A Thugz Mansion In Heaven’s Ghetto: Tupac Shakur—10 Years Gone

While it is fun to speculate as to whether or not he is really dead, today—September 13, 2006—marks the 10th anniversary of Tupac Amaru Shakur’s death.

Although for practically that entire decade I could have cared less about Tupac—believing his music said nothing to me about my life (to borrow from Morrissey)—I recently came to realize that his lyrics reflect a poetic truth about the human condition. In his music, conflicting emotions, values and beliefs collide in a fusion of rage, bravado, and compassion, yet flow out in terms that not only the mind understands, but the heart embraces. He was blessed with a distinctive voice, a prolific pen, an uncanny ear for rhythmic wiles, a perspicuous lyrical style that seamlessly blurred the line between reality and fiction, and profound insight into the interplay between his own desires, fears, joys, pain, anxieties, strife, triumphs, and failures, as well as those he could see in his community and society in general. Plus, the beatz is bangin’.

Despite his thug persona, Tupac’s oeuvre evinces an irrepressible artist’s sensitivity as much as it does a ruffian’s weary worldview, allowing others to understand his ambitionz az a ridah. We picture you rollin’, ‘Pac.

See also "If I Die 2Nite" (1996) — 2Pac.

If I Die 2Nite (1996) – 2Pac (Tupac Amaru Shakur)

In Sonic Lager’s estimation, while Eminem is rap’s wittiest artist, the late(?) 2Pac stands as its most heartfelt. His flow captivates with its clipped staccato, percussive plosives, swaggering inflection, invigorating alliteration, and metric variation whereby he pushes lines to the limits of their respective measures, sometimes extending them across bars. Likewise, his lyrical content conveys fanciful imagery while loosely observing, and taking liberties with, the rules of rhyme. “If I Die 2Nite” uncannily foretells Tupac’s fate, given that he died(?) at age 25 after being fatally wounded in a car-to-car shooting in Las Vegas. His lyrical preoccupation with premature death became a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one that, at times, he seemed almost willing to see come into fruition. While his slaying only intensified his legendary status, as his choice albums Me Against The World and All Eyez On Me exemplify, his contributions to the rap world had already secured his immortality.

Not available from iTunes Music Store.

See also A Thugz Mansion In Heaven's Ghetto.

Storm The Legion (2001) - !!! (chk chk chk)

It’s not often that a groove-oriented song is anti-drug. Set to a Gang of Four-esque neo-disco beat, throbbing bass, percussive guitars, and occasional horns, “Storm The Legion” finds a recreational drug user taking an honest look at a vacuous and self-destructive past, confronting the reasons for getting high and the consequences of chemical dependency: the enlightenment justification; the effects on his friends who have crossed the line from use into abuse, who glorify the past because they have no future; questioning whether the joke wasn’t on him, given the brain damage he sustained.

Vocalist Nic Offer understands the allure of it all, but also recognizes the aftermath. In its nervous agitation, “Storm The Legion” seeks to assail the mindset of the multitude that stumble through the fog machine haze, although they may be too zonked to mind the affront.

Listen to "Storm The Legion" and purchase from iTunes Music Store.