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Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur
From Pitchfork and Guardian contributor Dean Van Nguyen comes a revelatory history of Tupac beyond his musical legend, as a radical son of the Black Panther Party whose political legacy still resonates today.
Before his murder at 25, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the preeminent storyteller of the 90s, building, in the process, one of the most iconic public personas of the last half century. He recorded no fewer than 10 platinum albums, starred in major films, and became an activist and political hero known the world over. In this cultural history, journalist Van Nguyen reckons with Tupac’s coming of age, fame, and cultural capital, and how the political machinations that shaped him as a boy have since buoyed his legacy as a revolutionary following the George Floyd uprising. Words for My Comrades engages—crucially—with the influence of Tupac’s mother, Afeni, whose role in the Black Panther Party and dedication to dismantling American imperialism and police brutality informed Tupac’s art. Tupac’s childhood as a son of the Panthers, coupled with the influence of his step-father’s Marxist beliefs, became his own riveting code of ethics that helped listeners reckon with America’s inherent injustices.
Using oral histories from conversations with the people who shaped Tupac’s life and career, many of whom were interviewed for the first time here—from Panther elder Aaron Dixon, to music video director Stephen Ashley Blake, to friends and contemporaries of Tupac’s mother—Van Nguyen demonstrates how Tupac became one of the most enduring musical legends in hip-hop history, and how intimately his name is threaded with the legacy of Black Panther politics.
Van Nguyen reveals how Tupac and Afeni each championed the disenfranchised in distinct ways, and how their mother-son bond charts a narrative of the last fifty years of revolutionary Black American politics. Words for My Comrades is the story of how the energy of the Black political movement was subsumed by culture, and how America produced two of its most iconic, enduring revolutionaries.
Before his murder at 25, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the preeminent storyteller of the 90s, building, in the process, one of the most iconic public personas of the last half century. He recorded no fewer than 10 platinum albums, starred in major films, and became an activist and political hero known the world over. In this cultural history, journalist Van Nguyen reckons with Tupac’s coming of age, fame, and cultural capital, and how the political machinations that shaped him as a boy have since buoyed his legacy as a revolutionary following the George Floyd uprising. Words for My Comrades engages—crucially—with the influence of Tupac’s mother, Afeni, whose role in the Black Panther Party and dedication to dismantling American imperialism and police brutality informed Tupac’s art. Tupac’s childhood as a son of the Panthers, coupled with the influence of his step-father’s Marxist beliefs, became his own riveting code of ethics that helped listeners reckon with America’s inherent injustices.
Using oral histories from conversations with the people who shaped Tupac’s life and career, many of whom were interviewed for the first time here—from Panther elder Aaron Dixon, to music video director Stephen Ashley Blake, to friends and contemporaries of Tupac’s mother—Van Nguyen demonstrates how Tupac became one of the most enduring musical legends in hip-hop history, and how intimately his name is threaded with the legacy of Black Panther politics.
Van Nguyen reveals how Tupac and Afeni each championed the disenfranchised in distinct ways, and how their mother-son bond charts a narrative of the last fifty years of revolutionary Black American politics. Words for My Comrades is the story of how the energy of the Black political movement was subsumed by culture, and how America produced two of its most iconic, enduring revolutionaries.
464 pages, Hardcover
Published May 6, 2025
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November 30, 2025
It’s hard to name a rapper who has had more of an influence on popular culture than Tupac Shakur. There have been more than 40 works written about him, and he’s sold 125 million records. It’s impossible to document how many times other rappers have name-dropped him or included his lyrics in their songs, but it runs into the thousands.
Tupac Shakur’s circumstances provided him with a very unique experience of the world. This gave a certain depth to his music, poetry, and acting that at times indicated a maturity beyond his years. His 1995 song “Dear Mama” documented his experiences of childhood poverty and his love for his mother, Afeni, who struggled with an addiction to crack cocaine. Like much of his work, the vulnerability and empathy at the heart of the song have continued to resonate with millions of listeners.
However, “Dear Mama” doesn’t give the full picture. Like many other lone parents, Afeni struggled to raise children and pay the rent, and Tupac wanted to document the courage of those parents. What was left out of the song was Afeni’s incredible backstory of revolutionary struggle. A member of the Black Panther Party, Afeni was arrested in 1969 along with 20 of her comrades on trumped-up charges of conspiracy to bomb police stations and other public places in New York City. While she was pregnant and facing 156 felony charges, she represented herself in court, where she questioned witnesses, many of whom were cops or infiltrators. Despite having no previous legal experience or qualifications, she successfully defended herself and the other defendants in an eight-month trial.
In June 1971, one month after the acquittal, she gave birth to Lesane Parish Crooks, who was later renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur. She named him after an 18th-century indigenous Peruvian leader, Tupac Amaru II, who led an uprising against Spanish colonisers. In her words, “I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighbourhood… I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people of the world.”
To this day, most portrayals of Tupac in the mainstream media superficially depict him as a reckless, antisocial tearaway, but anyone with more than a superficial familiarity with his music will know that his outlook was steeped in social awareness and political analysis. And how could it have been any other way, given that Afeni raised him in such a political environment? His godfather was Geronimo Pratt, a leader of the Black Panthers, while his godmother was Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army.
After the publication of dozens of biographies and documentaries about Tupac, Dubliner Dean Van Nguyen has published a book that finally shines a light squarely on the politics of the hip-hop icon. Van Nguyen is a writer specialising in music criticism, and his critiques of Tupac’s music, album by album, will appeal to fans of the rap star. In a 1992 interview, Tupac explained, “My music is about the oppressed rising up against the oppressor. The only people that’s scared are the oppressors. The only people having any harm coming to them are those who oppress.”
Van Nguyen documents how Tupac’s left-wing political roots shone through in his songs, from the explicitly anti-capitalist “Panther Power” to the pro-choice and feminist messages in “Keep Ya Head Up” and “The Good Die Young”. He rose to prominence at a time when hip-hop was entering the mainstream and coming under increased corporate dominance. While the early days of hip-hop were dominated by either “party rap” or the socially conscious sounds of groups like Public Enemy or Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, the 1990s were dominated by music about drug-dealing and violence, with a heavy dose of misogyny thrown in. Van Nguyen outlines this process and how Tupac’s message and style changed over time, especially with the release of the album All Eyez On Me after he joined Death Row Records in the final year of his life.
