tupac talks about how we can’t live in world of equality when political prisoners like Nelson Mandela are in jail, and the racist violence that happened at Howard Beach in 1986 which led to the death of a young black man. Many of the black youths who listen to his music and read his poetry probably didn’t know about these issues. However, his artistic influence raises awareness to people about the injustices going on in the world at that time towards black

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