Sep 18, 1996480 words · 2 min
Music Wire obituary (1996): "Couldn't escape violence"
Five days after his death, Music Wire saw Tupac above all as a man of violence. An obituary with several errors, corrected here.
Original: “Tupac Shakur Couldn’t Escape Violence” · Music Boulevard (Music Wire) · Lynda Lane · September 18, 1996
Five days after Tupac’s death, Music Wire took stock under a headline that matched the tone of many obituaries that week: he could not escape violence. Lynda Lane recaps the shooting in Las Vegas and then pages through his career and his record: Digital Underground, the debut album, the films Juice, Poetic Justice and Above the Rim. Next she lists the 1993 incidents in Michigan and Atlanta, the sexual abuse trial in New York, the shooting at a Times Square studio, prison, marriage, a No. 1 album with Me Against the World, and the fresh start at Death Row.
In the final section she writes that Tupac was born in prison because his mother, a Black Panther, was locked up at the time. She quotes him from interviews as saying that trouble was all he knew and that he was not afraid to die. According to Reuters he was cremated over the weekend in a private ceremony, and a memorial was announced for September 19 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. The piece ends with a note about his last film with Tim Roth.
Born free, filed wrong
The outline is right; several details are not. Tupac was not born in prison: Afeni Shakur was jailed during her pregnancy in the Panther 21 case, was acquitted in May 1971, and Tupac was born on June 16, 1971, in East Harlem.
The music facts are off too. The debut album is called 2Pacalypse Now, came out in November 1991 (not 1992) and on Interscope, not Priority. Me Against the World (March 1995) was an Interscope record as well. His film with Tim Roth is called Gridlock’d and opened in January 1997.
The legal facts of 1993 and 1994
The cases are not accurately described either. The incident with another rapper at a Michigan State University concert happened in April 1993. Tupac wasn’t convicted until September 1994, of a misdemeanor: 30 days in jail, 20 of them suspended.
In Atlanta in October 1993, Tupac shot two off-duty police officers; the charges were later dropped. According to several witnesses, one of the officers had fired first.
On November 30, 1994, Tupac was shot five times and robbed in the lobby of Quad Studios. The next day the jury convicted him of sexual abuse and acquitted him of the other charges.
More than a man of violence
The story of a man who couldn’t escape violence shaped almost every obituary in 1996, The New York Times included. But it falls short: Tupac was just as much a politically minded artist, an actor and a poet. That side of his work only drew wider attention after his death.
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People in this text
Afeni Shakur: Panther, Mother, Keeper of the EstateSuge KnightDeath Row Records