Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on June 16, 1971 in Brooklyn, New York. His birth name was originally Lesane Parish Crooks, but it was changed when he was still a young child. The name Tupac Amaru comes from an indigenous Inca tribe and means “shining serpent” and his surname, Shakur, means “grateful to God”. Tupac’s mother is Afeni Shakur, also known as Alice Fayne Walker, and her father was William “Billy” Garland. He has a half sister named Sekyiwa Shakur and a half brother named Maurice Harding. Maurice is the Mopreme of Thug Life. Although Tupac’s real father was never present, his stepfather Jeral Wayne Williams, also known as Mutulu Shakur, was.

Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, and her stepfather were part of a New York chapter of the Black Panther Party. Afeni and twenty comrades were arrested in 1970 for conspiring to start a race war. Pregnant with Tupac at the time, she was released on bail and told Lumumba Abdul Shakur, her then-husband, that this was not her son. Afeni had been performing with a guy named Legs (a small-time associate of Harlem drug magnate Nicky Barnes) and William “Billy” Garland (Party member). Lumumba immediately divorced Afeni. She later

Afeni’s bail was revoked and she was found incarcerated in the Women’s Detention House in Greenwich Village. While incarcerated, she would rub her stomach and say: This is my Prince, and he is going to save the black nation. “Little did she know, the impact her son would have on her short life. When Tupac was born, Afeni was acquired by 156 positions and found a steady job as a paralegal, her goal was to educate her son to respect the value of education.

Since he was a child, people referred to Tupac as the “Black Prince”. When he misbehaved, he had to read an entire edition of The New York Times. When Tupac was two years old, his sister Sekyiwa was born. A few months before his birth, Mutulu, his father, was sentenced to 60 years for a fatal robbery in an armored vehicle. With Mutulu in prison, the family went through difficult times. No matter where they went, Tupac was distraught, and as time passed, the subject of his father plagued him. As loneliness began to wear him down, he began to write poetry and love songs. Tupac decided he wanted to be an actor. He was good at it and was eager to leave his scruffy family behind. Afeni enrolled Tupac in the 127th street Ensemble, where he landed his first role as Travis in “A Raisin in the Sun”.

In her teens, her mother moved the family to Baltimore, Maryland. It was there, at the age of fifteen, that he fell into the world of rap music. He began writing rap lyrics and walking “limping” and using his New York experience for all that was worth it. He called himself “MC New York” and made himself sound tough. Tupac enrolled in the Baltimore School of Performing Arts, where he studied acting and ballet. Tupac made an eternal impression on his teachers and they all believed he had great promise in the arts.

By the age of twenty, Tupac had been arrested eight times and convicted once of sexual abuse and served eight months in prison. Tupac was the subject of two wrongful death cases. One, including a six-year-old boy, who was killed when caught in a crossfire between Shakur’s gang and a rival group. In the late ’80s, Tupac hooked up with Humpty-Hump (Eddie Humphrey, Gregory “Shock-G” Jacobs) and a few other Oakland rappers to create Digital Underground. In 1990, they released their debut album “Sex Packets”, featuring the classic songs “Humpty Dance” and “Doowutchyalike”. In 1991, Digital Underground released “Sons of the P” and in 1992 they released “The Body-Hat Syndrome.”

Tupac left Digital Underground and made his first solo debut album “2Pacalypse Now”. The same year he starred in the low-budget film “Juice.” In 1993, he released his album “Strictly 4 My NIGGAZ”. The album had Tupac climbing the charts. The same year, Tupac acted alongside Janet Jackson in the movie “Poetic Justice,” where he played a single father and Jackson’s love interest. In November 1994, Tupac was shot five times while being mugged, which the criminals took with jewelry worth $ 40,000. Tupac recovered from his injuries and went on to make his two best albums, “Me Against the World” (released in 1995 and sold two million copies) and the two-disc album “All Eyez on Me” (released in 1996 and sold nearly three million copies.)

On September 13, 1996, after watching Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon fights in Las Vegas with the president of death row, Marion “Suge” Knight, Tupac was shot in his car and died. His death was a sham and we have lost a great artist and entertainer. However, Tupac expected him to die before the age of thirty. After his death, Tupac’s label released the album “The Don Killuminati” under the alias “Makaveli”. in 1997, they released “RU Still Down? (Remember Me)”; in 1999 “Still I Rise” and “Greatest Hits”; in 2001, “Until the End of Time” and “Better Dayz” in 2002. In 2003, the movie “Tupac: Resolution” was released along with a soundtrack. Death Row is said to have several unreleased recordings in the vaults for future releases.