In the Event of My Demise

There is no typeset print at the end of the book: In the Event of My Demise is the only poem in The Rose That Grew from Concrete printed solely as a facsimile of the handwriting, with no typed version beside it. The text concludes the volume and ranks among its best-known pieces.

Dying for a Principle

The text is short and phrased like a will. The speaker contemplates the moment his heart stops beating and hopes to die for a principle or a belief he lived for. The line “I Hope I Die For A Principle” is among the most famous in the book.

After that, it turns darker: the speaker senses the shadow and anticipates dying before his time, with so much left that he still wanted to achieve. He has resigned himself to this possibility and dried his last tear. The poem closes with a kind of balance sheet: he loved everyone who was positive.

After 1996: A Premonition in Retrospect

According to the preface by Afeni Shakur, the poems were written between 1989 and 1991; no more precise date is documented. Read after Tupac’s death in September 1996, at age 25, the text feels like a premonition. That remains a reading in retrospect. Yet thoughts of death are indeed among the constants in his work, right up to songs like If I Die 2Nite on Me Against the World (1995).

For the album The Rose That Grew from Concrete (2000), the Outlawz recorded the poem together with Geronimo Ji Jaga. He is better known as Geronimo Pratt, Tupac’s godfather and a former Black Panther member.

The editors placed the poem at the end of the book, as the author’s closing word. More on this in the introduction.