White supremacy meets “black boy rage”: Why Tupac’s needed more today than ever [View all]

[bravenak]

Tupac would have turned 43 today. In age of Trayvon and Jordan Davis, here's why we have a hard time letting him go

MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH

Tupac Shakur lived for twenty-five years. I was nine years-old when he died and twenty-five seemed so grown to me. Twenty-five sounded like you had lived. It wasn’t until I started approaching twenty-five myself that I realized how close to black boyhood Tupac, born forty-three years ago to the day, was when he died.

I think that’s part of the reason we have a hard time letting him go. For all of his faults (and there were many), he continues to show up in our conspiracy theories and urban legends, as a hologram at Coachella and an inspiration on Broadway, in our art, our style, our memorials, our fantasies, and our histories because of what he represented. Tupac wasn’t the most impressive rapper. Only a diehard mourns the loss of his actual rhyme skills. But more than any other figure of that time, and probably since, Tupac articulated black boy rage in a way that was authentic, relatable, and easily translated to a nation determined to kill us. When he rapped, his vocal strain came directly from the gut, where he held his pain. He spoke with his entire body and you could damn near see the fury and anger pulsating just underneath his skin. Tupac screamed in America’s face on behalf of black boys in Brooklyn, Compton, Atlanta, Houston, St. Louis, Baltimore, Miami, and all over who had been terrorized by white supremacy.



http://www.salon.com/2014/06/16/white_supremacy_meets_black_boy_rage_why_tupacs_needed_more_today_than_ever/