Four sides of one artist, curated by RapJointLagos. Tap a card to open it in Apple Music.
Playlist 01The Death Row years. Hard drums, war talk and the code he lived by.
Open in Apple Music Playlist 02The Panther's son. Songs about poverty, police, mothers and the block.
Open in Apple Music Playlist 03The poet alone with his thoughts. Doubt, faith, death and what comes after.
Open in Apple Music Playlist 04California sunshine. The records that fill a dance floor thirty years on.
Open in Apple MusicFull tracks need an Apple Music subscription. Without one you hear previews. Android phones open the playlists in the browser or the Apple Music app.
Tupac Amaru Shakur. Rapper, actor, poet.
He recorded for five years, died at 25, and thirty years later rappers on every continent still measure themselves against him.
Tupac was born in New York City on June 16, 1971. His mother, Afeni Shakur, belonged to the Black Panther Party. She named him after Túpac Amaru II, the Peruvian revolutionary, and raised him on politics and books.
The family moved often. In 1986 they reached Baltimore, where he studied acting, poetry and music at the Baltimore School for the Arts and stood out in all three. Before he could graduate, the family moved again, to Marin City, California. There he met the street life that later filled his lyrics.
In 1990 he joined Digital Underground, the Oakland group behind "The Humpty Dance", first as a roadie and dancer, then as a rapper. He appeared on two of their 1991 releases and put out his solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now, the same year.
Hollywood noticed. He played Bishop in Juice (1992), starred opposite Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice (1993) and followed with Above the Rim (1994). By his second album he had hit singles, film credits and a national audience.
Fame brought arrests and court dates. A 1994 conviction sent him to prison, and he was behind bars in 1995 when his third album, Me Against the World, reached number one in America.
He served eight months. Suge Knight of Death Row Records posted his bail, and Tupac signed with the label. All Eyez on Me followed in 1996: two discs, number one on the Billboard chart, more than five million copies sold in its first year. He went back to film sets too, shooting Bullet and Gridlock'd.
On September 7, 1996, Tupac left a Mike Tyson fight at a Las Vegas casino. A gunman in a passing car shot him on the Strip. He died six days later, on September 13, aged 25.
Many people tied the shooting to the East Coast and West Coast feud. The case sat unsolved for decades. Two men linked to it, Orlando Anderson and The Notorious B.I.G., died in shootings of their own. In September 2023, Las Vegas police arrested Anderson's uncle, Duane Davis, and charged him as the man who organised the attack.
A short career left a long shadow. Posthumous albums kept arriving well into the 2000s, and his sales now stand above 75 million records. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 2017.
From Compton to Lagos, rappers still borrow his mix of rage, tenderness and politics. Tonight we play the records and talk about why they last.
The albums released in his lifetime, plus the one he finished weeks before he died.
| 1991 | 2Pacalypse NowBrenda's Got a Baby, Trapped |
| 1993 | Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z...Keep Ya Head Up, I Get Around |
| 1994 | Thug Life: Volume 1With the group Thug Life |
| 1995 | Me Against the WorldDear Mama, So Many Tears |
| 1996 | All Eyez on MeCalifornia Love, How Do U Want It |
| 1996 | The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day TheoryReleased as Makaveli, two months after his death |
| 1992 | Juice |
| 1993 | Poetic Justice |
| 1994 | Above the Rim |
| 1996 | Bullet |
| 1997 | Gridlock'd, Gang Related |
Renegade Book Club review for the tribute.
Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography, by Staci Robinson.
His mother asked a school friend to write his life. Read the Renegade Book Club review document.
Read the book review (PDF)