2Pac’s vision redefined the word “thug” into a man who triumphs over systemic and societal obstacles. However, his reimagining of a word that the Oxford Dictionary defines as “a violent person, especially a criminal” into an positive attribute resonated. At the time, it seemed like an unnecessary variation on the “gangster” trope that dominated West Coast rap at the time. L.I.F.E., an acronym for The Hate U Gave Little Infants Fucks Everybody. He’s the man who single-handedly transformed a common epithet for a criminal into a source of masculine strength.Īfter recording two albums – the muddled 2Pacalypse Now and the slightly improved Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. While he didn’t realize the promise of that early breakout role, he managed a few more solid acting performances before his death, including an overheated reprisal of his Bishop template in the basketball drama Above the Rim, and a nice turn as a heroin-addicted jazz musician in the underrated indie flick Gridlock’d.Ģ. But Shakur, who studied acting while attending high school in Atlanta, commanded the screen with an effectiveness that no rapper-turned-moonlighting-actor had managed before, and few have done since.
#Changes album 2pac movie#
Months after Juice debuted in theaters in January of 1992, Ice-T would become a movie star in New Jack City.
#Changes album 2pac crack#
Yes, Ice Cube launched his acting career with his understated depiction of the Compton crack dealer Doughboy in Boyz N Tha Hood, which preceded Pac by a year. Shakur’s appearance in Juice as Bishop, the troubled high school teen who fashions himself into a cold-hearted killer, is the first great dramatic performance by a rapper in a movie.
Here are some of the ways 2Pac changed hip-hop – and, by extension, pop culture – forever.ġ. But no one can deny the way he transformed hip-hop into his singularly muscular, tattooed, bald-headed, bandana-clad image. His wayward, conflicting expressions of pride, militancy and gangster-ism resonates in a world when black men and women celebrate their heritage and collectively organize against a racist America, yet are also cautious to protect themselves from each other.įans – particularly East Coast rap listeners who, after all these years, still harbor a grudge against him – will continue to debate whether 2Pac’s albums can measure up to Nas’ Illmatic, the Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die, or Jay Z’s Reasonable Doubt. No other artist better illuminates hip-hop’s fault lines between regional pride and mainstream success, and the struggle to transcend and elevate beyond humble origins while honoring the streets that raised you.
#Changes album 2pac trial#
His life was a tapestry of often contradictory images: the concerned young father cradling his son in the video for “Keep Ya Head Up” the angry rapper spitting at cameras as they swirled around his 1994 trial for sexual assault the artist who animatedly, yet eloquently, pushed back at Ed Gordon’s questions during a memorable BET interview and the man who seemed to predict his own demise when the “I Ain’t Mad at Cha” video, released weeks after his death, depicted him as an angel in heaven.Īlthough he is no longer with us, the myth of 2Pac the thug angel remains. More than two decades after his death on September 13, 1996, Tupac Shakur endures as one of hip-hop’s most iconic figures and its most powerful enigma.
0 kommentar(er)
