“What connected Tyson and Tupac to each other was they were both able to experience an institution, an industry, that hated them but needed them because it satisfied their lust about what was awful about blackness. ’Pac would always fight against that image, but he himself was conflicted: He wanted to represent the ’hood, but he wanted to be bigger than that. And the same thing inevitably ended Mike Tyson’s boxing career, because Mike Tyson wanted to be a super boxer, but Mike’s career ended because he also wanted to be a thug. He could not deal with the tensions of who he was and who the world wanted him to be. That’s the same thing that Tupac experienced. When the world gives you this conflict, you almost inevitably self-destruct, because you’re not allowed to be more than one thing at one time. Tupac recognized that in Mike Tyson; that’s why the two of them got along so well.”
*****
Barely a minute into the fight, Tyson dropped Seldon with a seemingly invisible punch, then finished him off seconds later. Shakur watched the fight ringside with Marion “Suge” Knight, a former UNLV football player who had co-founded Death Row Records in 1991. Shakur had signed with Death Row after Knight posted a $1.4 million bail to get him out of prison on appeal in October 1995.
After the fight, Shakur and Knight were making their way through the MGM with members of their entourage when Shakur confronted and punched a man later identified as 21-year-old Orlando Anderson of Compton, California, a gang member with the South Side Crips. Shakur and Knight were both affiliated with the rival Mob Piru Bloods, and Shakur’s bodyguards proceeded to attack Anderson, beating and kicking him while he was on the ground. Following the melee, which was stopped by MGM security guards and captured on hotel surveillance cameras, Shakur, Knight and their crew were allowed to leave the MGM without being questioned. Anderson refused medical treatment, declined to file a complaint and headed out to the Strip. Carroll was in the arena for the fight, but immediately headed back outside afterward, unaware of what had happened in the casino.
*****
Gang violence had become a growing concern in Las Vegas in the mid-1980s, and by October 1991 The New York Times identified the city as one with a major gang problem, largely because of the increasing migration of the Los Angeles-based Crips and Bloods amid the Valley’s record-setting population boom. By 1996, the infiltration of the gangs had only become more prominent.
The growth of the Las Vegas gang scene also coincided with the rise of gangsta rap, which began to gain mainstream popularity in the late 1980s through artists such as Ice-T and N.W.A., who rhymed about police persecution, gang violence, drug use and misogyny. Songs such as “Fuck tha Police” and “Cop Killer” became anthems for young black men in urban neighborhoods who identified with the raw lyrical tales of the hardcore rappers.
Shakur released his first solo album, 2Pacalypse Now, in 1991, riffing on the usual topics of racism and police brutality, but the young rapper also addressed social issues such as poverty and teenage pregnancy. Born in the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York on June 16, 1971, Shakur was raised in an environment of political unrest and social upheaval. His mother, Afeni, was an active member of the Black Panther Party, and named her son after Tupac Amaru, a 16th-century Incan emperor who had resisted Spanish colonialism. It was that revolutionary spirit—part of a childhood in which his mother battled drug addiction, and she and other family members spent time in prison—that helped shape Shakur’s views.
By 1996, Shakur—whose family moved to Marin City, California, in 1988—had become a lightning rod in the growing East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry. He publicly accused New York-based rappers Biggie Smalls (a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.) and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs of orchestrating the 1994 attack on him, and he bragged in the 1996 song “Hit ’Em Up” about having sex with Smalls’ wife.
“Tupac was probably the one artist who was able to capture all the multiplicities of what hip-hop was in that era—and also in many ways capture what we want hip-hop to be,” Emdin says. “He was this non-apologetic revolutionary who was able to take a stand against the police or against anybody who seemed to speak in a negative manner about the hip-hop generation. But at the same time, he was also this man who adored women and who was able to write a song about his mother.
“Even in his misogyny, there were all these glimmers of hope and love, but at the same time he was able to capture the sentiments of an N.W.A., with the hyper-aggressive, hyper-thug imagery. Because he was able to carry all those things, all in one person, he redefined what ‘thug’ is. By being this complex person, he said that a thug is more than just this violent, angry person—that there were nuances to it.”
*****
*****
Barely a minute into the fight, Tyson dropped Seldon with a seemingly invisible punch, then finished him off seconds later. Shakur watched the fight ringside with Marion “Suge” Knight, a former UNLV football player who had co-founded Death Row Records in 1991. Shakur had signed with Death Row after Knight posted a $1.4 million bail to get him out of prison on appeal in October 1995.
After the fight, Shakur and Knight were making their way through the MGM with members of their entourage when Shakur confronted and punched a man later identified as 21-year-old Orlando Anderson of Compton, California, a gang member with the South Side Crips. Shakur and Knight were both affiliated with the rival Mob Piru Bloods, and Shakur’s bodyguards proceeded to attack Anderson, beating and kicking him while he was on the ground. Following the melee, which was stopped by MGM security guards and captured on hotel surveillance cameras, Shakur, Knight and their crew were allowed to leave the MGM without being questioned. Anderson refused medical treatment, declined to file a complaint and headed out to the Strip. Carroll was in the arena for the fight, but immediately headed back outside afterward, unaware of what had happened in the casino.
*****
Gang violence had become a growing concern in Las Vegas in the mid-1980s, and by October 1991 The New York Times identified the city as one with a major gang problem, largely because of the increasing migration of the Los Angeles-based Crips and Bloods amid the Valley’s record-setting population boom. By 1996, the infiltration of the gangs had only become more prominent.
The growth of the Las Vegas gang scene also coincided with the rise of gangsta rap, which began to gain mainstream popularity in the late 1980s through artists such as Ice-T and N.W.A., who rhymed about police persecution, gang violence, drug use and misogyny. Songs such as “Fuck tha Police” and “Cop Killer” became anthems for young black men in urban neighborhoods who identified with the raw lyrical tales of the hardcore rappers.
Shakur released his first solo album, 2Pacalypse Now, in 1991, riffing on the usual topics of racism and police brutality, but the young rapper also addressed social issues such as poverty and teenage pregnancy. Born in the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York on June 16, 1971, Shakur was raised in an environment of political unrest and social upheaval. His mother, Afeni, was an active member of the Black Panther Party, and named her son after Tupac Amaru, a 16th-century Incan emperor who had resisted Spanish colonialism. It was that revolutionary spirit—part of a childhood in which his mother battled drug addiction, and she and other family members spent time in prison—that helped shape Shakur’s views.
By 1996, Shakur—whose family moved to Marin City, California, in 1988—had become a lightning rod in the growing East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry. He publicly accused New York-based rappers Biggie Smalls (a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.) and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs of orchestrating the 1994 attack on him, and he bragged in the 1996 song “Hit ’Em Up” about having sex with Smalls’ wife.
“Tupac was probably the one artist who was able to capture all the multiplicities of what hip-hop was in that era—and also in many ways capture what we want hip-hop to be,” Emdin says. “He was this non-apologetic revolutionary who was able to take a stand against the police or against anybody who seemed to speak in a negative manner about the hip-hop generation. But at the same time, he was also this man who adored women and who was able to write a song about his mother.
“Even in his misogyny, there were all these glimmers of hope and love, but at the same time he was able to capture the sentiments of an N.W.A., with the hyper-aggressive, hyper-thug imagery. Because he was able to carry all those things, all in one person, he redefined what ‘thug’ is. By being this complex person, he said that a thug is more than just this violent, angry person—that there were nuances to it.”
*****