Death Row Records had brought West Coast “gangsta rap” to a worldwide audience, and its artists were noted for their particularly sexist lyrics. Tupac was not free of this, and some of his material is deeply misogynistic. Some of the tracks on the 1996 All Eyez On Me are steeped in sexism, and his song “Hit ‘Em Up”, attacking fellow rapper Biggie Smalls, sank into petty, personalised and bullying territory, beyond the battle-rap norms of hip hop at the time. By contrast, his earlier work was more socially conscious and dealt with themes such as child sex abuse that don’t often feature in hip hop or any other musical genres. “Brenda’s Got a Baby” features the story of a child who becomes pregnant after being raped by her cousin. The less well-known posthumous song, “16 on Deathrow”, features powerful lyrics narrated from the viewpoint of an imprisoned sixteen-year-old boy:
“Dear mama, these cops don’t understand me
I turned to a life of crime, cause I came from a broken family
My uncle used to touch me. I never told you that
Scared what you might do, I couldn’t hold you back
I kept it deep inside and let it fuel my anger
I’m down for all my homies, no mercy for a stranger
The brother in my cell is 16 as well
It’s hard to adapt when you’re black and you’re trapped in the livin’ hell…
They tell me the preacher’s there for me
He’s a crook with a book, that MF never cared for me
He’s only here to be sure
I don’t drop a dime to God about the crimes he’s committin' on the poor
And how can these people judge me?
They ain’t my peers and in all these years they ain’t never loved me
I never got to be a man
Must be part of some big plan to keep a n***a in the state pen”
His lyrics might often seem overly direct and heavy-handed, lacking the vagueness, evasiveness, arcane double-meanings and clever turns of phrase found in the works of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan or Grian Chatten. However, the delivery, sound and raw lyrics combine to have a powerful impact on the listener. Tupac mentioned his intentions behind the song “Dear Mama” in a 1995 interview with the Los Angeles Times:
“I’m the kind of guy who is moved by a song like Don MacLean’s ‘Vincent’, that one about Van Gogh. The lyric on that song is so touching. That’s how I want my songs to feel. Take ‘Dear Mama’ – I aimed that one straight for my homies’ heartstrings.”
He may not have been the most sophisticated lyricist in rap history, and he wasn’t even the most political rap artist either, but when it came to affecting the emotions of the listener, he excelled.
Van Nguyen notes how Afeni began to cultivate her son’s cultural level early on in his childhood in Harlem. She would sometimes make him read the entirety of a copy of The New York Times as punishment for misbehaving. At age 13, he performed in the play A Raisin in the Sun at the Apollo Theatre. He trained in ballet at the Baltimore School of the Arts as a teenager and performed the role of Othello in a school production of the Shakespeare play.
His outlook was clearly also broadened by his mother’s years of revolutionary activity. Van Nguyen charts the background to the radicalisation of Afeni, with extensive, if sometimes tangential, descriptions of the political lives of Malcolm X, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. The first 100 pages of Van Nguyen’s book barely feature Tupac, while later chapters give in-depth accounts of the 1992 LA riots and gang feuds in South Central LA.
Afeni’s descent into the abyss of crack addiction no doubt coincided with her weariness over the collapse of the movement she helped build. The hopes she and her comrades had for real revolutionary societal change were dashed, as the social movements and workers’ struggles of the 1960s and 1970s receded. The crack epidemic in American cities coincided with a dramatic rise in wealth inequality. The establishment used the racist myth of “welfare queens” to attack basic public services. In his first State of the Union address in 1992, Bill Clinton planned to further impoverish the most disadvantaged Americans by promising to “End welfare as we know it… We have to end welfare as a way of life.” In the song “Letter to the President” Tupac asks Bill Clinton,
“Sayin’ you cuttin’ welfare
That got us n***s on the street think’ who in the hell care?
What happened to our 40 acres and a mule, fool?
… Tryna turn us young n***s into troops
You want us to fight your war, what the f*ck I’m fightin’ for?
Added to this, pro-capitalist liberals and conservatives waged a historic campaign of right-wing triumphalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the idea took hold in society that there was no alternative to the status quo of racism and oppression. The phrase “I’m hopeless” appears repeatedly in Tupac’s songs, underscoring the importance of the early 1990s geopolitical context for understanding the mindset of far-left radicals like the Shakurs at that time.
Tupac briefly joined the Baltimore chapter of the Young Communist League and later served as the chairperson of the New Afrikan Panther Party. Both organisations were largely unknown to the wider black community, so they had no real support base.
While his forays into organised politics were short-lived, his music contained a political thread to a much greater extent than other artists of his stature at the time. The words “They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor” from “Keep Ya Head Up” resonate even more today than when they were written. So, it was no surprise to Tupac fans when the song “Changes” became the soundtrack to the mass protests against racial oppression and police brutality after George Floyd was murdered by a cop in Minneapolis in 2020.
During his lifetime, the media focused on Tupac’s run-ins with the law. In 1991, he filed a lawsuit against two Oakland Police Department officers who assaulted him after they stopped him for jaywalking. The officers choked him and slammed him to the ground, with his head hitting the concrete. This traumatic incident is often cited as the origin of the alopecia he developed at the time. A year later, he faced trial and was acquitted for shooting two white off-duty cops in Atlanta, whom he had witnessed attacking a black man. The following year, he sustained five bullet wounds during an attack by a group of men in New York. Every account of Tupac’s life describes how his personality seemed to have changed in the last years of his life. Van Nguyen describes how he spent a lot of time with organised crime figures such as Jacques Agnant (Also known as “Haitian Jack”) and Jimmy “Henchman” Rosemund when preparing to play the role of a drug dealer in the film, Above the Rim.
His artistic persona definitely became more hypermasculine around this period, which suited his move to Death Row Records in late 1995. One year later, he attended a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas with Suge Knight, the owner of Death Row. Knight was affiliated with the Mob Piru Blood gang in Los Angeles and used his gang connections for security and business dealings. After the Tyson fight, one of Knight’s Blood associates spotted a member of a rival gang and pointed him out to Tupac. Surveillance footage showed Tupac approaching the rival gang member in the lobby of the hotel and punching him in the face as his associates joined in to assault the man after he fell to the ground. A few hours later, Tupac was shot while sitting in the passenger seat of Suge Knight’s car as they waited in traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard. He passed away in the hospital six days later.
In the years before his death his songs were filled with the words “misery”, “memories”, and “Hennessy”. His childhood friend, Jada Pinkett Smith said “People don't like to talk about [the fact that] Pac was an addict… high all the time, drunk, whatever, his mind was never clear.”
The lyrics of “Lord Knows”, while seemingly from the perspective of a fictional narrator, give a sense of Tupac’s focus on mental health, paranoia, trauma and addiction,
“My memories bring me misery
And life is hard, in the ghetto it's insanity
I can't breathe…
I smoke a blunt to take the pain out
And if I wasn't high I'd probably try to blow my brains out,
I'm hopeless, they should've killed me as a baby,
And now they got me trapped in the storm, I'm going crazy,
Forgive me.”
