Tupac Shakur

He was born as Lesane Crooks in East Harlem, New York. Crooks was later renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur after Túpac Amaru II, a ruler in Peru. His family later moved to Marin City, California when Tupac was 17. Tupac went to the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he found it interesting to read Shakespeare's poems. He got very affected by the beauty of rhyming, choosing the word and expression. He studied poetry, acting, jazz, and ballet.

In 1990, Shakur joined with the Oakland, California-based alternative hip hop group Digital Underground. He appeared on two of the group's albums in 1991: This Is an EP Release and Sons of the P. Later that year he produced and released his first solo album, 2Pacalypse Now. The album protested problems such as racism, and made him much more popular.

His second album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., was released in 1993. It contained the hit singles "I Get Around" and "Keep Ya Head Up."

His third album, Me Against the World, was released in 1995. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. He was incarcerated (in prison) at the time.

His fourth album, All Eyez on Me (1996), was the last album released during his lifetime. All Eyez on Me included the Billboard Hot 100 number one singles "How Do U Want It?" and "California Love."

Shakur won the Soul Train Music Award for Best Rap Album in 1996 for ‘Me Against the World’. He received the American Music Award for the Favorite Rap/Hip Hop artist posthumously in 1997.

Several of Shakur's albums were released posthumously. It contained previously recorded material from when he was alive.

On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting by someone in a Cadillac car at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Las Vegas, Nevada.^[9] He died six days later at the Southern Nevada University Medical Center.^[10] His murder is still unsolved.^[11]

Shakur's friend and labelmate from Death Row Records, Marion "Suge" Knight, was in the car with Shakur. Knight survived the shooting.^[11]

In 1998, a prime suspect in Shakur’s murder, Orlando Anderson (aka Baby Lane) was killed in another drive-by shooting. Shakur once attacked Anderson. ^[source?]

In 2002, reporter Chuck Phillips wrote in the Los Angeles Times that another rapper called Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.) could have paid members of the Crips street gang to kill Shakur and that he could have given them the gun.^[11]

On September 29, 2023, Duane "Keefe D" Davis was named as a suspect and was arrested by the Las Vegas Police Department in connection with the murder of Shakur.^[12] Keefe D had previously admitted to killing Tupac on July 2, 2018 when he [thought that he was going to die soon, or] was dying from cancer.^[13] A trial against Davis is scheduled to start in June 2024.^[14]

There were four people in the car that was used by the suspects during the murder, according to the media. Three of the suspects are dead as of 2023.^[15]

There are murals of Shakur in North America (New York), South America (Brazil), Africa (Sierra Leone), and Europe (Bulgaria). There are also statues of him in Atlanta and Germany.

• ^A Did not chart on the Hot 100 or Hot R&B/Hip-Hop charts (Billboard rules at the time prevented album cuts from charting). Chart peak listed here represents Hot 100 Airplay and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay charts data.
• ¹ Double-A-Side in the U.S.

• 2Pac Legacy (official website)
• Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation for the Arts
• Tupac Legacy Tour Archived 2012-02-05 at the Wayback Machine
• pacside
• Tupac Nation Archived 2008-11-21 at the Wayback Machine