5 Grand;9463792 said:
This guy is right. When I was 25 I knew that being a "thug" wouldn't change the conditions of the Black community...you'd just end up dead or in jail, which is what happened to 2Pac and Suge.
I knew that when I was 20 and when I was 15. I even knew that when I was 10.
The whole "thug life" persona never made any sense. He was acting like a gangsta because it sold records but he COULDN'T have honestly thought he was a positive role model for struggling youth.
In fact, I remember around that time OJ was on trial for murder. Both attorney's for the case were Black, OJ's lawyer was Johnny Cochran and the Prosecutor was Christopher Darden, both brown skinned. And Colin Powell was in the news because he was in the president's cabinet. And then you had Minister Farrakhan and the Million Man March. Those are the real role models for the Black community, compare their accomplishments to some guy with a bandana and THUG LIFE tattooed across his chest.
I agree with some of this, particular most of the last paragraph, although Chris Darden was a token, and I knew that before my first nut. But tupac's strategy never had a chance to play out. I think one nation would have had tangible results. Of course he couldn't get the dealers to stop dealing, but I bet some of that drug money would have went to more positive causes. Pac's following has never been seen before in hip hop, or after, he had the medium, and the charisma to make somethin shake.
The things he talked about in that phone call with Monster Kody and the letter he sent home from the joint showed that he was trying to put the pill in the peanut butter. He wasn't the greatest lyricist, but when he spoke, people listened, and that ain't no making heroes bigger after they died shit. When pac passed niggas knew where they was when they found out, niggas was sayin shit like "We gettin fucked up tonight for pac my nigga" I remember it like yesterday. He wouldn't have changed everything, but to say he wouldn't have made a change is close to ignorant.
In the early 2000s, when niggas was startin to get away with all kinds of fuckery in hip hop, I remember people sayin things like "if pac was around he wouldn't have went for that" although it was largely dispelled that pac wasn't that damn powerful, the fact that that's who people thought was save hip hop because of his voice and his principles was pretty strange, but it spoke to the hole he left when he passed.
As a child in the ghetto i'd be more apt to connect with something that was familiar than unfamiliar. Nobody saw Colin Powell in anybody they was close to, but pac could have been any kid from the ghetto. I wasn't a pac fan, but you can't deny what he meant to the community. Nigga was one of a kind. You kinda got it fucked up.