What could have been?
Before his death, Tupac had been recording music in a frenzy to fulfil his contractual obligations with Death Row Records. Van Nguyen explains how he had even begun to plan the launch of his own media company called Euthanasia Incorporated, where he expressed that he would oversee screenwriting projects and youth outreach programmes. One can only speculate whether he could have grown out of the hypermasculine persona that had led him to engage in the LA gang feuding culture that he hadn’t grown up in. His actions at the MGM Grand on the night he was shot were far removed from the young poet who had made his mark at the Baltimore School of the Arts.
It’s also worth emphasising that the hypermasculine persona was driven by Tupac’s ambition for success. There was an expansion of the so-called “gangsta rap” genre of hip hop in the early nineties, whose subject matter was often about guns, selling crack, evading the police, and feuding with rivals. One end of the spectrum tended towards a sociological documenting of the streets, and the other end tended towards first-person narratives that revelled in gender-based violence and celebrating drug money and expensive jewellery. Defenders of this genre of hip hop argued that this music was only a reflection of behaviours and culture that existed in very socially and economically disadvantaged communities, marred by exploitation and racial oppression. That the artists weren't personally responsible for creating the social conditions that produced the anti-social behaviours and attitudes that were depicted in the music.
It is also worth emphasising that corporate America profited enormously from the work of black artists, at the expense of those artists. The music industry was dominated by white corporate CEOs who were quite comfortable with projecting very narrow depictions of black men, which sometimes verged on caricatures and stereotypes. Not to mention white corporate America's hypersexualisation of black women, who appeared much more often as background music video models rather than as artists in 1990s hip hop.
As Tupac’s music and image became more macho and less political, his profile grew from strength to strength. Simply put, the success of the hypermasculine persona fed the transformation.
To Van Nguyen’s credit, unlike many of the biographies and documentaries about Tupac Shakur, he doesn’t sugarcoat the facts that led to his 1994 conviction for sexual assault. In fact, Van Nguyen gives multiple quotes from an interview with the victim, Ayanna Jackson, in 2018. Ayanna outlined how the consensual sex she had with Tupac in the days before the incident was used against her in court to try to discredit her. She accuses Tupac, “Haitian” Jack, and another man of raping her in a hotel room, and her description of what happened was corroborated by another witness who was in the hotel room that night – Tupac’s road manager at the time, Charles Fuller. Van Nguyen quotes Tupac’s defence lawyer, who disgracefully leaned into sexist victim-blaming, stating, “It is our position that this woman is highly incredible… what we have here is a woman who was infatuated with Mr Shakur. Don’t be fooled by emotions displayed on the witness stand.”
Ayanna revealed that Tupac apologised to her in court before his sentencing, but unfortunately, he continued to proclaim his innocence in public, as did his family and friends. He went on to serve ten months in prison. Van Nguyen observes that in the song “White Manz World”, released after his death, “a more contrite 2Pac apologises to the black women whose pain he has overlooked – no specifics”.
Overall, Van Nguyen succeeds in recognising Tupac’s enormous influence on hip hop, popular culture, and art over the past 35 years without idolising him. The book starts with the observation that Tupac’s face appears on murals across the world as often as images of Che Guevara and Bob Marley. When learning about the incredible life story of him and his mother, it’s easy to fall into romantic sentimentalism, but Van Nguyen gives enough concrete information to show that, despite their exceptional talents, the Shakurs were traumatised and struggling to survive like the rest of us. They were also marked by many mistakes, transgressions and contradictions.
There is no doubt that the pain and roadblocks they encountered spurred Afeni’s political brilliance and Tupac’s deeply affecting music, and both were typified by an enduring sense of optimism that a better world is possible. Reagan’s counter-revolution was the backdrop to Tupac’s formative years, and history is now repeating itself under Trump’s reactionary administration. It is therefore very fitting that Van Nguyen ends the book with a quote from the Makaveli album: “The Trick is to Never Lose Hope”.
Tupac Shakur’s circumstances provided him with a very unique experience of the world. This gave a certain depth to his music, poetry, and acting that at times indicated a maturity beyond his years. His 1995 song “Dear Mama” documented his experiences of childhood poverty and his love for his mother, Afeni, who struggled with an addiction to crack cocaine. Like much of his work, the vulnerability and empathy at the heart of the song have continued to resonate with millions of listeners.
However, “Dear Mama” doesn’t give the full picture. Like many other lone parents, Afeni struggled to raise children and pay the rent, and Tupac wanted to document the courage of those parents. What was left out of the song was Afeni’s incredible backstory of revolutionary struggle. A member of the Black Panther Party, Afeni was arrested in 1969 along with 20 of her comrades on trumped-up charges of conspiracy to bomb police stations and other public places in New York City. While she was pregnant and facing 156 felony charges, she represented herself in court, where she questioned witnesses, many of whom were cops or infiltrators. Despite having no previous legal experience or qualifications, she successfully defended herself and the other defendants in an eight-month trial.
In June 1971, one month after the acquittal, she gave birth to Lesane Parish Crooks, who was later renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur. She named him after an 18th-century indigenous Peruvian leader, Tupac Amaru II, who led an uprising against Spanish colonisers. In her words, “I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighbourhood… I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people of the world.”
To this day, most portrayals of Tupac in the mainstream media superficially depict him as a reckless, antisocial tearaway, but anyone with more than a superficial familiarity with his music will know that his outlook was steeped in social awareness and political analysis. And how could it have been any other way, given that Afeni raised him in such a political environment? His godfather was Geronimo Pratt, a leader of the Black Panthers, while his godmother was Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army.
After the publication of dozens of biographies and documentaries about Tupac, Dubliner Dean Van Nguyen has published a book that finally shines a light squarely on the politics of the hip-hop icon. Van Nguyen is a writer specialising in music criticism, and his critiques of Tupac’s music, album by album, will appeal to fans of the rap star. In a 1992 interview, Tupac explained, “My music is about the oppressed rising up against the oppressor. The only people that’s scared are the oppressors. The only people having any harm coming to them are those who oppress.”
Van Nguyen documents how Tupac’s left-wing political roots shone through in his songs, from the explicitly anti-capitalist “Panther Power” to the pro-choice and feminist messages in “Keep Ya Head Up” and “The Good Die Young”. He rose to prominence at a time when hip-hop was entering the mainstream and coming under increased corporate dominance. While the early days of hip-hop were dominated by either “party rap” or the socially conscious sounds of groups like Public Enemy or Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, the 1990s were dominated by music about drug-dealing and violence, with a heavy dose of misogyny thrown in. Van Nguyen outlines this process and how Tupac’s message and style changed over time, especially with the release of the album All Eyez On Me after he joined Death Row Records in the final year of his life.
