In 1984 Afeni Shakur moved with her children from New York to Baltimore. Tupac was 13 at the time (14, according to other accounts). After Roland Park Middle School and a year at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, he transferred in tenth grade to the Baltimore School for the Arts, a public arts high school with an audition process. He studied acting and poetry, took jazz and ballet classes and read everything he could find, from Shakespeare to political writings. This is also where he started rapping seriously.
“MC New York”
Because he came from New York, he called himself “MC New York”, a name documented for his first recordings in California in 1989. At school, with his friend Dana “Mouse” Smith beatboxing, he won contests for the best rapper. With friends he formed the group Born Busy, and according to Baltimore Heritage he made his very first rap recordings with them. Two schoolmates who performed as DJ Plain Terror and Ace Rocker are named as members. Little more is known: nothing was officially released, and the other members’ names barely appear in later sources. What remains is the picture of a teenager trying out theatre, poetry and rap all at once.
A formative school
Tupac later described his time in Baltimore and at the arts school as formative: without those experiences, he said, he “would have been a totally different person.” He met classmates from very different backgrounds, and it was there that his friendship began with a drama student who later became known as Jada Pinkett. It is often said that Born Busy wrote lyrics for various rappers, “including today’s actress Jada Pinkett”; no evidence for this could be found. More about her on the Jada Pinkett page.
The end in Baltimore
In the summer of 1988 the family moved on to Marin City, California. Tupac had to leave the school, and that was the end of Born Busy. In California he started over with Ray Luv, the next stop was Strictly Dope.