"June xvi, 1971 / Mama gave birth to a hellraisin' heavenly son." – 2pac, "Cradle to the Grave"

On this mean solar day 44 years ago, Afeni Shakur, a 24 year old Black Panther from Lumberton, N Carolina, gave birth to her beginning child and just son at a infirmary in East Harlem but weeks after being acquitted of conspiring to blow upwardly New York City police precincts, department stores, and public buildings in what became known equally the "Panther 21" trial. As anyone reading this commodity probably knows, that kid, Tupac Amaru Shakur, grew upward to become one of the most of import pop culture icons of his generation. Nearly twenty years later his death, his legacy continues to be celebrated across the globe: statues of him have been erected in Stone Mount, Georgia and Herford, Frg; commercials based on his poetry air on American idiot box; contemporary Hip Hop albums, similar Kendrick Lamar'south To Pimp a Butterfly, are inspired past his life and music; and people as disparate as Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Vladislav Surkov, 1 of Vladimir Putin's top advisors, take expressed admiration for his torso of piece of work. Despite the already long shadow Tupac casts over the pop culture landscape, many proceed to wonder how much more than he could take achieved had he not been murdered at the age of 25.

This article written in celebration of what would accept been Tupac Shakur's twoscore-fourth birthday asks what might have been had he not driven to Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, not encountered Orlando Anderson at the MGM G afterward the Mike Tyson – Bruce Seldon fight, and not been riding shotgun in Suge Knight's BMW on the way to Club 662 that night. While that kind of enquiry necessarily involves speculation, every bit discussed below, Tupac left behind clues regarding his ambitions in music, films, and beyond.

Tupac Shakur: The Musician

In September 1996, Tupac was the nigh provocative artist working in pop music'due south most controversial genre. Seven months before, he stormed the charts with All Eyez On Me, his most ambitious album and the showtime in rap music to span two compact discs. Four months after that, he released "Hit 'Em Up," a merciless diss record that irrevocably severed his ties to East Coast rivals like the Notorious B.I.G. and Bad Boy Records. Fighting rap wars and collecting platinum plaques, Tupac was having a memorable 1996 by any metric but he knew that success is a jealous mistress. He was the hardest working human in Hip Hop and was developing a number of projects at the time of his death that were never fully realized.

The all-time known and closest to completion of those projects was the Makaveli album released posthumously by Expiry Row Records in November 1996 (Makaveli, a play on Niccolo Machiavelli, was Tupac's Outlaw nickname). Incorrectly titled in the rush to go it in stores (the championship should accept been Killuminati: The seven Twenty-four hours Theory, not The Don Killuminati: The 7 24-hour interval Theory), the Makaveli album was most finished that September and Tupac had already filmed three music videos to promote it (two for "Toss It Upward" and one for "To Live & Die in L.A."). The Makaveli anthology provoked polarized reactions from critics and fans alike. Some gimmicky reviewers mistakenly characterized it as a crass cash-in compiled later Tupac's death but it is actually 1 of his most complete cocky-portraits and is now considered one of his masterpieces.

Tupac had also been working on another project with a far different goal than the often vindictive Makaveli record. That project was One Nation, a compilation he conceived to heal the rift between the East Declension and West Coast during that tumultuous period of Hip Hop history. (He spells out its concept on the unreleased track "My Ain Fashion": "Now Eastward to West is irrelevant, we're doing it worldwide . . . Was it ever a war? If it was, today we sign the treaty.") Like All Eyez On Me, Ane Nation was to be a ii-disc affair (one on Death Row and the other on Duck Downwards Records, a characterization headquartered in New York) and has become legendary amid Tupac'south most devoted fans. Though One Nation was never completed (according to Duck Downward CEO Dru-Ha, it was about 75% finished), Tupac recorded a number of tracks for it over the form of two weeks in June 1996 (a few of those tracks, including "Military Minds," were later remixed and released posthumously by the Shakur Manor). Participating in those recording sessions was a various core of emcees from both coasts: Snoop Dogg, Buckshot (of Black Moon), Smif-N-Wessun, Greg Squeamish (of Nice and Smooth), the Outlawz (Tupac'due south rap group hailing from New Jersey), Melle Mel (one of rap's pioneers), and Scorpio (a member of Grandmaster Flash's Furious Five). Tupac as well reached out to Outkast and The Roots for the anthology, and had plans for artists similar Kurupt, Scarface, Kokane, Spice 1, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Da Luniz to invitee star also. Some of the songs Tupac earmarked for I Nation have never been heard by the public but its existence as a concept lonely is strong prove that his feuds with Due east Declension artists were personal in nature, not merely territorial as often portrayed by the media, and suggests that Tupac may have put some of his more trivial beefs to rest had he not been silenced prematurely (as he had with NaS in Bryant Park following the MTV Music Video Awards on September 4, 1996).