Death Row Records had brought West Coast “gangsta rap” to a worldwide audience, and its artists were noted for their particularly sexist lyrics. Tupac was not free of this, and some of his material is deeply misogynistic. Some of the tracks on the 1996 All Eyez On Me are steeped in sexism, and his song “Hit ‘Em Up”, attacking fellow rapper Biggie Smalls, sank into petty, personalised and bullying territory, beyond the battle-rap norms of hip hop at the time. By contrast, his earlier work was more socially conscious and dealt with themes such as child sex abuse that don’t often feature in hip hop or any other musical genres. “Brenda’s Got a Baby” features the story of a child who becomes pregnant after being raped by her cousin. The less well-known posthumous song, “16 on Deathrow”, features powerful lyrics narrated from the viewpoint of an imprisoned sixteen-year-old boy:
“Dear mama, these cops don’t understand me
I turned to a life of crime, cause I came from a broken family
My uncle used to touch me. I never told you that
Scared what you might do, I couldn’t hold you back
I kept it deep inside and let it fuel my anger
I’m down for all my homies, no mercy for a stranger
The brother in my cell is 16 as well
It’s hard to adapt when you’re black and you’re trapped in the livin’ hell…
They tell me the preacher’s there for me
He’s a crook with a book, that MF never cared for me
He’s only here to be sure
I don’t drop a dime to God about the crimes he’s committin' on the poor
And how can these people judge me?
They ain’t my peers and in all these years they ain’t never loved me
I never got to be a man
Must be part of some big plan to keep a n***a in the state pen”
His lyrics might often seem overly direct and heavy-handed, lacking the vagueness, evasiveness, arcane double-meanings and clever turns of phrase found in the works of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan or Grian Chatten. However, the delivery, sound and raw lyrics combine to have a powerful impact on the listener. Tupac mentioned his intentions behind the song “Dear Mama” in a 1995 interview with the Los Angeles Times:
“I’m the kind of guy who is moved by a song like Don MacLean’s ‘Vincent’, that one about Van Gogh. The lyric on that song is so touching. That’s how I want my songs to feel. Take ‘Dear Mama’ – I aimed that one straight for my homies’ heartstrings.”
He may not have been the most sophisticated lyricist in rap history, and he wasn’t even the most political rap artist either, but when it came to affecting the emotions of the listener, he excelled.
Van Nguyen notes how Afeni began to cultivate her son’s cultural level early on in his childhood in Harlem. She would sometimes make him read the entirety of a copy of The New York Times as punishment for misbehaving. At age 13, he performed in the play A Raisin in the Sun at the Apollo Theatre. He trained in ballet at the Baltimore School of the Arts as a teenager and performed the role of Othello in a school production of the Shakespeare play.
His outlook was clearly also broadened by his mother’s years of revolutionary activity. Van Nguyen charts the background to the radicalisation of Afeni, with extensive, if sometimes tangential, descriptions of the political lives of Malcolm X, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. The first 100 pages of Van Nguyen’s book barely feature Tupac, while later chapters give in-depth accounts of the 1992 LA riots and gang feuds in South Central LA.
Afeni’s descent into the abyss of crack addiction no doubt coincided with her weariness over the collapse of the movement she helped build. The hopes she and her comrades had for real revolutionary societal change were dashed, as the social movements and workers’ struggles of the 1960s and 1970s receded. The crack epidemic in American cities coincided with a dramatic rise in wealth inequality. The establishment used the racist myth of “welfare queens” to attack basic public services. In his first State of the Union address in 1992, Bill Clinton planned to further impoverish the most disadvantaged Americans by promising to “End welfare as we know it… We have to end welfare as a way of life.” In the song “Letter to the President” Tupac asks Bill Clinton,
“Sayin’ you cuttin’ welfare
That got us n***s on the street think’ who in the hell care?
What happened to our 40 acres and a mule, fool?
… Tryna turn us young n***s into troops
You want us to fight your war, what the f*ck I’m fightin’ for?
Added to this, pro-capitalist liberals and conservatives waged a historic campaign of right-wing triumphalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the idea took hold in society that there was no alternative to the status quo of racism and oppression. The phrase “I’m hopeless” appears repeatedly in Tupac’s songs, underscoring the importance of the early 1990s geopolitical context for understanding the mindset of far-left radicals like the Shakurs at that time.
Tupac briefly joined the Baltimore chapter of the Young Communist League and later served as the chairperson of the New Afrikan Panther Party. Both organisations were largely unknown to the wider black community, so they had no real support base.
While his forays into organised politics were short-lived, his music contained a political thread to a much greater extent than other artists of his stature at the time. The words “They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor” from “Keep Ya Head Up” resonate even more today than when they were written. So, it was no surprise to Tupac fans when the song “Changes” became the soundtrack to the mass protests against racial oppression and police brutality after George Floyd was murdered by a cop in Minneapolis in 2020.
During his lifetime, the media focused on Tupac’s run-ins with the law. In 1991, he filed a lawsuit against two Oakland Police Department officers who assaulted him after they stopped him for jaywalking. The officers choked him and slammed him to the ground, with his head hitting the concrete. This traumatic incident is often cited as the origin of the alopecia he developed at the time. A year later, he faced trial and was acquitted for shooting two white off-duty cops in Atlanta, whom he had witnessed attacking a black man. The following year, he sustained five bullet wounds during an attack by a group of men in New York. Every account of Tupac’s life describes how his personality seemed to have changed in the last years of his life. Van Nguyen describes how he spent a lot of time with organised crime figures such as Jacques Agnant (Also known as “Haitian Jack”) and Jimmy “Henchman” Rosemund when preparing to play the role of a drug dealer in the film, Above the Rim.
His artistic persona definitely became more hypermasculine around this period, which suited his move to Death Row Records in late 1995. One year later, he attended a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas with Suge Knight, the owner of Death Row. Knight was affiliated with the Mob Piru Blood gang in Los Angeles and used his gang connections for security and business dealings. After the Tyson fight, one of Knight’s Blood associates spotted a member of a rival gang and pointed him out to Tupac. Surveillance footage showed Tupac approaching the rival gang member in the lobby of the hotel and punching him in the face as his associates joined in to assault the man after he fell to the ground. A few hours later, Tupac was shot while sitting in the passenger seat of Suge Knight’s car as they waited in traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard. He passed away in the hospital six days later.
In the years before his death his songs were filled with the words “misery”, “memories”, and “Hennessy”. His childhood friend, Jada Pinkett Smith said “People don't like to talk about [the fact that] Pac was an addict… high all the time, drunk, whatever, his mind was never clear.”
