![]() They all project a grandeur that music, alone, could hardly communicate or confine they all brag like 2Pac, rant like 2Pac, and swear by 2Pac. You see it in Kanye West, who has framed his troubled fashion career as civil rights martyrdom. You see it in 50 Cent, who aped many of 2Pac’s vocal and personal idiosyncrasies, but none of his good will. You see the template in DMX, who fashioned himself as a dark, bizarro Christ figure whose paranoia and access to guns made him a danger to others, not to mention himself. They’ve got the posturing down pat: the self-righteousness, the fatalism in the face of persecution, the delusions of grandeur that may just happen to pan out. Countless rap stars of the past couple of decades have impersonated 2Pac, the public figure, in some form or fashion. These are the few contemporary rappers who take 2Pac’s civil rights mission and messaging to heart.ĢPac’s persona is another matter. There’s Kendrick Lamar and YG, two Compton rappers whose music is equal parts introspection and exhortation. There’s Run the Jewels, the mosh-rap duo whose leftist paranoia certainly suits the present moment in American politics. And, overall, Drake’s massive orbit is given to narcissism and bacchanalia - with exception. ![]() Drake - the star of hip-hop’s latest phase - couldn’t sound any less urgent if he tried. But if there’s a single, essential quality that hip-hop’s current mainstream has largely discarded, it’s 2Pac’s sense of urgency. It’s foolish to spend too much time faulting contemporary music for whatever qualities it’s challenged or shed from previous generations. It’s crazy how every 2Pac song is somehow the most urgent music you’ve ever heard in your life. The trick of 2Pac’s music is how forcefully it established the rapper as the center of all gravity and concern. ![]() And his albums presented several different moods and facets of that ego - selfishness, righteousness, lust, love, war, and peace - with incredible dynamic range. The alarm in his music owed to panic-rap forefathers such as Chuck D and KRS-One, who gave the genre a sense of militancy and political purpose, and Ice Cube, who interpreted that purpose through a haze of youthful indiscretion. ![]() Just by the size of his personality and the breadth of his talent - artist, actor, activist - 2Pac greatly expanded the bounds of a rapper’s stardom. He taught rappers how to be, and his archetype endures to this day. Spiritually, though, hip-hop has never really moved on from 2Pac. Musically, rappers have moved on from the mid-1990s. But this particular bout of nostalgia also comes at a point when Gen X hip-hop fandom has found cause to worry whether its two definitive martyrs - 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. - will translate to the SoundCloud generation. Gary Gray’s N.W.A biopic, Straight Outta Compton, in summer 2015. Unsurprisingly, this wave of 2Pac retrospectives comes on the heels of the box-office success of F. There are two high-profile 2Pac documentaries in the works, one a six-part A&E Biography series, Who Killed Tupac?, premiering June 29, plus a feature, directed by Steve McQueen. There’s a new Tupac Shakur biopic, All Eyez on Me, in theaters on Friday.
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