The death of one of the most transformative artists of his generation 27 years ago returned to the headlines last week after the authorities in Las Vegas, US, announced the arrest and indictment of a suspect in the murder.
Duane Keith Davis (Keffe D), a self-described gang member, has repeatedly confessed to participating in the 1996 shooting of rapper and actor Tupac Amaru Shakur. He recounted the events in his 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend about a dispute that escalated after Tupac and his crew beat up Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson, a member of a California-based gang.
Davis has claimed that it is Anderson who fired the gunshots at Tupac at a traffic red light on the night of September 7, 1996, after attending a boxing match between Bruce Seldon and Mike Tyson in Las Vegas.
The 25-year-old artist died in hospital six days later, on September 13, 1996. Anderson, who was killed in an unrelated gun attack in 1998, was interviewed by the police over the Tupac shooting but was never charged.
Aside from the multiple conspiracy theories on his death, what makes this rapper, actor and activist who died aged just 25, such an enduring and influential cultural icon?
While his life has been the subject of numerous books and films, the 2022 docu-series Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur is particularly illuminating as it draws parallels between the rapper’s uncompromising stance on social and political issues and his mother’s, role in the revolutionary Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 70s.
As he raps in the song Letter 2 My Unborn released posthumously in 2001: "My mama was a Panther loud, single parent but she proud."
Afeni was pregnant with Tupac while in custody on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to bomb public buildings, along with 20 other Panthers. She famously defended herself in court and was acquitted a month and three days before Tupac was born on June 16, 1971.
Afeni named her son after the mythical figure who led the Peruvian struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire because she wanted him to understand that it is not only the Black race that had been subject to oppression. Childhood friends in New York City recall an avid reader and a natural performer who loved to entertain people.
“I don’t think Tupac had any fear of expressing his feelings,” says Donald Hicken, his drama teacher at the Baltimore School for the Arts. “For whatever reason that barrier just didn’t exist for him. He had a pretty open channel,” he says in the film.
In 1988, 17-year-old Tupac fed up with living with his mother who was then battling addiction to cocaine, left home and moved in with family friends in Oakland California. He got his first big break as a roadie, then onstage dancer and hype man for the pioneering hip-hop group, the Digital Underground.
This handout picture provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on September 29, 2023 shows the booking picture of Duane "Keffe D" Davis. PHOTO | AFP
Tupac’s first big solo hit was Brenda’s Got a Baby, a song based on the true story of a newborn baby who is rescued from a garbage dump after she is abandoned by her 12-year-old mother who was made pregnant by her own cousin.
The video of Los Angeles police beating up an African American motorist, Rodney King and the resultant public anger in 1991 had a huge impact on Tupac and he expressed his outrage on the album 2Pacalypse Now which kicked up a storm with lyrics about killing police officers.
Along with the success of his music career, his acting also thrived with roles in hit movies like Juice in 1992 and Poetic Justice in 1993, starring opposite Janet Jackson.
As the decade wore on, Tupac was thrust in the centre of the East Coast vs West Coast rap rivalry in the US. He survived when a gunman shot him four times in an ambush in 1994, but a year later, he was found guilty of sexually assaulting a female fan and sentenced to a jail term of up to four and a half years.
In October 1995, the CEO of Death Row Records, Suge Knight posted $1.4 million bail to secure Tupac’s release from jail in return for a recording deal, beginning with All Eyez on Me in February 1996, the biggest-selling album of his career.
Seven months later, Tupac was riding in the same car with Knight, when a gunman pulled the trigger on him.
Over four albums during his lifetime (and seven posthumous releases) Tupac expressed the reality of young black people not just in America, but millions of discontented youths around the world, a universal message that has sustained his legacy as a timeless symbol of rebellion.
“I have always been a fighter, always been a soldier, always been a struggler. I keep coming back. The only thing that can stop me is death and even then, my music will live forever,” he said in an interview recorded in prison in 1995.