The music projects Tupac was working on at the terminate of his life were numerous. In addition to those previously discussed, Tupac was writing and recording songs for the Outlawz' debut LP and for MC Hammer's never-released Death Row anthology, as well every bit overseeing the soundtrack for his upcoming moving picture, Gridlock'd (one of the artists Tupac wanted on the soundtrack was, believe it or non, Alanis Morissette). Further off in the distance was a collaboration with controversial R&B legend R. Kelly (the original idea for his Best of Both Worlds albums with Jay-Z was born during an encounter between R. and Tupac at the Hotel Nikko in Los Angeles) and an introspective album he likened to "a Me Confronting the World function ii."

Tupac's biggy productivity could give one the impression that he had never been more passionate about making music at the end of his life. That'southward not entirely true. Rather than some newfound affection for recording, Tupac'south relentless piece of work ethic during his xi months at Expiry Row might best exist explained by his premonitions of decease and the possibility of reincarceration if the appeal of his sex-corruption conviction was denied. Tupac'due south interviews in the terminal year of his life suggest that he was fueled past something other than a beloved of music (he had contemplated retiring from rap while he was imprisoned and told a reporter from Canada'southward MuchMusic that "Nosotros rap to make coin. We do business concern." but three days before he was fatally shot). In one interview on the set of Gridlock'd, Tupac expressed a longing for more acting gigs and described himself equally "an actor. I just happen to rap in my spare fourth dimension instead of being a waiter." Even when beingness interviewed by Hip Hop journalists, Tupac did not hide his feelings regarding the dubiety of his music career. In April 1996, he told Sway from KMEL in San Francisco that he saw himself existence an A&R for Death Row Records by 2001, someone like Paul McCartney, who dropped albums every five years or and so.

Despite Tupac's proclamations of loyalty to Expiry Row, many Hip Hop listeners yet fence over how much longer he would have been associated with the label and its embattled CEO, Marion "Suge" Knight. Earlier delving into that debate, a flake of groundwork is necessary. On September 16, 1995, Tupac signed a hand-written three album deal with Death Row naming Suge every bit his manager and David Kenner (counsel for Expiry Row) equally his attorney. (The apparent conflict of interest posed by Kenner representing both Tupac and Death Row aroused no protest past the parties.) Less than a month afterwards Tupac signed the contract, Kenner was able to obtain go out from the New York Court of Appeals to post Tupac's $1.4 million bail. On February 13, 1996, Tupac's Death Row debut, All Eyez On Me, was in stores. Those who believe Tupac wanted off Expiry Row argue that All Eyez (2 compact discs long) constituted two separate albums within the pregnant of his contract, evidencing that he was eager to fulfill its terms and that the Makaveli album would have been his terminal on Death Row. They may be correct in one sense: Tupac'southward newly founded Makaveli Records was just getting started and subsequent projects, like One Nation, would likely have been branded with its logo (which featured a five-pointed crown, a symbol of the Bloods) had Tupac lived. Even so, those who cite All Eyez as evidence of Tupac'due south restlessness never put forth whatsoever public statements fabricated by him to that event or any language in his contract or legal precedent supporting the conclusion that a double full-length anthology constitutes 2 dissever albums for purposes of determining whether a multi-album recording deal has been terminated or not. If that was what Tupac intended, Decease Row'southward legal team would undoubtedly have fought such an interpretation vigorously.

