I stare at my computer for days after my editor asked me to write this piece with this title. It is blank, save the words at the top of the page. That is because I do not really know what to say, even as we stand at this 30th anniversary of the murder of Tupac Shakur.
He is, easily, the most discussed rapper in the half-century annals of hip-hop, a global poet who rivals in mass popularity, affection and extreme curiosity, since his terrible passing, the likes of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana and the fallen Kennedys. This has been no easy 30-year odyssey for me because I really did know Tupac. I spent significant time with him, talking, listening and writing about him, possibly more than any other journalist when he was alive, for Quincy Jones’ Vibe magazine and also for a sad Rolling Stone cover story when he was gone.
I’ve shed tears on many occasions throughout the years over Tupac’s demise. I’ve been hurt, confused, angry and, like his blood relatives and others dear to him, I have also had to carry the weight of seemingly never-ending trauma tied to ‘Pac’s life and death, including the very recent murder trial. This is not what I signed up for when I first saw Tupac, like truly saw him, in his debut film Juice in January of 1992.
I was mesmerized by his acting, his presence, his charisma, his ability to transform himself, before our eyes, into one of the most notorious villains in American cinema. That screenshot led me down a rabbit hole about Tupac, given his eminent surname—Shakur—which I had heard often in Black activist circles as a youth and college student leader.Little did I know the year 1992 would transform both my and Tupac’s lives forever. That motion picture made Tupac a ‘hood hero on his way to becoming a superstar.
A month after seeing Juice, I became a cast member on the very first season of MTV’s The Real World—the legit original reality show in American television history—and shortly thereafter I began work on the inaugural cover for Vibe, about the rap group Naughty By Nature. I had no clue as I sat in the Harlem cinema absorbing the theatrical swagger of Tupac that, a few months removed, he would be clocking me on MTV. Similar to how Juice became an unapologetic social marker with a cult-like following, so too did our episodes of The Real World, transforming television in the process.
Well over a year forward, I was on assignment in Atlanta at a huge music festival called “Jack the Rapper,” branded after the pioneering Black radio personality, to produce another cover story about another electric young hip-hopper, Snoop Dogg. It was there I first met Tupac in person. I was with my then Vibe co-worker Karla Radford when we saw a throng of folks surrounding ‘Pac.
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