Yes Virginia, There Is No 2Pac

That’s right he is not what you thought he was. He was not the “gansta” you thought he was. The one quote I remember about him is “Genius has a tendency of hypocrisy”. Well lets examine his duality.

Tupac Shakur was before anything, an intellect. A man in his younger years desired the spotlight. How a thug came from his life is truly understandable, yet thought-provoking.
How a very tenuous upbringing inspired hate and anger, where his present was only a psychological manifestation of just frustrated based anger and self-loathing.

Here is man who with his desire for the spotlight he was in his younger life was found at high schools that would be considers the city’s version of a “Fame” school. He was well-learned. How else to you explain his selection of books he read: Art of War, Catcher in the Rye, and of course The Prince. The latter title fueled his moniker of Makaveli. He was very interested in the author Machiavelli.


But lets remember here is a man who in his early years were laced with a Black Panther dissolution by the government through drugs and incarceration. That is enough to make any man get angry. He spoke out many times against what he considered inequality of black people. So find the best caricature to use as a platform to express anger…2Pac.

That’s right not Tupac…2Pac. That way he can snap off in his best Black Panther persona. So here you have a man, an angry man, with a strong understanding of what he saw around him. That is enough to make any young man, especially a young black man who can’t have the luxury of “white entitlement” explode! Or did he?

Did he explode or did he implode? The fact that his persona mixed with urban anger and learned background gives credence to his implosion. So let’s look at the complexity of him.

First he constantly said in his lyrics he is not a thug, he paraded around as one especially after he was first shot. Next he always spoke out for what he considered those of us who had god given talent, but were hindered by man given road blocks. He was seeking an understanding of how it could get better for others while always angry at how it could not get better for him.

Tupac was a man who had enough of being told one thing while experiencing another.
That is not a rapper/thug, that is a leader without the ability to lead…he knew not where to go. That is not a man who we saw, but a man who wanted the world he envisioned for us to see.

I always wonder…what if he had lost the bandana, and replaced it with a suit and a briefcase? Where would he be…where would the black youth of America be?
Could he have saw the utopia he wanted for himself and the world and lead us there?

Or would the world have consumed him just like Michael Jackson?