Happy April! It is April 1st! While many of you will be pranking all day today, HypeFresh wants to start the month of April with National Poetry Month. Today, we celebrate Tupac Shakur, one of the most influential bad a**es of all time. Tupac was a poster child of the 90s, rocking a bald head and a nose ring. He was an actor, screenwriter, poet, artist, rapper and model.
In turn, he was a villain, rebel and gangster—one of the 90s most notable hot-heads. Like many influential poets, Tupac’s struggle was a portal to Fine Arts. He was the kind of artist that fans will hold on to forever, his music living on forever. He is one of the first artists to combine philosophy and gangster rap.
Who is Tupac?
Tupac Amaru Shakur ws a native of East Harlem, New York. The artist was born at the end of the civil rights movement in 1971 to Afeni Shakur, a devout member of the Black Panther Party. According to IMDB, the future rap sensation moved to Baltimore with his family at 13, in hopes of a better way of life in 1984. Four years later, the family moved to Oakland, California where the star in Tupac was born.
California Love
The world came to know Shakur in 1991, debuting “2Pacalypse Now” an embodiment of work that would promote cop killing and street violence. In 1992, he launched his breakout role as an actor in the movie Juice, following a co-star role alongside Janet Jackson in the movie Poetic Justice in 1993.
After recording a very controversial track, “Hit Em Up” on June 4, 1996, a track where Shakur verbally assaults and sexualizes B.I.G’s wife, Faith Evans, causes a fury. On September 13th, 1996, Tupac Shakur was assassinated. His untimely death became one of the most infamous unsolved murders in hip-hop.
Making History After Death
According to The Daily Egyptian, Shakur’s impact is so great that Harvard University now offers courses using Tupac’s lyrics. The Ivy League school created the course, “Modern Protest Literature: From Thomas Paine to Tupac”. The program includes oral forms of literature that are expressive of history’s protests.
Passing the torch to Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar, who followed Shakur’s footsteps as a rap poet. According to Entertainment Weekly, Kendrick visited a high school in New Jersey, using his album, To Pimp a Butterfly, helping students learn about poetry in English class.
Tupac is still making an impact decades later. His legacy is greatly appreciated.
So this is all you know about Tupac; “promoting cop killin” & “hit em up”
You really need reeducation.