Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), better known as 2Pac or Makaveli, was an American rapper, actor, dancer, record producer and record executive. He is considered by many music enthusiasts to be one of the greatest rappers and actors of all time. He sold many records. Shakur has sold over 75 million albums worldwide as of 2001. Shakur began his career as a roadie, backup dancer, and MC for the alternative hip hop group Digital Underground as "MC New York". He eventually branched off as a solo artist.
In 2004, a biographical movie about Tupac was announced.
Early life
He was born as Lesane Crooks in East Harlem, New York. Crooks was later renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur after Túpac Amaru II, a ruler in Peru. His family later moved to Marin City, California when Tupac was 17. Tupac went to the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he found it interesting to read Shakespeare's poems. He got very affected by the beauty of rhyming, choosing the word and expression. He studied poetry, acting, jazz, and ballet.
Music career
In 1990, Shakur joined with the Oakland, California-based alternative hip hop group Digital Underground. He appeared on two of the group's albums in 1991: This Is an EP Release and Sons of the P. Later that year he produced and released his first solo album, 2Pacalypse Now. The album protested problems such as racism, and made him much more popular.
Shakur won the Soul Train Music Award for Best Rap Album in 1996 for ‘Me Against the World’. He received the American Music Award for the Favorite Rap/Hip Hop artist posthumously in 1997.
Several of Shakur's albums were released posthumously. It contained previously recorded material from when he was alive.
On November 30, 1994, Shakur was shot outside of Quad Studios, a recording studio in Manhattan, New York. Shakur had been invited to record, but was later confronted by three armed men in the lobby, who robbed him of his possessions and shot him multiple times. These nonfatal gunshot wounds incited a feud between Shakur and well known Hip-Hop artist Christopher Wallace, also known as The Notorious B.I.G., as Shakur believed that it was Wallace's associates who assaulted him. This escalated into a rap beef, when Shakur and his labelmates of Death Row Records sided against Wallace and his labelmates of Bad Boy Records. This west coast versus east coast beef eventually led to the killings of both Shakur and Wallace in the 1990's.
Shakur's friend and labelmate from Death Row Records, Marion "Suge" Knight, was in the car with Shakur. Knight survived the shooting.
In 1998, a prime suspect in Shakur’s murder, Orlando Anderson (aka Baby Lane) was killed in another drive-by shooting.
In 2002, reporter Chuck Phillips wrote in the Los Angeles Times that another rapper called Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.) could have paid members of the Crips street gang to kill Shakur and that he could have given them the gun.
Arrest, trial and aftermath
On September 29, 2023, Duane "Keefe D" Davis was named as a suspect and was arrested by the Las Vegas Police Department in connection with the murder of Shakur. Keefe D had previously admitted to killing Tupac on July 2, 2018 when he [thought that he was going to die soon, or] was dying from cancer. The trial against Davis, was delayed until August 2026.
There were four people in the car that was used by the suspects during the murder, according to the media. Three of the suspects are dead as of 2023.
On August 10, 2026, Davis' trial for the murder of Shakur started. Davis was convicted for the murder of Shakur on August 31. On October 13, Davis was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison.
A Did not chart on the Hot 100 or Hot R&B/Hip-Hop charts (Billboard rules at the time prevented album cuts from charting). Chart peak listed here represents Hot 100 Airplay and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay charts data.
