Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on June 16, 1971 to his mother Alice Faye Williams. She was a black panther at the time and called herself “Afeni Shakur”. Tupac was born in a New York City jail to his mother, who was there on 156 bombing charges. Although she was in jail at the time of Tupac’s birth, Afeni was a paralegal and wanted Tupac to understand the value of a good education. .
Tupac never knew who his father was and over time this bothered him.
At the age of fifteen, Tupac found himself in Baltimore, where he found his new love for rap music. He started writing lyrics and felt more confident in who he was. He started out calling himself MC New York and had a reputation for being a tough guy. By age twenty, Tupac had been arrested eight times and served eight months in prison for convictions of sexual abuse.
With troubles surrounding him and his family, he decided to join the Grammy nominated rap group Digital Underground as a dancer / rapper. After touring with them for a year, he released his first solo album in 1991 with “2pacalypse Now”. The album had two very successful tracks that can be found on her greatest hits album with “Trapped” and “Brenda’s Got A Baby”. With the success of his debut album, he wanted to show the world that he was not just a rapper and starred in the 1992 film “Juice.”
All of his success came to a halt in 1994 when he was arrested on charges of sexual assault in New York and later that month he was also shot outside a music studio in New York. After he recovered from his injuries, Tupac released “Me Against The World” which was another very successful album.
Continuing the success of his 1995 album “Me Against The World”, Tupac released his first album on Death Row Records. The album “All Eyez On Me” debuted at number 1 on the Billboard album chart. The album went on to sell nine million records and is considered one of the best hip hop albums of all time.
On September 7, 1996, Tupac was shot in a drive following a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. Six days later he was pronounced dead and soon after a lot of questions arose about the weather or not, he was actually shot.
Two months after his passing, Tupac released another album titled “The Don Killuminati”, under the alias “Makaveli”.
Although he is no longer alive, Tupac’s fame continues to rise to this day. Since his death, he has released numerous albums alongside the January 1997 film Gridlock’d.