To Followers, Attack Seemed Ironic

To the fellow rappers who record frequently violent commentaries on urban life and the millions of fans who buy their albums, the weekend shooting of Tupac Shakur seemed at once inevitable and ironic.

In a pop genre whose artistry and popularity have been based largely on documentary-like tales of social anger and tough-guy cynicism, Shakur--who records under the name 2Pac--drew upon his own experiences and observations to forge a reputation as one of the field’s most brilliant, yet volatile figures.

But Saturday night’s shooting, which left Shakur in critical condition in Las Vegas, came at a time when rap music had seemed to turn the corner. After years of being branded as a bad influence on young people, many rappers--from newcomers such as the Fugees to such gangsta-rap veterans as the Geto Boys--called upon their fellow artists to adopt a more positive stance.

And Shakur insisted he was ready to do the same with his life, saying not long ago, “When I look at the last few years, it’s not like everybody just did me wrong. I made some mistakes. But I’m ready to move on.”

To a generation of fans, he has been an outspoken, even fearless artist whose music, however unsettling, speaks with honesty and passion about life’s hopes, frustrations and problems--much like the late Kurt Cobain in the alternative rock world.

Shakur’s latest Death Row Records album, a two-disc set titled “All Eyez on Me,” generated an estimated $14 million in sales during its first week in the stores last spring--the highest first week total of any album this year. It is, in part, a chronicle of the competing forces that have seemed to long pull at him.

“To me, Tupac represents all the beauty and contradictions of young black males,” said Kevin Powell, a rap journalist who has written several lengthy profiles of Shakur for Vibe magazine. “He has a lot of talent, a lot of charisma and he obviously attracts a lot of people to him, but the other side is an inability to be consistent about what he says he’s about.

“And a lot of it may . . . be that he’s addicted to the money, the sex, the limelight. He symbolizes the cynicism of a whole generation . . . and rap manifests that just how alternative rock manifests that the same attitudes for white youth. Tupac is our James Dean, our Kurt Cobain. It’s real scary.”

In “Eyez” and earlier albums, Shakur’s music moves from reflective moments that express the futility of the gangsta life style to bravado-filled scenarios that celebrate and uphold it.

The album was recorded shortly after Shakur was released last year from a New York prison, where he spent eight months on a sex abuse conviction until winning his release pending appeal. The 25-year-old rapper, who has had numerous other brushes with the law over the years, was also shot five times by robbers in the lobby of a New York City recording studio.

“It’s been stress and drama for a long time now, man,” he said in an interview after his release from prison that suggested he might be changing his own priorities. “So much has happened. I got shot five times by some dudes who were trying to rub me out. But God is great. He let me come back.”

Many industry figures and fans wanted to believe he was turning around his life, especially at a time when rap music had seemed to turn a stylistic corner.

Only last Wednesday at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York, two of the rap acts featured on the telecast--Coolio and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony--had major hits over the last year with sensitive songs that yearned for an end to the killings that have claimed so many black youth.

Backstage at the telecast, Dr. Dre, the acclaimed Los Angeles rap producer who worked with Shakur on his latest album, even declared gangsta-rap as passe. “Been there, done that,” he said.

Coming from Dre, a founding member of the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A. and co-founder of Death Row Records, the statement was shocking. It was like the Beatles saying rock was dead.

The shooting, too, came only days after the end of a hugely successful “Smoking Grooves” summer tour that demonstrated to a skeptical music industry that live hip-hop music could be presented without trouble. Because of violence at a few, highly publicized rap shows over the years, many arena managers and concert promoters had shied away from booking rap shows in the ‘90s.

But the “Smoking Grooves” tour--which grossed an average of $200,000 a night during its 34-city run--could lead to an upswing in the live performances for a musical genre that accounts for $800 million a year in record sales. Death Row--thanks to such artists as Shakur, Dr. Dre. and Snoop Doggy Dogg--is the dominant rap record label, distributed by a partnership of Interscope Records and MCA Inc.

Yet the attacks by critics of gangsta rap also helped prolong the tough talking by some of the field’s stars who didn’t want their fans to think they had been intimidated. Ice Cube, Public Enemy’s Chuck D. and others defended the music as social realism. Indeed, many of the records spoke about such matters as police brutality long before it became, in the wake of the Rodney King beating, a widespread issue in the media.

Eventually, the most gifted hard-core rapper artists began expanding their themes to include introspective tales of the pain and suffering that had initially fueled their rage. Shakur’s “Dear Mama,” a song last year about his difficult relationship with his one-time drug-addicted mother, was a key part of that new direction.

But Shakur had trouble separating himself from the lifestyle of his songs. Where other rappers often speak from the side of the firestorm, Tupac has tended to speak from the center of it, drawing upon his turbulent life for his lyrics.

And he was one rapper literally born in social conflict.

His mother, Afeni Shakur, was a member of the Black Panther Party and, as one of the New York 21, spent part of her pregnancy with him in prison.

Born and raised in Harlem, Shakur moved with his family to Baltimore as a teenager and then to Marin City, near Oakland. It was there, he has said, that he learned about the world of dope dealers and thugs.

Along the way, he went through some of the nightmarish experiences that produced the anger and nihilism that sometimes erupts in his music--a trail that seemed to lead him to the Saturday attack that left his voice, at least for now, silenced.

In “Lord Knows,” a song on the “Eyez” album in which he contemplates suicide, Shakur tries to escape his troubles under the haze of alcohol and marijuana, and laments his situation:

“My memories bring me misery / And life is hard in the ghetto, it’s insanity / I can’t breathe / Got me thinking what do hell got / ‘Cause I done suffered so much, I’m feeling shell shocked.”