The lyrics of “Lord Knows”, while seemingly from the perspective of a fictional narrator, give a sense of Tupac’s focus on mental health, paranoia, trauma and addiction,
“My memories bring me misery
And life is hard, in the ghetto it's insanity
I can't breathe…
I smoke a blunt to take the pain out
And if I wasn't high I'd probably try to blow my brains out,
I'm hopeless, they should've killed me as a baby,
And now they got me trapped in the storm, I'm going crazy,
Forgive me.”
What could have been?
Before his death, Tupac had been recording music in a frenzy to fulfil his contractual obligations with Death Row Records. Van Nguyen explains how he had even begun to plan the launch of his own media company called Euthanasia Incorporated, where he expressed that he would oversee screenwriting projects and youth outreach programmes. One can only speculate whether he could have grown out of the hypermasculine persona that had led him to engage in the LA gang feuding culture that he hadn’t grown up in. His actions at the MGM Grand on the night he was shot were far removed from the young poet who had made his mark at the Baltimore School of the Arts.
It’s also worth emphasising that the hypermasculine persona was driven by Tupac’s ambition for success. There was an expansion of the so-called “gangsta rap” genre of hip hop in the early nineties, whose subject matter was often about guns, selling crack, evading the police, and feuding with rivals. One end of the spectrum tended towards a sociological documenting of the streets, and the other end tended towards first-person narratives that revelled in gender-based violence and celebrating drug money and expensive jewellery. Defenders of this genre of hip hop argued that this music was only a reflection of behaviours and culture that existed in very socially and economically disadvantaged communities, marred by exploitation and racial oppression. That the artists weren't personally responsible for creating the social conditions that produced the anti-social behaviours and attitudes that were depicted in the music.
It is also worth emphasising that corporate America profited enormously from the work of black artists, at the expense of those artists. The music industry was dominated by white corporate CEOs who were quite comfortable with projecting very narrow depictions of black men, which sometimes verged on caricatures and stereotypes. Not to mention white corporate America's hypersexualisation of black women, who appeared much more often as background music video models rather than as artists in 1990s hip hop.
As Tupac’s music and image became more macho and less political, his profile grew from strength to strength. Simply put, the success of the hypermasculine persona fed the transformation.
To Van Nguyen’s credit, unlike many of the biographies and documentaries about Tupac Shakur, he doesn’t sugarcoat the facts that led to his 1994 conviction for sexual assault. In fact, Van Nguyen gives multiple quotes from an interview with the victim, Ayanna Jackson, in 2018. Ayanna outlined how the consensual sex she had with Tupac in the days before the incident was used against her in court to try to discredit her. She accuses Tupac, “Haitian” Jack, and another man of raping her in a hotel room, and her description of what happened was corroborated by another witness who was in the hotel room that night – Tupac’s road manager at the time, Charles Fuller. Van Nguyen quotes Tupac’s defence lawyer, who disgracefully leaned into sexist victim-blaming, stating, “It is our position that this woman is highly incredible… what we have here is a woman who was infatuated with Mr Shakur. Don’t be fooled by emotions displayed on the witness stand.”
Ayanna revealed that Tupac apologised to her in court before his sentencing, but unfortunately, he continued to proclaim his innocence in public, as did his family and friends. He went on to serve ten months in prison. Van Nguyen observes that in the song “White Manz World”, released after his death, “a more contrite 2Pac apologises to the black women whose pain he has overlooked – no specifics”.
Overall, Van Nguyen succeeds in recognising Tupac’s enormous influence on hip hop, popular culture, and art over the past 35 years without idolising him. The book starts with the observation that Tupac’s face appears on murals across the world as often as images of Che Guevara and Bob Marley. When learning about the incredible life story of him and his mother, it’s easy to fall into romantic sentimentalism, but Van Nguyen gives enough concrete information to show that, despite their exceptional talents, the Shakurs were traumatised and struggling to survive like the rest of us. They were also marked by many mistakes, transgressions and contradictions.
There is no doubt that the pain and roadblocks they encountered spurred Afeni’s political brilliance and Tupac’s deeply affecting music, and both were typified by an enduring sense of optimism that a better world is possible. Reagan’s counter-revolution was the backdrop to Tupac’s formative years, and history is now repeating itself under Trump’s reactionary administration. It is therefore very fitting that Van Nguyen ends the book with a quote from the Makaveli album: “The Trick is to Never Lose Hope”.
April 20, 2025
Dean Van Nguyen's Words for My Comrades traces the fortunes of the Shakur family and the organizations and cultural movements they drew into their orbit. Heroic, flawed, maddening, yet magnetic to some of the most beautiful and dangerous aspects of American culture in the last century, their story illustrates how we are shaped not only by our ancestry but also by the environments we inhabit-some within our control, others engineered to derail us and suppress our gentlest instincts. Their lives mirror both the flaws and the beauty within ourselves and reflect a society long overdue for socialist change.
Van Nguyen's prose flows with a rhythm that mirrors the cadence of Tupac's own lyrics, making the narrative both engaging and thought-provoking. His meticulous research and vivid storytelling open up a world that compels readers to delve deeper into the socio-political landscapes that shaped the Shakurs. The best books do more than tell a story-they ignite a desire to learn more, and this work does just that.
Van Nguyen's prose flows with a rhythm that mirrors the cadence of Tupac's own lyrics, making the narrative both engaging and thought-provoking. His meticulous research and vivid storytelling open up a world that compels readers to delve deeper into the socio-political landscapes that shaped the Shakurs. The best books do more than tell a story-they ignite a desire to learn more, and this work does just that.
October 2, 2025
An excellently written and impeccably researched biography that convincingly frames Shakur not only as an iconoclastic artist but as both an inheritor and paragon of the radical tradition of the Black Panthers. Highly recommended.
December 14, 2025
I've witnessed the adulation of Tupac's legacy, but I knew very little about him, his music, his life. This book explained much of that... and more.
November 15, 2025
outstanding. what a time to be alive
August 19, 2025
Took a bit longer than I thought it would because of various life circumstances. Great primer on Malcolm X, the Black Panthers in the beginning of the book. This is all relevant to Tupacs upbringing. Goes through his life, music and politics. Virtually has a mini history of rap and hip-hop. Last 2 chapters are after his murder. Discussion of the shrining of capitalism amongst majority of rappers. Last chapter has a small section on leftist musicians that carry the torch.
I should probably do a video review on my TikTok.
I should probably do a video review on my TikTok.
September 3, 2025
You cannot talk about the artist that is Tupac Shakur without also talking about and understanding the political environment that shaped his upbringing. Dean Van Nguyen does an excellent job at presenting an informed view of the Black Panther Party, Afeni Shakur, and the culture that gave rise to one of the most recognized and celebrated artists in the industry.