Others have cited Tupac's firing of attorney David Kenner on August 27, 1996 as proof of his intention to get out. Co-ordinate to a story published by The New Yorker, Tupac fired Kenner, a powerful figure at the label, considering Kenner had prohibited Tupac from removing tapes of his recordings from the studio that nighttime (a long-continuing policy at Death Row intended to prevent leaks). Whether Tupac had been planning to fire Kenner or did so out of acrimony is not entirely articulate. Either way, that incident is 1 of a number suggesting Tupac'due south unhappiness with his label. Not everyone thinks that Tupac had ane foot out the door, still. Some Death Row employees have opined that Tupac was not unhappy, had no intentions of leaving, and have characterized his relationship with Suge equally a close one. Tupac'due south firing of Kenner is too non necessarily inconsistent with him preparing to run Makaveli Records underneath Expiry Row's expanding umbrella of operations. (In the summer of 1996, Death Row was renamed The New and "Untouchable" Death Row Records in gild to reflect its new structure: a number of sublabels, including Makaveli Records, Doggystyle Records, and Death Row Eastward, were to be tied to the original label run by Suge.) Given that Tupac, at some point, had plans to practise business with Death Row as both an artist and every bit the head of his own characterization, it made even less sense for him to continue retaining Kenner's services given Kenner'due south loyalty to Decease Row.

Still, many believe that Tupac had definite plans to have Makaveli Records and his newly formed Euphanasia production visitor elsewhere, to Quincy Jones at Warner Bros. perhaps. How that move might have affected Tupac's freedom given the bail coin Expiry Row helped put up has not been explained. One of the attorneys who was handling Tupac's sex-corruption appeal, Charles Ogletree, Jr. (an achieved Harvard Constabulary Professor), believes that issue is irrelevant – "It wasn't a legal contract . . . It was cool that anyone with an opportunity to reflect would hold to those terms. It was only because he was in prison house that he signed it," he told The New Yorker'southward Connie Bruck in 1997.

E.D.I. Mean of the Outlawz (who knew Tupac ameliorate than near anyone) also believes that Tupac'south days as a Death Row inmate were numbered. He cryptically replied that there was going to exist "life subsequently Death Row" when I asked him nearly Tupac's future plans at a Grammy Museum event in February. Any Tupac's private intentions, he remained loyal to Expiry Row in public even after firing Kenner. The final videos he shot and tracks he recorded (including "Allow'z Get Information technology On" for Mike Tyson'due south ring entrance) characteristic Expiry Row shout-outs galore and the brawl he started at the MGM in Las Vegas on the night he was shot was allegedly precipitated past the theft of a Death Row Records chain by South Side Compton Crip Orlando Anderson.

Whether Tupac remained on Death Row or not, based on statements he made around the time of his death, it seems probable that his torrid pace would have slowed long agone and that he might not even be recording had he lived to come across this twenty-four hour period. Given his pronounced dear of acting, it seems probable that he would take followed the path since trod by Will Smith (the married man of one of his best friends, Jada Pinkett-Smith), Ice Cube, and Ludacris, all of whom have had highly successful music careers somewhat overshadowed by their Hollywood exploits over the past twenty years.

Tupac Shakur: The Actor

Tupac's honey for the spotlight was apparent from a very early age. As a youth, he ofttimes reenacted The A-Team with friends and ever gave himself the role of Hannibal, the Team's cigar-chomping leader. At historic period 12, he joined a New York theater troupe and went on to play Travis in a traveling product of A Raisin in the Sun that was performed at a Jesse Jackson presidential campaign outcome at Harlem's Apollo Theater. When Tupac's family moved to Baltimore, he attended the prestigious School for the Arts where he met future extra Jada Pinkett-Smith and starred in productions of Shakespeare's Othello and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Years later, Tupac'south rap ambitions synergized with his interim aspirations (he told one interviewer toward the terminate of his life that "[t]he reason I've been successful in the rap game, I think, is that I treat my albums like movies, and I treat writing [songs] like I'm a grapheme writing a story"). Two months afterward his debut anthology 2pacalypse Now was released to great controversy, he burned upward the silver screen in a critically-acclaimed operation as Bishop in Ernest R. Dickerson's Juice. Though Tupac's off-screen troubles made studios wary of casting him, he turned in magnetic performances in Poetic Justice and Above the Rim and on tv set shows like A Different World and In Living Color. Even when he was tirelessly recording at Death Row, Tupac continued seeking out parts in major motion pictures.

