by Mr. Lee, El Paso, Texas
There’s a book I own about Tupac Shakur that I ordered back in 2007. It was the first of its kind I’d ever seen. I first noticed the book at a Hastings Books Music & Video retail store that has since been closed for many years. The book was about ten inches in length and 11 inches wide. It’s a solid block of a book, about two inches thick and is a lot heavier than most books. Along the spine of the book is the title in bold print with each letter capitalized like this…TUPAC SHAKUR LEGACY. Pac’s name is in black, and the word “LEGACY” is in orange. On the cover of the book is a picture of Pac standing upright, possibly from the years he’d been working on a group album he spearheaded called THUG LIFE.
Pac started this group around 1992 and it consisted of Pac and members Stretch, Big Syke, Mopreme, Macadoshis, and a rapper by the name of The Rated R. I believe the photograph on the book is from before Pac’s incarceration. While he was incarcerated, he’d release his third solo album titled, Me Against the World, one of my personal favorite records.
On the cover of the book Pac has on a jean jacket and a bandana tied around his head. The bandana image became very popular over the years on t-shirts, artwork, murals, magazine covers and in other ways. The photograph is in black and white on the outer cover. Inside the block cover is the actual book (it slides out). The cover is in color. On the back of the book’s cover is a description. It says, “features removable reproductions of handwritten lyrics, notebook pages, and other personal memorabilia, plus Tupac Shakur Speaks, a 60-minute CD featuring rare interviews with Tupac Amaru Shakur”. As I mentioned the actual book slides out and is organized like a scrapbook. There’s a bunch of items that you can take out from the pages including Tupac’s own personal handwritten notes, poems, letters, and other items that give some insight to his life story and family ties…one of the inserts is Tupac’s inmate ID card and a paper that includes a song list written by Tupac on a Clinton Correctional Facility envelope. Pac’s inmate card says, “State of New York Department of Correctional Services” and includes his date of birth 6/16/71, height 5’11, weight 170, eyes Brown, hair Black, and date of issue 3/8/95.
Every time I visited the Hastings bookstore back then, I’d browse through the book and thought a lot about purchasing the book. It cost more than $40 though which at the time was a big investment for my budget as a college student. I wanted to buy it though so that I could take it to the juvenile prison where I volunteered. The youth incarcerated there LOVED Pac. Since I started working with young people both in and outside of juvenile prison, there wasn’t a group of youth or a unit I worked with that didn’t want to talk about Pac, or that didn’t reference him as someone that inspired them or motivated them to want to express themselves. I loved these interactions since I’d become very familiar with Tupac Shakur as a fan going all the way back to my adolescent years when I started listening to Hip Hop and when Tupac started his acting and music career.
There was only one copy of the Tupac Shakur Legacy book at the Hastings bookstore. Throughout the book, I noticed there were a bunch of inserts missing. I suppose that as people at the store looked at the book and flipped through the pages in the store, they’d take out the inserts and steal them without buying the book. For example, on page 17 where there was supposed to be a copy of Pac’s poem as written by Pac, it was missing. Above the missing insert read a caption “Tupac’s poem in tribute to Vincent van Gogh, who gave so much through his art but whose genius was not recognized during his lifetime”. Also attached to the inside of the book is a replica, replica meaning copy, of Tupac’s own composition book from 1990 in Pac’s own handwriting! In it, the track list of his debut album 2Pacalypse Now and plans for EPs (an EP is a short version of an album containing a handful of songs sometimes to promote another larger project). He also wrote down notes about a video (which I believe was Tupac’s first Hip Hop video) called “Trapped” that was produced by The Hughes Brothers. The Hughes Brothers would go on to produce the film Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. They’d later work with Denzel Washington on the film Book of Eli. I was always amazed that here we had the chance to experience Tupac’s own handwriting through a copy of his composition book in Tupac Shakur Legacy. On the back of the composition book, there’s a note written by Pac…the notes appear to be directions to a destination in New York or New Jersey…”777 Washington Avenue past 12th Street”.
The book was published by Atria Books, the word atria on their website is defined as a “central living space open to the air and sky”. Tupac’s mother Afeni Shakur had her hand in the book’s development. She wrote the foreword. I often think about how involved Afeni Shakur was in reclaiming her son’s story considering all the conspiracies and perspectives that people immediately started sharing about Tupac after his death. This book is an example of how Afeni Shakur set out to remember her son, Tupac, and give back to the young people and generations later that loved and followed Pac’s story through his music and film career. The author of the text is Jamal Joseph, a member of the Harlem Chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968, then the youngest member at the age of 15. He spent 9 years in prison for his involvement in the movement and knew Tupac Shakur since he was a baby boy. He was very close and has many memories of Pac growing up. He often reflects on some of the guidance Pac would seek from him. Jamal Joseph is a writer, educator, poet, activist, theatre director and the author of his memoir titled Panther Baby. In the foreword of this text that Jamal Joseph and Afeni Shakur collaborated on, Afeni Shakur writes, “through reading Tupac Shakur Legacy…use it as a guideline for your own success. Use Tupac’s journey through obstacles he faced as a map when doors are shut in your face and when it feels like you can’t go on another second. Give yourself permission to express your feelings in any way that suits you, be it through song, poetry, painting, acting, dance – it doesn’t mater as long as you then use that same energy to open another door, as this book will show Tupac often did.”