September 28, 2025
I really enjoyed reading this book, it's a book not just about Tupac's life but how the political landscape he lived through influenced his work and life, as the author says " I had to show what [being of Black Panther parentage] exactly meant, who the Panthers were and how that spirit manifested in [Tupac]" .
August 22, 2025
This was a fantastic read, and while I’m a fan of Tupac I read this more for my love of Kendrick Lamar, who Tupac influenced in such a huge way. I loved how it illustrated Tupac’s politics through his upbringing, especially after the first half outlining the Black Panther Party. I think this is a fantastic book for the current moment in time too, given how civil liberties are disappearing by the day. Tupac’s music and the politics therein are as relevant as ever.
July 16, 2025
A striking and beautiful account of Tupac’s life and thoughts by Dublin’s own Dean van Nguyen. It charts his familial links to the Black Panthers, his own efforts as an activist (including a wild sequence where Tupac, barely an adult, attempts to lead a new Black Panther party in the late 80s, only to abandon this to go on tour with Digital Underground) and the changing face of hip-hop towards the bad kind of materialism, with the spectre of cointelpro hanging over it all.
Dean brings all the incisive analysis of his album reviews to this book, but this is a significant leap in depth, scale and purpose. If I didn’t like this book, no one would, so five stars shouldn’t come as a surprise.
A particularly moving passage about Tupac’s mother Afeni brought me to tears on a crowded train, so cheers Dean.
Dean brings all the incisive analysis of his album reviews to this book, but this is a significant leap in depth, scale and purpose. If I didn’t like this book, no one would, so five stars shouldn’t come as a surprise.
A particularly moving passage about Tupac’s mother Afeni brought me to tears on a crowded train, so cheers Dean.
July 26, 2025
There are some stylistic flourishes and certain connections drawn that I found a bit off, but overall this is a solid, comprehensive biography of Tupac and his political context
November 26, 2025
such an awesome depiction of Tupac’s life. i love the discussion about the Black Panthers, politics, other rap figures, and Tupac’s overall effect on pop culture. i loved this
May 23, 2025
Thank you to Doubleday and Netgalley for an eARC of this book.
This was a brilliant and thorough revolutionary history of Tupac Shakur. This book rightfully centers him with the Black Panther Party, a conversation that hasn't been expanded on much before.
The first part of the book is a detailed history of the BPP. Tupac is barely mentioned as we are given a crash course on the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, the Family and more. I found the author doesn't whitewash or villainize the revolutionaries, something that happens a lot in mainstream media, and I deeply appreciated this. The thorough history given (at times I felt like I was reading a book about the Black Panthers and not about Tupac) is why I am going to be recommending this book to others.
Sometimes all of the information given feels overwhelming. It is a lot of history to go through, especially in a book that seems like it isn't about what we are reading. But it is vital context to who Tupac Shakur was and what drove him. At one point in the book there is something said along the lines that Tupac was a revolutionary, but his passion was music. Thanks to the author we see those how those two worlds molded together to give us honest songs about being Black in America.
Tupac was a highly empathetic person whose mother was a revolutionary, because of this and his hardships growing up, he was deeply attuned to the violence of imperialist amerika and the problems of capitalism. The latter part of the book discusses the rise of capitalist rap and how hip-hop artists willingly gave up their more honest lyrics and experiences for a slice of fortune. It made me think of something Frantz Fanon says in Wretched of the Earth, that art by the colonized person will be accepted and celebrated by the colonizer so long as it upholds the colonizers beliefs and systems. Once art by the colonized becomes a way to encourage liberatory practice it is villainized and shut down. We see this in Tupac's work. His revolutionary ethics came out in his songs and encouraged revolutionary praxis among the people and still does.
This is a book I will be thinking on for a long time and I really appreciate the author doing the honor to Tupac of placing him rightfully where he belongs, as a revolutionary music artist in a revolutionary life.
This was a brilliant and thorough revolutionary history of Tupac Shakur. This book rightfully centers him with the Black Panther Party, a conversation that hasn't been expanded on much before.
The first part of the book is a detailed history of the BPP. Tupac is barely mentioned as we are given a crash course on the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, the Family and more. I found the author doesn't whitewash or villainize the revolutionaries, something that happens a lot in mainstream media, and I deeply appreciated this. The thorough history given (at times I felt like I was reading a book about the Black Panthers and not about Tupac) is why I am going to be recommending this book to others.
Sometimes all of the information given feels overwhelming. It is a lot of history to go through, especially in a book that seems like it isn't about what we are reading. But it is vital context to who Tupac Shakur was and what drove him. At one point in the book there is something said along the lines that Tupac was a revolutionary, but his passion was music. Thanks to the author we see those how those two worlds molded together to give us honest songs about being Black in America.
Tupac was a highly empathetic person whose mother was a revolutionary, because of this and his hardships growing up, he was deeply attuned to the violence of imperialist amerika and the problems of capitalism. The latter part of the book discusses the rise of capitalist rap and how hip-hop artists willingly gave up their more honest lyrics and experiences for a slice of fortune. It made me think of something Frantz Fanon says in Wretched of the Earth, that art by the colonized person will be accepted and celebrated by the colonizer so long as it upholds the colonizers beliefs and systems. Once art by the colonized becomes a way to encourage liberatory practice it is villainized and shut down. We see this in Tupac's work. His revolutionary ethics came out in his songs and encouraged revolutionary praxis among the people and still does.
This is a book I will be thinking on for a long time and I really appreciate the author doing the honor to Tupac of placing him rightfully where he belongs, as a revolutionary music artist in a revolutionary life.
March 19, 2025
Dean Van Nguyen's "Words for My Comrades" transcends a typical biography, presenting Tupac Shakur as a direct product of Black radical political thought. The book meticulously traces the influence of his mother, Afeni Shakur, a former Black Panther, and his stepfather's Marxist beliefs, illustrating how these experiences shaped Tupac's worldview and fueled his art. Through oral histories and rigorous research, Nguyen contextualizes Tupac's life and work within the broader history of Black revolutionary movements.
Nguyen's work is a researched and compelling examination of Tupac Shakur's life through the lens of Black Panther politics. The author avoids simplistic hero-worship, offering a nuanced portrait of a complex figure. The detailed exploration of Afeni Shakur's influence is a standout feature, providing a powerful portrayal of her dedication to activism and her profound impact on Tupac. The book effectively contextualizes Tupac's music and public persona within the historical context of the Black Panther Party's decline and the rise of hip-hop as a platform for political expression. The use of oral histories adds authenticity, allowing readers to hear directly from those who knew Tupac and Afeni. The writing is engaging, even when discussing complex political ideas.
