Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on June 16, 1971 in Brooklyn, New York. His birth name was originally Lesane Parish Crooks, but it was changed when he was still a small child. The name Tupac Amaru comes from an indigenous Inca tribe and means “bright serpent” and his last name, Shakur, means “grateful to God.” Tupac’s mother is Afeni Shakur, also known as Alice Fayne Walker, and her father was William “Billy” Garland. He has a half sister named Sekyiwa Shakur and a half brother named Maurice Harding. Maurice is the Mopreme of Thug Life. Although Tupac’s real father was never around, his stepfather Jeral Wayne Williams, aka Mutulu Shakur, was.

Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, and stepfather were part of a New York chapter of the Black Panther Party. Afeni and twenty comrades were arrested in 1970 for conspiring to start a race war. Pregnant with Tupac at the time, she posted bail and told Lumumba Abdul Shakur, her then-husband, that this was not her child. Afeni had been dating a guy named Legs (a small-time associate of Harlem drug lord Nicky Barnes) and William “Billy” Garland (a Party member). Lumumba then immediately divorced Afeni. she later
Afeni’s bail was revoked and she found herself incarcerated at the Women’s Detention House in Greenwich Village. While in prison, she would rub her stomach and say, This is my Prince, and he is going to save the black nation.” Little did she know, the impact her son would have on her young life. By the time Tupac was born, Afeni was acquitted of 156 charges and found steady work as a paralegal, her goal being to raise her son while respecting the value of education.
Since he was a child, people have referred to Tupac as the “Black Prince.” When he misbehaved, he had to read a whole edition of The New York Times. When Tupac was two years old, his sister Sekyiwa was born. A few months before her birth, Mutulu, his father, was sentenced to 60 years for the fatal robbery of an armored vehicle. With Mutulu in prison, the family fell on hard times. No matter where they went, Tupac was distraught, and as time went by, the subject of his father plagued him. As loneliness began to wear on him, he began to write poetry and love songs. Tupac decided that he wanted to be an actor. He was good at it and was eager to leave his scruffy family behind. Afeni enrolled Tupac in the 127th Street ensemble, where he landed his first role as Travis in “A Raisin in the Sun.”

When he was a young teenager, his mother moved the family to Baltimore, Maryland. It was there, at the age of fifteen, that he fell into the world of rap music. He began writing rap lyrics and walking with a “limp” and using his New York experience for all it was worth. He called himself “MC New York” and made himself look tough. Tupac enrolled in the Baltimore School of Performing Arts, where he studied acting and ballet. Tupac made an everlasting impression on his teachers and everyone believed that he held great promise in the arts.

By the age of twenty, Tupac had been arrested eight times and convicted once for sexual assault and served eight months in prison. Tupac was the subject of two wrongful death cases. One that included a six-year-old boy, who was killed when he was caught in a crossfire between Shakur’s gang and a rival group. In the late ’80s, Tupac teamed up with Humpty-Hump (Eddie Humphrey, Gregory “Shock-G” Jacobs) and a few other Oakland rappers to create Digital Underground. In 1990, they released their debut album “Sex Packets”, featuring the classic songs “Humpty Dance” and “Doowutchyalike”. In 1991 Digital Underground released “Sons of the P” and in 1992 released “The Body-Hat Syndrome”.

Tupac left Digital Underground and made his first debut solo album “2Pacalypse Now”. The same year he starred in the low-budget movie “Juice.” In 1993, he released his album “Strictly 4 My NIGGAZ”. The album sent Tupac up the charts. The same year, Tupac starred opposite Janet Jackson in the film “Poetic Justice,” where he played a single father and Jackson’s love interest. In November 1994, Tupac was shot five times during a robbery, which the criminals stole with $40,000 worth of jewelry. Tupac recovered from his injuries and went on to make his two best albums, “Me Against the World” (released in 1995 and sold two million copies) and the two-disc album “All Eyez on Me” (released in 1996 and sold nearly three million copies.)

On September 13, 1996, after watching Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon fights in Las Vegas with the president of death row, Marion “Suge” Knight, Tupac was shot in his car and died. His death was a transvestite, and we have lost a great artist and entertainer. However, Tupac expected him to die before he was thirty. After his death, Tupac’s label released the album “The Don Killuminati” under the alias “Makaveli”. in 1997, they released “RU Still Down? (Remember Me)”; in 1999 “Still I Rise” and “Greatest Hits”; in 2001, “Until the End of Time” and “Better Dayz” in 2002. In 2003, the movie “Tupac: Resolution” was released along with a soundtrack. Death Row is said to have several previously unreleased recordings in the vaults for future releases.