In the summertime of 1996, Tupac played starring roles in not ane but two films that were released theatrically post-obit his death. The starting time filmed and premiered was Gridlock'd, a well-reviewed dark one-act about the trials and tribulations of two heroin addicts (the other played by Tim Roth) caught upwardly in the stifling bureaucracy of American drug treatment facilities. The second was Gang Related, a conventional crime drama most corrupt law officers that co-starred Jim Belushi and Lela Rochon. Both roles Tupac played in those films reflect his well-founded fear of being typecast. In one he played a maverick musician and in the other a conflicted cop, 2 characters worlds away from the dangerous criminals he played in Juice and Above the Rim. Tupac explained his interim ambitions at the end of his life – "Upon my release [from prison], I felt like I wanted to be seen as a complete homo existence. I'thousand through mimicking characters for people and so that they can get a better understanding on what young black males are about. I desire to mimic a whole grapheme, so that I tin get a ameliorate agreement of what men and human beings are virtually . . . Not all sad. Not trigger-happy. Not all serious."

Up until the last days of his life, Tupac continued to push button for more interesting parts. According to Rick Clifford (an engineer at Death Row Records), Tupac intended to audition for a role in George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. John Singleton, who directed Tupac in Poetic Justice and recently stepped downward from directing Morgan Creek's Tupac biopic, also had a motion-picture show for Tupac in the pipeline: the atomic number 82 played past Tyrese Gibson in 2001's Baby Boy was originally written with Tupac in mind. Tupac also understood the value of developing his own characters. He wrote a number of screenplays over the years, including while he was incarcerated in 1995. Pages from one of those scripts, Live 2 Tell, are currently on display at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.

Given Tupac's rough edges and gift for portraying outsiders, information technology is hard to imagine him condign the kind of box role superstar Will Smith morphed into by fighting aliens in 1996'due south Independence Day. The roles he excelled in were grittier than those that populate this era's figurer-enhanced cartoonish fare. It is much easier to pic him today in the types of roles favored by actors like Sean Penn (who Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman compared Tupac to in 1994), Michael K. Williams (who Tupac discovered), or Mickey Rourke (who declared that Tupac was "as real as any fuckin' method actor that e'er stepped human foot on the planet").

However Tupac's interim career would have panned out, one affair is adequately certain: moviegoers missed out on a major talent. Though not classically trained ("due to the poverty and the natural circumstances that stopped me, similar being poor and homeless, I never got a gamble to leisurely study interim with great teachers and fine-tune my craft"), Tupac brought something unique to every film he starred in and it is no stretch to conclude that his performances were the highlight of every production he was part of. Don't accept my word for it. If yous wish to discover Tupac's on-screen charisma for yourself, Juice can currently be streamed on NetFlix in the United States and all of his films are available on DVD (sadly, none of them, including the Academy Honor-nominated documentary Tupac: Resurrection, are on Blu-ray).

Tupac Shakur: The Activist

Tupac was something of a 20th century renaissance human. In add-on to his many creative endeavors, he was deeply involved in issues affecting his community. Tupac had no selection only to go an activist. His family unit ensured that he was steeped in the revolutionary movements of the 1970s from a very early age. At just v years old, Tupac gave his kickoff public speech at a Black Panther rally in New York City. When he was a teenager in New York and Baltimore, he organized AIDS Awareness and Stop the Violence campaigns in his neighborhoods. Past 18, he was the National Chairman of the New Afrikan Panthers, an organization inspired by the Black Panther Party that his mother was so committed to.

