"Young people very much identified with what he rapped about. "The kids adored Tupac, young and old," Hicks said. This week, fans continue to flood the phone lines, according to Hicks. WEJM-FM 106.3 fielded "tens of thousands" of calls, prompting the program director to extend an hourlong Sunday talk show, "The Zone," hosted by Cortney Hicks, into a two-hour phone-in session. Since Shakur's death on Friday, Chicago urban contemporary station WGCI-FM 107.5 has fielded some 8,000 calls from distraught fans demanding to know when the violence in the black community will end. "He represents a lot of the anger, frustrations and cynicism of this era." "Tupac was an icon for this era," says hip hop journalist Kevin Powell. Shakur's body is now ashes, and pundits are left to sift through the debris, trying to find meaning in a volatile 25-year life. It's about the fear of a young black male." He's a tragic figure," said Michael Eric Dyson, cultural critic and author of "Between God and Gangsta Rap." Nevertheless, Dyson said, mainstream America isn't likely to forgive Shakur his excesses: "It's about class. vice president with the lyrics from his anti-cop diatribes. He was a man who charmed flight attendants with his gentleness and enraged a U.S. Pepper this tradition with some very real African-American angst, and you've got an incendiary brew. Shakur, the dirt-poor son of a Black Panther, was the classic rock rebel, testosterone running amok, bragging "I Get Around," as he thrilled fans with his in-your-face bravado. They get away with that which we never can their danger is intoxicating.īut when the bad boy is black, all too often, those fantasies become fears. From James Dean to Clint Eastwood to Jim Morrison to Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix, we embrace our bad boys, projecting onto them all our fantasies. Perhaps he laughed because he knew this is a nation that loves its rebels-after all, we live in a country founded by a bunch of white guys thumbing their noses at Mother England. But in this rap world, they (are.) I cautioned him about that.
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"In most genres, actors aren't expected to be the same person offstage as they are on. His ego began to get a little out of whack.
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"As the years went by, he was more and more engaged in this other persona. The thug life philosophy "was a persona that he had to adopt gradually," Hicken said.
2PAC DEAR MAMA MEANING PROFESSIONAL
His first foray into professional rap was with Digital Underground, a loopy Oakland ensemble known for quirky hits like "The Humpty Dance," "Sex Packets" and "Same Old Song." It's a long way to go from rapping about the joys of dancing like "MC Hammer on crack" to extolling the virtues of Glock pistols. Even then, he chafed at authority, spending some time on academic probation before he warmed to theater discipline, said Donald Hicken, Shakur's drama teacher. Shakur rapped about the cold, cruel world of thugs, but who was he, really?Īt the Baltimore School of the Arts, where he attended his sophomore and junior years, Shakur was a class clown whose charisma impressed teachers from the start.