Unpacking Tupac's complicated legacy, on what would have been his 50th birthday

Jeffrey Ogbar was in his junior year at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga., when he first met Lesane Parish Crooks.

At the time, students had organized a 25th anniversary event commemorating the assassination of civil rights icon Malcolm X.

"I got a chance to meet some people who did speak, including this young man who represented the New African People's Organization," said Ogbar, now a professor of history and director of the University of Connecticut's Center for the Study of Popular Music.

Crooks would become better known around the world in 1991 under the name Tupac Shakur, with his debut and now-legendary album 2Pacalypse Now.

According to Ogbar, it was clear even at that event that Shakur's social consciousness and his family's Black Panther Party heritage weren't just "inflections here and there in his music, but it was, in fact, part of his activism."

Over the course of the next six years — until his death on Sept. 13, 1996 — Shakur's career skyrocketed, elevating the young man born in East Harlem, N.Y., to stratospheric levels of stardom. This week marked what would have been his 50th birthday.

Despite legal troubles with authority, accusations of promoting misogyny and violence through his lyrics, as well as a conviction for sexual abuse that landed the young artist in prison for eight months, Ogbar and others say Shakur was a beacon whose voice advocated for social equality and the rights of Black Americans, and rallied against police brutality and the drug trade.

Not a gangster rapper, but a human being

While the term is often used to denote a specific brand of hip hop, people like writer and civil and human rights activist Kevin Powell bristle when Shakur is described as a gangster rapper.

"I think that those of us who are hip-hop heads, folks who are committed to the culture of hip hop and the preservation of its history, understand that the term 'gangster rap' is something that was created by the mainstream media here in America," said Powell, in an interview with Day 6.

"Mostly white folks started labelling it 'gangster rap.'"

In addition to writing extensively about hip hop, and rap more specifically, Powell also published three cover stories for Vibe and one cover story for Rolling Stone on Shakur himself.

"As people of colour who have created pretty much every major music form in America … we understand that a lot of time, people outside of our culture, our communities, will put terminologies on things to try to reduce people to labels."

That's what Powell says he believes has happened in part with Shakur's image.

"He's a human being," Powell said. "There were many things to him, and he deserves to be put in the same category as Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, as John Lennon, in terms of his global impact."

Tupac Shakur's contradictions

Despite the praise, it can be difficult to square the misogyny and violence present in tracks like Hit 'Em Up and Against All Odds with the Tupac behind thoughtful, socially-conscious, almost feminist songs like Dear Mama, Brenda's Got a Baby and Keep Ya Head Up.

Ogbar adds that tracks like Changes — in which Shakur makes reverent reference to Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton — adds to the contradictions of Tupac's ideology. 

Shakur's contradictions, Powell says, can be explained by to the evolving nature of hip hop over the course of Tupac's career. 

As trends began to shift, Powell said Shakur pivoted away from positive and affirming political music toward commercially profitable, but more controversial tracks.

"He needed to make money," Powell said. "A lot of it had to do with the fact that most of us in America, in spite of what people may see on TV or in ads or in the movies, are struggling. Tupac Shakur was no different."

Powell also doesn't shy away from the contradictions inherent in Shakur's eight months in prison following a conviction for sexually abusing a fan.

"He said, 'I did not sexually assault or rape that young woman in the hotel room,'" according to Powell, referencing an interview he did with Shakur for Vibe. "But what he said in [my] interview, what I always remember is, 'I'm guilty of not stopping my male friends from doing anything to that young lady.'"

"Even in the midst of all of that, [Tupac] still took ownership."

Shakur was released on bail pending an appeal which was never resolved before his death.

What defines Tupac

Ogbar says he often thinks about how Tupac might relate to modern political and social movements, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the #SayHerName movement to raise awareness for Black women who are victims of anti-Black violence. 

For an answer, Ogbar points to the fact that "more than any other name in all of Tupac's discography," the rapper mentioned the name of Latasha Harlins — a 15-year-old Black girl who was killed by a store owner in 1991. 

"He said her name in I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto, he said her name in, Keep Ya Head Up, said her name in Something to Die For, said her name in, Thug's Mansion, in White Man's World and Hellraiser."

To Ogbar, Powell, and others around the world who still listen to Shakur's music, it's that commitment to activism, as well as his charisma, fearlessness, vulnerability and contradictions, that define the young man once known as Lesane Parish Crooks.

Written and produced by Sameer Chhabra.

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