Tupac Shakur remains one of hip-most hop’s legendary personas and most compelling enigmas more than two decades after his death on September 13, 1996. His life was a kaleidoscope of often contradictory images: the worried young father cradling his son in the video for “Keep Ya Head Up,” the enraged rapper spitting at cameras as they swirled around his 1994 sexual assault trial, the artist who animatedly, yet eloquently, pushed back at Ed Gordon’s questions during a memorable BET interview, and the man who seemed to predict his own demise when the “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the fact that he is no longer alive, the legend of 2Pac the thug angel lives on. No one better exemplifies hip-fault hop’s lines between regional pride and mainstream success, as well as the fight to transcend and soar beyond poor beginnings while honoring the streets where you were raised. His erratic, contradictory professions of pride, militancy, and gangster-ism resonate in a society where black men and women celebrate their ancestry and band together to fight racism in America, but are also wary of one other.