Put Ya lighters up ya'll.....it's been 10 years since the end....what are your thought on his impact now

He's probably dust by now.

He's "easily" ( thinking about another thread) one of the best to put pen to pad. He was one of the most charismatic MCs in the history of the genre. His death was a great loss and a great waste of talent. He remains an enigma to this day. He is still revered and exploited to this day.

May he rest in peace.
[Edited 9/13/06 14:58pm]

The guy was a bum.

2freaky4church1 said:

Thanks..I was afraid all the thug lovers would flame me for saying that...THANKS !!!

tupac is my all time favorite rapper. he was bigger than life and he was a great mc and also a talented lyricist too even though some of his stuff werent complex or innovative. it was straight from the heart and how he saw things. i have listened to his cds all day along and i am going to watch the BET special about him too. I cant believed that it been 10 years and i never forget when I heard the first time he got shot hearing it on a late night radio station after me and my siblings got back from a small party and watched that sucked and too short mike tyson fight.

long live tupac shakur.
1971-96

I miss Pac very much. The thug persona was never what I saw, I just saw a person who had undeniably one of the best flows. His words spoke to the sadness and hopelessness of the ghetto and I still mourn him.

For people who choose to label him a thug or speak negatively about him, we could sit here all day and point out negative things about anyone, including ourselves. There is most likely something about all of us that we wouldn't want posted on a messageboard. Tupac is gone, been gone for ten years and folks still ain't got over it.

Peace to his soul.

Charismatic.
Talented.
Deluded.

He believed all the nonsense of "thug life" and what it meant to be a "gangsta".

He made it easier for non-entities like 50 Cent to enter the game and be rewarded for having no talent and a bad attitude.

He transcended the hip-hop genre and became the focus of whatever he was in, whether it was a video, a song, or a movie, but he believed too hard in the fiction that to be black in America, one had to be "real" and "hard". Whatever that means...

A shame to see him die the way he did, but unfortunately, it's the result of the people he chose to associate with.

Praise Tupac. Fuq the "thug life".

Alasseon said:

enuff said

prettymansson said:

I can't co-sign that. He was an extremely talented writer. His problem was his inability to distinguish his imagery from his reality, and it was his imagery that caught up with him. He could be insightful and uplifting, but he could also be petty, misogynistic, and volatile.

This is why you get "Brenda's Got A Baby" and "Keep Ya Head Up" on one hand, and "Hit'Em Up" on the other. This is why you get "Young Black Male" on one hand, and then that "Thug Life" ish on the other.

He could have been the West Coast's answer to KRS-ONE, a street poet and philospher. In some ways he was. But he chose the Thug Life path and it derailed his career and took his life.

Rest in

Dear Pac....
on September 7th 1996 death finally came around the corner like u said it would
ya know we all laughed it off cause it wasn't the 1st time and wouldn't be the last....
so we lit up the candles and the herb while we sat around the hospitals televisions and radios...
never losin hope cause u said keep ya head up 4 brighter days after darkness
but we didn't see u scream fuck the world with your middle finger like b4
it just kept rainin with no thunder.... no lightnin...and it got even darker...
6 days later when they announced that u weren't comin back the world kept turnin
yea another young black male bites the dust...another dead rapper...1 less nigga
but in every ghetto, every streetcorner, every kid who didn't have a voice...
a brother was gone a soldier died in combat another star was missin from the sky
and 2day we still feel it as if it was yesterday cause in every1n of us will always be u....
[Edited 9/13/06 16:35pm]

diamondpearl1 said:

1. 2pac was a rebel.

2. I rank him #2 as the G.O.A.T. (right behind Rakim, the man 2pac wanted to be like!)

3. If 2pac was alive for just 10 more years, he would have destory the careers of Biggie, Nas, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent (in THAT order, IMO).

4. See this thread: http://www.prince.org/msg/8/201466
[Edited 9/13/06 16:33pm]

EDIT
[Edited 9/13/06 16:34pm]

When I think of 2Pac, I think of raw emotion and pain, cuz the brother had lots of BOTH!!!!! he is sorely missed in Hip-Hop. We wouldn't have had to listen to Eminem talk bad about his Mama & his Wife, cuz 2Pac woulda shut that s**t DOWN!!!!! My favorite CD of his is "Me Against The World". RIP PAC!!!!! WE MISS U!!

Alasseon said:

And f*** Suge Knight for bring 2pac to the dark side of the force.

woogiebear said:

2pac would have defeated Slim in a diss war. And then show him a better way in dealing with family (Read: Changes).

TonyVanDam said:

Notwithstanding the fact that only 'Pac would start one, since a) he would blast any given rapper on any given day, and b) Em would never try to step to "Pac because he'd say goodbye to his career . . .

