2Pac

2Pac is considered one of the greatest rappers of all time, and many argue he is the best. His lyrics focus on social issues that he endured throughout his life. His mother was a crack fein, his father left, and his step father was and black panther, and was on Americas list of most wanted. Being raised into a family with a crackhead mother, and a black panther father figure, it is easy to see where his deep lyrics came from. He didn't just rap about killing people and dealing drugs, he often rapped about racial issues that have existed since the civil rights movement. He used rap as a way to show what he thought the problems with his society, and used rap to explain how he felt about those issues. In lyrics from the song “or my soul” Tupac say, “the choice is no stranger to poverty, your soul or government assitance, I'm 18 in a country with no path for a young un-addicted Black youth with a dream, instead I am given the ultimatum”. Almost all rap that exists preceding has had some influence from 2Pac. He was involved with beef with Biggie over a shooting that took place at Tupac's studio. Tupac died the night after he got into an altercation with a Crip gang member, but people suspected that Biggie had put a hit on Tupac. It has been speculated that Biggie was responsible for the killing. For me Tupac's music has the most meaning to it, and the most diversity to his songs. Pac seems to be the last hip-hop artist that wasn't forced into the stereo type of a black male. Often he talks about loving women and respecting them, he often wrote songs about the hardships women in the ghetto endured. In "keep ya head up" he says, "And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up"
He seems to have a greater social understanding of the problems with his society and the effects of his lyrics on society. I think Tupac's image is something the following years of rap tried to emulate, especially after the content of the lyrics changed when he had beef with Biggie.