I am gonna admit that I’ve always been a fan of 2Pac ever since I was a kid that grew up listening to his music. Unlike some black folks back then, I never bought into the white media’s falsified negative portrayals of him as a “gangster/thug” because I knew that 2Pac was more than the white media’s falsified negative depictions of him.To me, of course every black person including myself have contradictions including 2Pac himself. He wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t need to be because when I looked at a guy like a 2Pac, I saw a very intellectual guy who was ahead of his time, don’t believe me, check out his interviews on YouTube. He was raised by his mother Afeni who was a former member of The Black Panther Party.
In fact, 2Pac said real things about issues that negatively affected our community back then and even today from horizontal violence to police brutality. He even warned us in a prison interview he did back in September 1995 of the day that hip-hop would be dumbed down by corporate sponsored and created gimmick rappers that forced and shoved down the throats of our youth today when he said:
What I want people to know is that don'tHere are my top 5 favorite 2Pac songs.
Don't support the phonies but support the real
You know what I mean, How can these people be talking
About how they so real that they don't care about our communities
How can they be talking about what they all this the hood blah blah...
They don't care about our communities, you know what I mean
Listen to the words people say in their lyrics
And tell me if that's some real shit
If that's real to you, you know what I mean
Listen to what they're saying
Don't just bob your head to the beat, peep the game
And listen to what I'm saying and hold us accountable for it.
1. Changes - This track is my personal favorite 2Pac track for several reasons: 1) he made references to the drug counterinsurgency against black people codenamed “War On Drugs” 2) The nasty, negative treatment that the black community receives from the police on a daily basis while this type of treatment is never seen in white communities. 3) The systemically imposed cycle of poverty, homelessness, & horizontal violence. 4) He also talks about the difficulties of life growing up and living in the hood. My favorite lyric from this song is “I’d love to back to when we played as kids, but things change, that’s the way it is.”. This one lyric makes me often reminisce about the memories of my childhood both good and bad.
2. Keep Ya Head Up - This classically timeless 2Pac track is one of my personal favorite 2Pac tracks because in this song, he encourages the brothers to uplift and protect the sisters, not tearing or putting them down let alone hurt them. 2Pac did this song as a personal tribute to Latasha Harlins who was a 14 year old black girl who was cowardly killed by a petty Asian merchant in South Central Los Angeles in 1991. This incident along with the Rodney King beating were the main incidents that led to the heroic rebellion in LA by the black working class in late April-early May 1992.
3. Brenda’s Got A Baby - This song talks about an issue that’s very rampant in black communities across the country today: teen pregnancy. As much as I deeply love my mother, she was a young teen herself several decades ago who was sexually irresponsible with her body that had given birth to her first three sons before she had reached the age of 20, so I know my mom can relate to this song because she was a teen mom back in her day. The inspiration behind 2Pac doing this song stems from reading an newspaper article about a real life 12 year old black girl who got pregnant shockingly by her own cousin and because she didn’t want her family to find out about the baby, she threw the baby in the trash.
4. Dear Mama - I absolutely fell in love with this song when I first heard it on the radio back then because this song 2pac did was not only a personal tribute to his mother Afeni, but to all working class black mothers who work hard and do everything they can to not only provide their kids food, clothes, and a roof over their head, but also shower them with love, protection, and guidance.
5. Trapped - In 1991, 2Pac had been a roadie for a famous hip-hop group known as “Digital Underground” and now had his sights set on making a name for himself in the world of hip-hop by releasing his first music video from his debut album “2Pacalypse Now”. In the video/song “Trapped”, he talks about a real issue that affects our community every single day and that’s police brutality and he also was the victim of police brutality at the hands of the vicious and murderous gang known as The Oakland Police Department during a jaywalking incident after he cursed at them for demeaning his name and prolonging the issuing of a ticket sustained around the time that the video for “Trapped” had debuted. He also talks about the constant harassment and intimidation that black people get from the police on a daily basis. This video along with the album generated significant controversy after a white nationalist police officer was killed by a young black male in an traditional 600+ year act of black resistance after being influenced by this song and the album’s message of resisting colonial terrorism at the hands of the police.
The Conclusion - I don’t care about what anybody else thinks about 2Pac, but for me, personally he will always be my favorite rapper because he was not only just a rapper, but he was also an actor, poet, and an intellectual in his own right. If he was still alive, he would lyrically destroy these gimmick rappers today that are poisoning the airwaves with their corporate backed garbage.
By Kwame Shakir