I think Em would do better in a rhyme fight than you think. It wouldn't be an easy out for 'Pac because Em's style is so dense.

2Pac was a great rapper. I don't blame him for the whole "gangsta" persona that is so popular in rap. I blame guys like NWA, Ice Cube, and others. Until you truly research Tupac, you can't really judge the guy. He was more than just "Thug Life"

I just finished watching Tupac Resurection on VH-1, a film produced by his mother and the feelings have come rushing back...

I remember when Tupac died. I was a senior in highschool. I was working part time as a server at a banquet hall. I remember feeling so hurt that someone so influential and talented could put himself in harms way like this. It reminded me of my father's death and how young he was when he passed and how he could have meant so much more to me in life than in death. I was so angry. It rained that day (Sep. 13th, 1996). It rained cats and dogs. I stood on the back loading dock (at the banquet hall) and looked up to the clouds in complete and utter sorrow, not just for Tupac but for all of the young black men whose blood had been shed on the concrete of urban jungles. I could think of at least a dozen men under 30 who had been murdered. My heart ached for every one of them.

2freaky4church1 said:

Your an idiot.


Tupac was a brillant man.

10 years flies by so fast. This is a CNN.com report from 10 years ago today.

Rapper hit in drive-by shooting last week
September 13, 1996
Web posted at: 10:45 p.m. EDT

LAS VEGAS (CNN) -- Tupac Shakur, the rapper whose raw lyrics seemed a blueprint of his own violent life, died Friday from wounds suffered in a drive-by shooting. He was 25.

Shakur, his mother at his bedside, was pronounced dead at 7:03 p.m. EDT at the University Medical Center in Las Vegas, according to hospital spokeswoman Nancy Collins.

Collins said doctors determined Shakur died from respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest. The rapper had been in a medical-induced coma after having his right lung removed earlier this week.

Shakur was hit by four bullets September 7 as he rode near the Las Vegas Strip in a car driven by the head of Death Row Records, Marion "Suge" Knight, who was slightly wounded. It was the second time in less than two years that the rapper was gunned down.

The Las Vegas attackers got away, and no arrests have been made.

Controversial career:
Known simply as 2Pac, with "Thug Life" tattooed across his stomach, Shakur embodied the extremes of pop culture. Fans loved him, buying millions of his records, while politicians and others denounced both him and his lyrics for glorifying violence and drugs and degrading women.

He was born Tupac Amaru Shakur in 1971 in New York City. His mother, Afeni Shakur, is a former Black Panther activist and the inspiration for the touching song "Dear Mama" on his Grammy-nominated album "Me Against The World."

As a member of the Grammy-nominated group Digital Underground, he appeared in 1991 on the track "Same Song" from "This is an EP Release" and on the album "Sons Of The P."


That same year, Shakur achieved individual recognition with the album "2Pacalypse Now," which spawned the successful singles "Trapped" and "Brenda's Got A Baby."

The album, with references to police officers being killed, drew notoriety when a slain police officer's family claimed Shakur's music drove the killer to action. By that time, Shakur had made his first film appearance in Earnest Dickerson's "Juice."


In the 1992 John Singleton film, "Poetic Justice," Shakur co- starred opposite pop singer Janet Jackson. But Shakur seemed to spend as much time in courtrooms and jail cells than he did on movie sets.

A 1993 confrontation with two off-duty Atlanta police officers led to charges that were later dropped.

In 1994, he was sentenced to 15 days in jail for assault and battery on a music video producer.


Then, in November 1994, he was shot five times and robbed of $40,000 worth of jewelry in the lobby of a New York recording studio.

In 1995, Shakur was found guilty of sexually assaulting a female fan in a New York hotel room. He served eight months before winning release pending his appeal. In 1996, a judge ordered him to serve 120 days in jail for probation violations. An appeal was pending, and he had recently completed filming a role as a detective for the Orion picture "Gang Related."

'Soldiers are out there'
When the rapper appeared at the MTV Video Awards three days before the Las Vegas shooting, he explained why he stayed in touch with members of his "posse" by two-way radio.


"Well today, every young black man needs to be physically inclined and military-minded," he said. "And this (two-way radio) is part of the military mind. The soldiers are out there.

"I'm not the same guy that would come to the awards, have a problem with somebody and whup their ass in front of everybody," Shakur continued. "So now I got the radio. I see a problem, we quelch it. It's out. No big fires, just small, tiny little sparks that can be put out."

"That shows my growth," he said. "That shows our brain power. That shows the organization and not just Tupac, but Death Row as a whole."

Still there was trouble.

Police were called into the awards show to break up a confrontation between Shakur's entourage and six other men.

The night he was hit by four bullets, Shakur and his entourage had been involved in a fight outside their Las Vegas hotel.

