Tupac Amaru

Born: June 16, 1971

Physical Departure: September 13,1996

Tupac Amaru was named after an Inca Chief, it's meaning is shining serpent. Tupac

Amaru Shakur grew up around many influential leaders of the Black Panther Party.

His mother, born Alice Faye Williams, who later changed her name to Afeni Shakur,

was a section leader in the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party spurn from

a movement to re-open the New York Public Schools, feed school kids breakfast and

gain equal civil rights for African Americans.

Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, one month prior to his birth, a pregnant Afeni had

just defended herself in court and been acquitted of 156 counts charged against her

and other members of the Black Panther Party-called the Panther 21. Living in the

Bronx, she found steady work as a paralegal and raised her son to respect the value

of obtaining knowledge.

From childhood, everyone called him the "Black Prince." For misbehaving, he had to

read an entire edition of The New York Times. When he was two, his sister, Sekyiwa,

was born. Her father, Mutulu, was a Black Panther who, a few months before her birth,

had been sentenced to sixty years for a fatal armored car robbery and had to leave

the family.

Mutulu went away, the family experienced hard times. No matter where they movedthe

Bronx, Harlem, with family-Tupac was distressed. "I remember crying all the time.

My major thing growing up was I couldn't fit in. Because I was grew up everywhere. I

didn't have any buddies that I grew up with."

As time passed, the issue of his father tormented him. He felt "unmanly," he said.

Then his cousins started saying he had an effeminate face. "I don't know. I just didn't

feel hard."

The loneliness began to wear on him. He retreated into writing love songs and poetry.

"I remember I had a book like a diary. And in that book I said I was going to be

famous." He wanted to be an actor. Acting was an escape from the reality of life. He

was good at it, eager to leave his tough times behind. "The reason why I could get into

acting was because it takes nothing to get out of who I am and go into somebody

else."

His mother enrolled him in the 127th Street Ensemble, a theater group in the Harlem

section of Manhattan, where he landed his first role at age twelve, that of Travis in A

Raisin in the Sun. "I lay on a couch and played sleep for the first scene. Then I woke

up and I was the only person onstage. I can remember thinking, "This is the best shit

in the world!" That got me real high. I was learning a secret: This is what my cousins

can't do."

In Baltimore, at age fifteen, he fell into rap; he started writing lyrics, walking with a

swagger, and milking his background in New York for all it was worth. People in small

towns feared the Big Apple's reputation; he called himself MC New York and made

people think he was a tough guy.

He enrolled in the illustrious Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied acting

and ballet with white kids and finally felt "in touch" with himself. "Them white kids had

things we never seen," he said. "That was the first time I saw there was white people

who you could get along with. Before that, I just believed what everyone else said:

They were devils. But I loved it. I loved going to school. It taught me a lot. I was

starting to feel like I really wanted to be an artist."

In the late eighties, Shakur teamed up with Humpty-Hump (a.k.a. Eddie Humphrey,

a.k.a. Gregory "Shock-G" Jacobs) and other Oakland-based rappers to create Digital

Underground, a band intent on massive bass beats and frenetic, Parliament-

Funkadelic-style rhythms. In 1990, the group released its debut and best album, Sex

Packets, a pulsating testament to the boogie power of hip-hop, featuring two classic

tracks, "Humpty Dance" and "Doowutchyalike." After an EP of re-mixes in 1991, D.U.

released Sons of the P and, the following year, The Body-Hat Syndrome, all on

Tommy Boy Records.

In 1992, Shakur