Recommended for anyone interested in Tupac Shakur, hip-hop history, or the history of Black political movements. This book offers a fresh and insightful perspective on a cultural icon.
Rating: 3.75/5 stars
My Rating System:
1⭐️: The book didn’t hold my interest and/or had significant issues that overshadowed any redeeming qualities for me, but generally not my cup of tea. Most likely did not finish the book.
2⭐️: The book didn’t quite resonate with me, and while my experience wasn’t remarkable, I did finish it. It had some redeeming qualities and potential but fell short in execution. Recommendable, though with some reservations.
3⭐️: Good read, but didn’t quite stand out. Still worth recommending to others.
4⭐️: Really enjoyed it and stayed engaged throughout. Would read book again. Definitely recommendable.
5⭐️: Incredible writing that made me deeply connect with the characters. I was completely absorbed in the world and didn’t want it to end. This book stayed with me even when I wasn’t reading it. I'd gladly reread it and highly recommend it to everyone!
Thank you NetGalley for the arc review.
Nguyen's work is a researched and compelling examination of Tupac Shakur's life through the lens of Black Panther politics. The author avoids simplistic hero-worship, offering a nuanced portrait of a complex figure. The detailed exploration of Afeni Shakur's influence is a standout feature, providing a powerful portrayal of her dedication to activism and her profound impact on Tupac. The book effectively contextualizes Tupac's music and public persona within the historical context of the Black Panther Party's decline and the rise of hip-hop as a platform for political expression. The use of oral histories adds authenticity, allowing readers to hear directly from those who knew Tupac and Afeni. The writing is engaging, even when discussing complex political ideas.
Recommended for anyone interested in Tupac Shakur, hip-hop history, or the history of Black political movements. This book offers a fresh and insightful perspective on a cultural icon.
Rating: 3.75/5 stars
My Rating System:
1⭐️: The book didn’t hold my interest and/or had significant issues that overshadowed any redeeming qualities for me, but generally not my cup of tea. Most likely did not finish the book.
2⭐️: The book didn’t quite resonate with me, and while my experience wasn’t remarkable, I did finish it. It had some redeeming qualities and potential but fell short in execution. Recommendable, though with some reservations.
3⭐️: Good read, but didn’t quite stand out. Still worth recommending to others.
4⭐️: Really enjoyed it and stayed engaged throughout. Would read book again. Definitely recommendable.
5⭐️: Incredible writing that made me deeply connect with the characters. I was completely absorbed in the world and didn’t want it to end. This book stayed with me even when I wasn’t reading it. I'd gladly reread it and highly recommend it to everyone!
Thank you NetGalley for the arc review.
December 30, 2025
5 ⭐️
What I appreciated most about this book was how it situates rap music within a much longer history of resistance—especially through its connections to the Black Panther Party and other revolutionary movements that shaped the social and political landscape in which hip-hop was born. Van Nguyen does an excellent job tracing how artists were influenced by these traditions, showing that political rap didn’t emerge in a vacuum but grew out of deeply rooted struggles around race, policing, poverty, and liberation. The book feels both educational and alive, weaving historical context with the stories of artists who carried these ideas forward through music. I was especially struck by the treatment of Tupac. Rather than turning him into either a saint or a villain, the book presents him as a complex, contradictory figure—deeply thoughtful and politically engaged, but also shaped by trauma, anger, and the pressures of fame. Hearing both the positives and the failures of Tupac made the portrait feel honest and human, and it reflects one of the book’s greatest strengths: its refusal to flatten people into symbols.
What I appreciated most about this book was how it situates rap music within a much longer history of resistance—especially through its connections to the Black Panther Party and other revolutionary movements that shaped the social and political landscape in which hip-hop was born. Van Nguyen does an excellent job tracing how artists were influenced by these traditions, showing that political rap didn’t emerge in a vacuum but grew out of deeply rooted struggles around race, policing, poverty, and liberation. The book feels both educational and alive, weaving historical context with the stories of artists who carried these ideas forward through music. I was especially struck by the treatment of Tupac. Rather than turning him into either a saint or a villain, the book presents him as a complex, contradictory figure—deeply thoughtful and politically engaged, but also shaped by trauma, anger, and the pressures of fame. Hearing both the positives and the failures of Tupac made the portrait feel honest and human, and it reflects one of the book’s greatest strengths: its refusal to flatten people into symbols.
April 10, 2025
A fascinating, edifying, and unflinching chronical of the life, times, and politics of one of music's most iconic artists. Dean's exploration of how the topics of race and class molded Tupac's work is more vital now than ever.
In general, I find myself not particularly fond of non-fiction so I was worried that this could end up colouring my enjoyment of this but Dean’s writing style is so lyrical and engaging, I found myself hooked from the get go. The books balances being incredibly well researched and detailed with being with being an incredibly propulsive read. The book is thoughtful, exciting, witty, uncomfortable, and heartbreaking in equal measures while also managing to really educate the reader in, not only the life of the artist, but also that of the political movements that shaped it.
An absolute must for hip-hop, history and politics fans alike.
In general, I find myself not particularly fond of non-fiction so I was worried that this could end up colouring my enjoyment of this but Dean’s writing style is so lyrical and engaging, I found myself hooked from the get go. The books balances being incredibly well researched and detailed with being with being an incredibly propulsive read. The book is thoughtful, exciting, witty, uncomfortable, and heartbreaking in equal measures while also managing to really educate the reader in, not only the life of the artist, but also that of the political movements that shaped it.
An absolute must for hip-hop, history and politics fans alike.
July 29, 2025
1. Not sure why the author thought it was appropriate to write and speak the full N word throughout the book. Surely we all would have gotten the point if it was bleeped out. The whole book is about racism but the white author thought this was okay? 🤔🤔🤔🤔
2. It’s actually impressive how boring this book was. I don’t know how he managed to make a multifaceted and emotional story with so many legendary characters so bland
3. The last chapter about the tension between being anticapitalist while also trying to be in the music industry was interesting but like 2 pages.
2. It’s actually impressive how boring this book was. I don’t know how he managed to make a multifaceted and emotional story with so many legendary characters so bland
3. The last chapter about the tension between being anticapitalist while also trying to be in the music industry was interesting but like 2 pages.
April 21, 2025
An absolutely excellent book, written with true compassion and understanding. Really opened my mind to things I was unaware about Tupac Shakur. Would definitely recommend. 5/5
June 15, 2025
As Tupac said, “My mama always used to tell me: 'If you can't find somethin' to live for, you best find somethin' to die for.'”
Read
July 17, 2025Incredibly well written, I did find it to be equal parts extremely interesting and extremely depressing.
