Back in the Day: My Life and Times with Tupac Shakur

Back in the Day is not a book about Tupac the star but about Tupac the teenager. Darrin Keith Bastfield met him in the mid-1980s at the Baltimore School for the Arts, where both were students. Some fifteen years later he set down his memories of that friendship. The book is in English; there is no German translation.

The facts

What it’s about

Bastfield tells the story of two ambitious boys, each raised by a single parent, who bonded over rap. He describes school life in Baltimore, young Tupac’s occasional awkwardness, and the talent and charisma that already set him apart, qualities that also earned him envy and hostility from some classmates. The focus stays on their shared school years, before Tupac moved west with his family and became famous.

Verdict

This is a personal memoir, not a researched biography. Its value lies in covering a stretch of Tupac’s life for which there are few first-hand accounts. Kirkus Reviews summed it up briefly as “exclusively for fans”, quoting Bastfield’s own admission that a kind of veil hung over his subject as he tried to figure him out. The Library Journal review, by contrast, recommended it for all public libraries.

If you want to know what Tupac was like before 2Pacalypse Now, you will find honest, low-key scenes here. It is no substitute for a full biography. More titles: Books.