Tupac Shakur

Shakur was born Lesane Parish Crooks in East Harlem, a month after his mother Afeni was acquitted in the Panther 21 conspiracy trial while eight months pregnant with him — she renamed him for Tupac Amaru II, the Incan leader executed for rebelling against Spain. His mother's addiction and the instability that came with it pushed the family from New York to Baltimore in 1984. There he enrolled at the Baltimore School for the Arts, studying acting, poetry and ballet, and befriended a classmate named Jada Pinkett. In 1988 the family moved again, to Marin City, California, where Shakur left high school without graduating, later earning a GED, and started rapping under the name MC New York.

Digital Underground took him on as a roadie and dancer in 1990 and put him on record the following January as 2Pac. His solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now, in 1991, made him a voice against police violence and poverty, sharp enough that Vice President Dan Quayle blamed the record for a trooper's shooting. Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. and Me Against the World followed, the second recorded in prison and still debuting at number one, a first for a male rapper. All Eyez on Me, released in February 1996 on Death Row Records, was rap's first double album and carried two number-one singles, California Love and How Do U Want It. He also acted, in Juice, Poetic Justice and Above the Rim, building a film career alongside the music.

The violence in the records was not only material. In November 1994 he was shot five times at Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan and robbed of 40,000 dollars in jewelry, then convicted weeks later of sexually abusing a fan in his hotel room, a charge he denied to the end while his co-defendants took plea deals. He served eight months at Clinton Correctional before Suge Knight posted his 1.4-million-dollar bail and signed him to Death Row, and Shakur spent his last year publicly feuding with the East Coast rappers and executives he blamed for the Quad shooting. On September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas, an unidentified gunman shot him four times from a passing car.

He died six days later, on September 13, 1996, of internal bleeding, and was cremated the next day. Members of his group the Outlawz later said they mixed his ashes with marijuana and smoked them. Death Row released five more albums built from unfinished recordings within a decade, keeping him on the charts longer dead than most rappers manage alive. The murder went unsolved for 27 years, until Duane "Keffe D" Davis, who had described his own role in interviews and a memoir, was indicted for it in September 2023 and pleaded not guilty, with a trial still pending as of 2026. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Shakur in 2017, his first year of eligibility.

Tupac Shakur's life against the full span of the corpus.

• 2Pacalypse Now album
  His solo debut 1991
• Juice film
  His breakout film role 1992
• Me Against the World album
  Recorded and released while he was incarcerated 1995
• All Eyez on Me album
  Rap's first double album 1996
• The Rose That Grew from Concrete book
  Poems written between 1989 and 1991, published posthumously 1999

• June 16, 1971 aged 0 Born in East Harlem, New York City
• 1984 aged ~13 Family relocates to Baltimore
• 1986 aged ~15 Enrolls at the Baltimore School for the Arts
• 1988 aged ~17 Family moves to Marin City, California
• 1991 aged ~20 Releases his solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now
• November 30, 1994 aged 23 Shot five times at Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan
• October 1995 aged 24 Released on bail and signs to Death Row Records
• September 7, 1996 aged 25 Shot four times in a drive-by in Las Vegas
• September 13, 1996 aged 25 Dies in Las Vegas

• Angela Davis b. 1944
  Political activist and academic whose scholarship on race, class, and prisons became globally influential. his mother's movement, family friend
• Maya Angelou 1928–2014
  Poet and memoirist whose I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings broke new ground in autobiographical writing. co-star and mentor on Poetic Justice
• Malcolm X 1925–1965
  Civil-rights leader whose critique of racism and advocacy of Black dignity reshaped American political thought. posthumous ideological influence
• Jesse Jackson 1941–2026
  Civil rights leader whose 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns expanded Black political participation. civil-rights contemporary who spoke on his death