Music Wire
September 1996
by Lynda Lane

Even the bright lights of the entertainment world couldn't blind violence to of the troubled life of late rapper Tupac Shakur. Shakur, 25, died September 13, 1996 in a Las Vegas, Nevada hospital, of injuries sustained from four bullets -- some of which necessitated the removal of one of his lungs a few days before his death.

Six nights before the shooting, Shakur and a bevy of cohorts had been looking forward to going to a club after witnessing world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson 's victory over Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. But Shakur's night on the town ended abruptly when he was ambushed by unknown assailants who fired on the car in which he was the passenger of Death Row Records label executive Marion "Suge" Knight , who suffered only minor injuries.

A former member of rap group Digital Underground, Shakur stepped into the spotlight as a solo artist with his 1992 album, 2Pacolypse Now (Priority). At the same time, he put his acting skills to work by portraying a violent, misguided youth in the highly-acclaimed film, Juice . He subsequently played a young man trying to win the heart of Janet Jackson's character in Poetic Justice and a smart aleck drug dealer in Above the Rim .

Shakur's climb to stardom was plagued with a series of criminal charges. In April, 1993, he spent 10 days in a Michigan prison for assaulting another rapper. The following October, he was arrested for allegedly shooting at two off-duty Atlanta, Georgia police officers; those charges were eventually dropped. The next month, he faced charges of sexual abuse, sodomy and weapons charges in New York City. The day before he was convicted of sexual abuse, Shakur was shot five times and had money and gold jewelry stolen off of him in the lobby of a Times Square recording studio. Police classified this attack as a robbery.

After recovering from the shooting, Shakur served time for sexual abuse. While in prison, he got married and his third solo album, Me Against the World (Priority/Scarface), rose to #1. After Shakur had served eight months behind bars, Marion "Suge" Knight came to his rescue, bailing him out and immediately signing him to Death Row. His debut release for Death Row, All Eyez On Me , sold five million copies and scored a number-one single. Once again, Shakur was back in the spotlight touting the "Thug Life" he was living -- expensive cars, guns, women and dodging death. The album included other controversial Death Row luminaries Snoop Doggy Dog and Tha Dogg Pound. He also annulled the marriage to his wife, Keisha , shortly after his release.

The violence afflicting Shakur's life was nothing new to him. He started out life in prison, literally, as his mother, Afeni , gave birth to him in a cell after being arrested. At the time, she was a member of the Black Panther Party -- an organization whose purpose was to better conditions in Black neighborhoods, but whose activities were shady in the eyes of the FBI. In a television interview taped months preceding his death, Shakur remarked that trouble was all he knew because he came from a family that fought constantly with trouble. He was not afraid to die. He rapped about it in several songs. Now, it has become his reality.

Reuters reports that Shakur's family had his body cremated over the weekend in a private funeral. A spokesman for Death Row declined comment about this, but did say that there will be a memorial service tomorrow, September 19, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, California at 11:30 a.m. Meanwhile, police still have no suspects in Shakur's slaying.

Shakur had recently wrapped up work on another movie, Gridlock , in which he and actor Tim Roth play heroin addicts. It is due out early next year.

(Some of the information in the above article came from reports filed by Reuters and MTV News.) rs and MTV News.)