September 5, 2025
One of my favorite music writers writing on one of my favorite rappers and discovering that there was still much more to explore in his political lineage and philosophy. Masterful.
did-not-finish
December 16, 2025Audiobook DNFed @ 5%. As fascinating as the book's subject is, writing- and narration-wise, it felt extremely dry.
December 29, 2025
praxis
October 17, 2025
3.75 stars, rounded up.
Tupac Shakur lived for just 25 years, but he left an outsized legacy. Author Dean Van Nguyen has published a “political history,” a biography of sorts focusing on Tupac’s political ideology and the foundation on which it was formed. My thanks go to NetGalley and Doubleday for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
Van Nguyen begins his narrative with an overview of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. This is an area I’ve studied fairly closely, and so there was no new information in it for me, but I could see its value in a community college Black Studies or general history course. Once we’re past that, we enter into Tupac’s family background, and from there forward, his personal and political upbringings are intertwined. His parents were members of the Black Panthers, a militant, armed group of rebels seeking to force equity for Black people in the U.S. from a government that was long on promises and short on substance. There is a tremendous amount of the book given to the history of the Panthers, and most of what is recounted occurs either before Tupac was born, or while he was an infant.
Here's my takeaway: I have often been curious about the Panthers, whose struggle I knew in broad strokes, but few specifics, and so this is interesting to me. But the book’s title has led me to believe that this book is primarily about Tupac, and we are at around the 40% before he even comes into the narrative. This is my sole complaint about this work, but it’s a significant one. Had the title been clearer that this is really a history of Tupac and the Black Panthers, I probably would have still read it, but because of the way it’s promoted, I feel frustrated when the 20% mark goes on by, then the 30% mark, and apart from a brief reference or two, Tupac isn’t even in it. In fact, we learn more about his mother than we do about him.
Once we do get to the meat of the matter, this is riveting material. What a gifted man he was, and yet he was still coming of age when he died. He loved reading classical literature, and he attended a fine arts high school where he was better able to develop his interests and talents, playing in Shakespearean productions; but as is often the case for children in low-income households, about the time he put down roots and made connections, his mother had to give up their lodgings, and that meant moving to a new town and a new school.
This happens again and again. Single motherhood is hard anyway, but once you bring crack into it, the game’s all but over. And (here I suppress a primal scream,) because his father isn’t there and his mother is struggling, Tupac believes he must take care of his mother and long, long before he is old enough to bear such a burden. Teachers everywhere have seen that kid. He might be Black, Caucasian, or any other ethnic and racial background; he might be a she, for that matter. But children that take the responsibility that belongs to the head of the household are under a whole lot of stress, and the fracture lines often don’t show in their teens. They look as if they’re handling the job like an adult, often being praised by those in authority for their organization and focus. But—ask a social worker here—when they hit their twenties, that’s when they start falling apart. Because kids cannot be adults. When they are forced into the role, it will break them, sooner or later. And it seems clear to me that this is part of what led to Tupac’s early demise.
There’s a lot of interesting material packed into the relatively small part of the book that he occupies. We learn about the other famous performers he meets and befriends, first in school, then professionally, and about the political ideas he explores, serving for a while as a member and organizer of the local chapter of the Communist Party’s youth group. His willingness to dive deep into ethical and political ideas is reflected in his music, and to my knowledge, there is no other rapper that has included respect for women, along with an overtly pro-choice message, in their recordings. But just as his star begins to rise in earnest, he is killed.
Those considering reading this book should either be ready to read extensively about peripheral issues and events that don’t directly include Tupac, or should be ready to get the book with the intention of skipping a lot of material. As for me, I’m glad I read it.
Tupac Shakur lived for just 25 years, but he left an outsized legacy. Author Dean Van Nguyen has published a “political history,” a biography of sorts focusing on Tupac’s political ideology and the foundation on which it was formed. My thanks go to NetGalley and Doubleday for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
Van Nguyen begins his narrative with an overview of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. This is an area I’ve studied fairly closely, and so there was no new information in it for me, but I could see its value in a community college Black Studies or general history course. Once we’re past that, we enter into Tupac’s family background, and from there forward, his personal and political upbringings are intertwined. His parents were members of the Black Panthers, a militant, armed group of rebels seeking to force equity for Black people in the U.S. from a government that was long on promises and short on substance. There is a tremendous amount of the book given to the history of the Panthers, and most of what is recounted occurs either before Tupac was born, or while he was an infant.
Here's my takeaway: I have often been curious about the Panthers, whose struggle I knew in broad strokes, but few specifics, and so this is interesting to me. But the book’s title has led me to believe that this book is primarily about Tupac, and we are at around the 40% before he even comes into the narrative. This is my sole complaint about this work, but it’s a significant one. Had the title been clearer that this is really a history of Tupac and the Black Panthers, I probably would have still read it, but because of the way it’s promoted, I feel frustrated when the 20% mark goes on by, then the 30% mark, and apart from a brief reference or two, Tupac isn’t even in it. In fact, we learn more about his mother than we do about him.
Once we do get to the meat of the matter, this is riveting material. What a gifted man he was, and yet he was still coming of age when he died. He loved reading classical literature, and he attended a fine arts high school where he was better able to develop his interests and talents, playing in Shakespearean productions; but as is often the case for children in low-income households, about the time he put down roots and made connections, his mother had to give up their lodgings, and that meant moving to a new town and a new school.
This happens again and again. Single motherhood is hard anyway, but once you bring crack into it, the game’s all but over. And (here I suppress a primal scream,) because his father isn’t there and his mother is struggling, Tupac believes he must take care of his mother and long, long before he is old enough to bear such a burden. Teachers everywhere have seen that kid. He might be Black, Caucasian, or any other ethnic and racial background; he might be a she, for that matter. But children that take the responsibility that belongs to the head of the household are under a whole lot of stress, and the fracture lines often don’t show in their teens. They look as if they’re handling the job like an adult, often being praised by those in authority for their organization and focus. But—ask a social worker here—when they hit their twenties, that’s when they start falling apart. Because kids cannot be adults. When they are forced into the role, it will break them, sooner or later. And it seems clear to me that this is part of what led to Tupac’s early demise.
There’s a lot of interesting material packed into the relatively small part of the book that he occupies. We learn about the other famous performers he meets and befriends, first in school, then professionally, and about the political ideas he explores, serving for a while as a member and organizer of the local chapter of the Communist Party’s youth group. His willingness to dive deep into ethical and political ideas is reflected in his music, and to my knowledge, there is no other rapper that has included respect for women, along with an overtly pro-choice message, in their recordings. But just as his star begins to rise in earnest, he is killed.
Those considering reading this book should either be ready to read extensively about peripheral issues and events that don’t directly include Tupac, or should be ready to get the book with the intention of skipping a lot of material. As for me, I’m glad I read it.
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