Tupac in Baltimore: Pen Lucy, Library Rap and “Tupac Shakur Way”

Place: Baltimore, Maryland, especially the north of the city (Pen Lucy, Greenmount Avenue) Time: 1984 to summer 1988 Commemoration: Stretch of street “Tupac Shakur Way” since May 8, 2026

When Tupac Shakur arrived in Baltimore, he was 13; when the family left, 17. In the four years in between, the teenager turned into a rapper and actor. Outside of California and New York, hardly any place shaped Tupac as strongly as this city. Afeni Shakur moved here from New York with him and Sekyiwa at the time. The Amsterdam News cites 1986 as the year of the move; most biographies and the biography on this site, by contrast, speak of 1984.

A Ground-Floor Apartment in Pen Lucy

The family moved into a ground-floor apartment in a row house on Greenmount Avenue in the Pen Lucy neighborhood in the north of the city. Pen Lucy is a residential neighborhood of brick row houses. The exact house number does not matter; for the story, the street is enough.

This period was not easy: the excerpt from Jeff Pearlman’s biography in Rolling Stone bears the title “Everything in Our Lives Was Traumatic.” That was precisely why school was so important.

From Middle School to the School for the Arts

Tupac’s schooling began with a delay: according to Pearlman, he entered eighth grade at Roland Park Middle School several months after the start of the school year. This was followed by his first year of high school at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, and then the transfer to the Baltimore School for the Arts.

At the 2026 ceremony, Mayor Brandon Scott cited three milestones from those years: his first lyrics written in Mullan Park, the victory in the library rap contest, and his first concert at the Cherry Hill Recreation Center.

Rhymes for the Library: The November 1985 Contest

The best-known Baltimore event is the Enoch Pratt Free Library rap contest in November 1985. Youths under 18 were eligible to enter; the lyrics had to be about the library, submitted in writing beforehand, and free of profanity. Tupac competed with his friend Dana Smith, the beatboxer everyone called “Mouse”; as the East-Side Crew, they reached the finals at the branch on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Sources report the outcome of the performance differently: Baltimore Heritage calls it a win, while according to Pearlman it was second place; the available sources cannot decide this. What is certain: Tupac’s handwritten lyrics are preserved in the library’s archive. When he died in 1996, then-library chief Carla Hayden had the sheet placed in the vault. Tupac later formed the group Born Busy with friends, making his first recordings with them.

Departure for Marin City in August 1988

In the summer of 1988, the family left the city for Marin City. Friendships from the Baltimore years endured, especially the one with Jada Pinkett.

Greenmount Avenue Becomes “Tupac Shakur Way”: May 2026

On May 8, 2026, Mayor Brandon Scott’s Office of Arts and Culture officially dedicated a section of Greenmount Avenue as “Tupac Shakur Way.” The ceremony ran from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., open to the public, featuring rap and spoken word, the unveiling of the street sign and peace pole, and an appearance by the Orioles mascot. CBS cites the 3900 block, other reports the 4000 block; in any case, the sign stands where the family lived.

Sekyiwa Shakur, the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, and the city want to turn the location into a place of safety. That evening at Camden Yards, the Baltimore Orioles gave away 20,000 Tupac bobbleheads; details are in the report of May 8, 2026. How streets were named for Tupac is contextualized on the Monuments page, as is its counterpart in Oakland.

What Remains in Baltimore (as of October 2026)

The street sign and the peace pole stand openly and publicly accessible on Greenmount Avenue. The house itself is a private home, not a museum. The Enoch Pratt Free Library preserves the handwritten “Library Rap” in its archive, a record of those years when Tupac grew into an artist in Baltimore.