Afeni Shakur passed away ten years after the publication of the text Tupac Shakur Legacy, in 2016. Through this text, I’d heard about the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts. It was located in Stone Mountain, Georgia, a location that was very close to where Tupac bought a home for his mother. In recent years after Tupac’s mother passed away, I’d learn the center closed. When it was open, I read that it was filled with Tupac’s memorabilia and a statue of Tupac Shakur sculpted by Tina Allen. Allen was known for her sculptures of prominent African Americans including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, A. Phillip Randolph, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and several others. She passed in her late 50s in 2008. In the text Tupac Shakur Legacy, it states that the center created by Afeni Shakur in memory of Tupac was to provide creative arts and leadership training to young people around the country. It included a state-of-the-art Creative Arts Center where young people would study the creative arts with professional instructors. It also had a peace garden.
I first learned of Pac when I was just a kid, right before middle school in the early 1990s. At this point, Hip Hop started to catch our attention, but it was the films and music videos that really caught mine. Since I was young, my parents didn’t filter films we watched. I watched whatever I wanted to watch and grew to really like movies that depicted real life issues whether it was Scarface, Stand & Deliver, or films like Bad Boys, a 1983 flick set in a juvenile detention center.
Even at the theatres, we may not have been able to purchase the tickets ourselves since we were too young. If it was rated R though one of my parents would always step in to get the ticket for the film I wanted to see with my friends. It would be the same case at movie rentals where we’d get VHS tapes to play off our VCR. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I remember gasoline being a lot cheaper than it is now and gas stations even had bins where you could rent all kinds of movies. I believe the movie Juice, starring Tupac Shakur & Omar Epps contributed to me becoming a fan of Pac. I became intrigued by who he was on screen and through his music.
A year or two later, a close friend of mine also bought me a set of overalls (real popular style of dress for us back then) and a CD of Tupac’s second album titled Strictly for My N*. Pac represented a change for me and my life as my connection to Hip Hop started to form and my love for the art of storytelling started to emerge. I always felt I knew what made a good film. I even aspired early on in life to one day create my own films, scripts or stories. I became a big fan of the way Pac took on characters in films like Poetic Justice, Juice, and later Above the Rim. I’d rewatch those films over and over struck by Pac’s acting ability and the connections I’d make to his music videos. At the time, I didn’t have a CD player and wouldn’t have one for a few years, not until I got to high school. So, I’d basically spend a lot of time observing Pac’s Strictly 4 My N* album cover, looking at the track list, trying to imagine what all the songs that weren’t music videos on TV sounded like. It’s not like today where youth can simply search on Spotify or iTunes or YouTube for just about any song in the world. Back then, all I had was my imagination and an appreciation for this new voice who was bringing life to my big screen and just a new wave of filmmaking. We started learning about Pac’s story through his love to create and to share his deepest thoughts with the world.
No one introduced my generation to Pac. It wasn’t like my parents knew what was going on in Hip Hop. And my school experience NEVER even recognized Hip Hop culture let alone EVER talk about it within classroom spaces. Tupac had to get our attention himself. Looking back, it’s something I’ll always remember. Especially when Pac passed, the day was dark as the realization set in that we wouldn’t have any more new memories of Pac creating or get to know what Pac was thinking or planning next. This created a cloud above my conscious about death’s permanence and the pain people experience when so much is lost so early.
There are a lot of stories about Pac out there. Today, if you go to YouTube, you’ll find a lot of interviews surrounding the controversy and death of Tupac Shakur. You’ll find some speaking on Pac’s mistakes or creating click bate stories claiming to know details into who was responsible for his death or just flat out defaming who he was based on some of the choices Pac made that led to his life coming to an end after being shot September 7th, 1996 in Las Vegas.
When I discovered The Beat Within in 2003 and got the chance to speak to founder Dave Inocencio and a few members of The Beat Within family, I discovered that Pac’s memory was an important thread in the birth of The Beat Within. Dave and The Beat family were kind enough to share with me the very first issue of The Beat Within released September 23-29, 1996. It is titled “Reactions to the Death of Tupac Shakur” Volume 1.1. On October 4, 1996, there was another section titled Thoughts on Tupac from the G’z at YGC. It was complimented with an incredible work of art showing Tupac Shakur and the dates 1971-1996. It was the first of many more artworks remembering Pac that would grace the covers and pages of this youth led/youth read magazine that’s been alive as many years as Pac got to live at 25. I’ve always been so proud of this connection to Pac’s story. You won’t find it anywhere else other than through the voice of the youth from the Bay. You won’t find any of these popular platforms out here that talk about Pac’s death all day, ever utter a word about the impact Pac’s life had on the voices of youth inside. The voices of the youth that started The Beat and who were connected by proximity to Pac’s Bay Area roots. There’s a lot of reasons I fell in love with The Beat, and that tie to Pac is one of them.
I’m not sure how I’d have heard about The Beat if not for our own volition. It certainly wouldn’t have been through a professor in my case, or an author, or anyone else. It’s been through The Beat Within fam, the youth that contribute every week to bring life to the pages of this magazine. It’s the poets, storytellers, and the artist…it’s y’all that create the strongest connection possible to why The Beat matters and the value of those that share their expression to inspire much life Pac’s mother aspired through the release of the Tupac Shakur Legacy book.
To all contributors of this magazine, as The Beat moves forward to celebrate it’s 25th year in existence, I just want to thank you for helping so many find their way and for creating a conversation around the history of everything The Beat is connected to for us to be able to share with a purpose week in and week out. Especially with hopes that what we have to say, be it through word or art, will spark the next mind to contribute and keep the power of creativity and expression open for another page, another day, and hopefully another 25 years. Rhyme in peace Pac. And to the life of The Beat, thank you.
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