Yet Shakur was not just the fury, expletives and anger of songs like "F--- the World." He could be poignant ("It was hell hugging on my mama from a jail cell") and both sympathetic and critical of young black men trying to become "gangstas."

He even admitted to being tired of the gangsta lifestyle.

"Thug Life to me is dead. If it's real, let somebody else represent it, because I'm tired of it," Shakur told Vibe magazine. "I represented it too much. I was Thug Life."

Still, there were forebodings of a violent ending.

When Shakur talked to Details magazine earlier this year, he said: "All good niggers, all the niggers who change the world, die in violence. They don't die in regular ways."

Correspondent Mark Scheerer, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBI.../13/tupac/

I remember the following Monday (Sep. 16th) my government teacher (who looked just like David Spade) brought a taped MTV piece to class which included Tupac's "I Aint Mad Atcha" video. Im guessing he brought it because he knew that we wouldnt be focused and we'd want to talk about Pac's death (afterall, we were a bunch of 17 year olds). We watched the whole thing and had an hour long discussion. Everyone was really sad that day, even more sad than the day Kurt Cobain committed suicide when we were freshmen. Those few days are so vivid in my mind. When I was a senior in highschool, Tupac and Biggie were murdered. Yeah, it was a rough year for hip hop.

"2pac rest in peace"


...

"Okay I wiiiiilll"

Loved Tupac-may he rest in peace .

I miss him.

Sorry for his passing...

Sorry that so many idolized him and further ruined all that was good about hip-hip culture.

Thugz Mansion"
(feat. Anthony Hamilton)

Shit, tired of gettin shot at
Tired of gettin chased by the police and arrested
N****z need a spot where WE can kick it
A spot where WE belong, that's just for us
N****z ain't gotta get all dressed up and be Hollywood
Y'knahmean? Where do go when we die?
Ain't no heaven for a thug N****
That's why we go to thug mansion
That's the only place where thugs get in free and you gotta be a G
... at thug mansion

[Verse One]
A place to spend my quiet nights, time to unwind
So much pressure in this life of mine, I cry at times
I once contemplated suicide, and woulda tried
But when I held that 9, all I could see was my momma's eyes
No one knows my struggle, they only see the troubleNot knowin it's hard to carry on when no one loves you
Picture me inside the misery of poverty
No man alive has ever witnessed struggles I survived
Prayin hard for better days, promise to hold onMe and my dawgs ain't have a choice but to roll on
We found a family spot to kick it
Where we can drink liquor and no one bickers over trick shit
A spot where we can smoke in peace, and even though we G's
We still visualize places, that we can roll in peace
And in my mind's eye I see this place, the players go in fast
I got a spot for us all, so we can ball, at thug's mansion

[Chorus: Anthony Hamilton]
Ain't no place I'd rather be
Chillin' with homies and family
Sky high, iced out paradise
In the skyyyyy..
Ain't no place I'd rather be
Only place that's right for me
Chromed out mansion in paradise
In the skyyyyy..

[Verse Two]
Will I survive all the fights and the darkness?
Trouble sparks, they tell me home is where the heart is, dear departed
I shed tattooed tears and couldn't sleep good
for multiple years, witness peers catch gunshots
Nobody cares, seen the politicians ban us
They'd rather see us locked in chains, please explain
why they can't stand us, is there a way for me to change?
Or am I just a victim of things I did to maintain?
I need a place to rest my head
with the little bit of homeboys that remains, cause all the rest dead
Is there a spot for us to roll, if you find it
I'll be right behind ya, show me and I'll go
How can I be peaceful? I'm comin from the bottom
Watch my daddy scream peace while the other man shot him
I need a house that's full of love when I need to escape
the deadly places slingin drugs, in thug's mansion

[Chorus w/ minor ad lib variations]

[Verse Three]
Dear momma don't cry, your baby boy's doin good
Tell the homies I'm in heaven and they ain't got hoods
Seen a show with Marvin Gaye last night, it had me shook
Drippin peppermint Schnapps, with Jackie Wilson, and Sam Cooke
Then some lady named Billie Holiday
Sang sittin there kickin it with Malcolm, 'til the day came
Little LaTasha sho' grown
Tell the lady in the liquorstore that she's forgiven, so come home
Maybe in time you'll understand only God can save us
When Miles Davis cuttin lose with the band
Just think of all the people that you knew in the past
that passed on, they in heaven, found peace at last
Picture a place that they exist, together
There has to be a place better than this, in heaven
So right before I sleep, dear God, what I'm askin
Remember this face, save me a place, in thug's mansion[Chorus - repeat 2X (w/ ad libs)]
[Edited 9/13/06 20:53pm]

sosgemini said:

Have you heard about The Church of 2pac?

RIP.

Tupac is an inspiration. No one knows the good he could have done if he wasn't taken.