Tupac also made time for the causes he was passionate about despite the hectic schedule he kept as he transformed into a rap music superstar. His vocal "Ghetto Gospel" was originally recorded to do good the Special Olympics and he ofttimes gave strangers who were down on their luck a identify to stay at his homes in Oakland and Los Angeles. He never forgot the violence plaguing the neighborhoods of his childhood either. In 1992, Tupac and his step-father, Mutulu Shakur, helped broker a truce between Blood and Crip sets in Los Angeles, an ironic accomplishment in low-cal of the circumstances of Tupac's expiry four years later.

Tupac's good deeds did not abate while he was on Expiry Row Records in the last year of his life. He passed out Thanksgiving turkeys to impoverished families in South Los Angeles, performed "Love Mama" for single mothers at a costless luncheon on Mother's Day, and helped open a new location for A Identify Called Habitation, a non-profit organization defended to at-risk youth, ii weeks earlier he died. Right until the terminate, Tupac was lending a helping hand. He and Suge were on the style to a charity consequence for Barry's Boxing, a gym owned by a Las Vegas constabulary officer, when they were fired upon at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane on September 7, 1996. The above represents just a handful of the acts of compassion Tupac performed for others over the course of his brief life.

Tupac's advancement in his last days was political, too. On August xv, 1996, he spoke out in favor of affirmative action at a rally in Los Angeles and was scheduled to headline a do good concert at the Shrine Auditorium opposing California's Proposition 209 (a then-proposed law that ultimately prohibited state regime institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in public employment, contracting, and pedagogy) that was cancelled because of his death. Tupac would never see many of his dreams realized merely at least one of them was brought to life by a friend of his after he died. While on the way to a film set during his last summer, he told actress Rashida Jones (the sis of his fiancée, Kidada) that he wanted to bring "ambition and excellence" back to the hood past rewarding underprivileged children who had perfect school attendance by setting up sports teams for them that would have been coached by himself and other rap musicians. Nine years later, his friend and Death Row label mate, Snoop Dogg, started his own youth football league with similar aspirations.

Like many immature people, Tupac ascribed to the theory that "information technology'south better to fire out than to fade abroad." During the "interview" at the conclusion of Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, he states, "[i]northward this land, a black man only take like five years we can showroom maximum strength . . . 'Cause once you turn thirty, information technology's like they take the center and soul out of a man, out of a black man in this country . . . And if you don't believe me you tin look around; you lot don't run across no loud mouth thirty year erstwhile motherfuckers." Whether he would have grown out of that conventionalities will never be known. However, as outspoken and insightful as he was at just 25, information technology is hard to imagine him keeping his "loud mouth" shut when the Twin Towers fell, every bit New Orleans drowned, and while Baltimore burned.

One of the nigh disappointing failures of mainstream Hip Hop music in the past x years has been the art form's relative silence regarding Barack Obama and the social and political bug highlighted by his presidency. I, for one, believe that Tupac would take been extremely proud of President Obama's accomplishments but I practice non doubtfulness for a second that Tupac would have lashed out with his acidic natural language whenever he felt Barack had failed to live up to his hope. Edgeless honesty and fearlessness in the face of power was 1 of Tupac'southward greatest virtues. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of his death, autonomously from the terrible loss suffered by his loved ones, is that no one with his point of view, intelligence, and rhetorical gifts has been able to fill the void left in his absence. Shortly after Tupac's death, Quincy Jones summed upwards Tupac'due south tragedy far more than eloquently than I ever could:

"The tragedy of Tupac is that his untimely passing is representative of too many young black men in this country . . . If nosotros had lost Oprah Winfrey at 25, we would take lost a relatively unknown, local market TV anchorwoman. If nosotros had lost Malcolm Ten at 25, we would have lost a hustler nicknamed Detroit Blood-red. And if I had left the world at 25, we would have lost a big-ring trumpet thespian and aspiring composer — merely a sliver of my eventual life potential."

Michael Namikas is a writer and longtime Hip Hop listener who skillful constabulary in a past life and is currently writing a listener'southward guide devoted to the music of Tupac Shakur, the first book of which will be published in the showtime quarter of 2016. He frequently posts on Reddit as /u/Mikeaveli2682 and can be followed on Twitter @Mikeaveli2682.