When Tupac's third album came out on March 14, 1995, he was still in jail. Its title, Me Against the World, could not have been more apt. It reached No. 1 in the Billboard 200 chart and is considered by many to be his magnum opus — "by and large a work of pain, anger and burning desperation" wrote Cheo H. Coker at Rolling Stone. But there was vulnerability, too — lead single, "Dear Mama," was a tear-jerking tribute to his mother, Afeni.
While Tupac was in prison he was visited by Suge Knight, the notorious label boss of Death Row records. Knight offered to post the $1.3 million dollar bail Tupac needed to be released pending his appeal. The condition was that Tupac sign on to Death Row. Tupac duly signed and was released from the high-security Dannemora facility in New York in October 1995.
Tupac's debut for Death Row — the double-length album All Eyez on Me — came out just months later, in February 1996. With his new hip hop group Outlawz debuting on the album, All Eyes on Me was an unapologetic celebration of the thug lifestyle, eschewing socially conscious lyrics in favour of gangsta-funk hedonism and menace. Dr Dre, who had pioneered g-funk with NWA, produced the album's first single, "California Love" — which went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and remains Tupac's best-known song. The third single from the album, "How Do You Want It," also reached No. 1. Within two months of its release, All Eyez on Me had been certified five-times double-platinum. It would eventually become diamond certified.
At the same time as he was glorifying an outlaw lifestyle for Death Row, Tupac was financing an at-risk youth center, bankrolling South Central sports teams, setting up a telephone help line for young people with problems — all noted in Robert Sam Anson's Vanity Fair article, published after Tupac's death. But when he was still alive, the wider world seemed most enthralled with Tupac in the role of the bad man. And Tupac kept playing to the gallery. In June 1996 he released a diss track, "Hit 'Em Up," aimed at Biggie Smalls and his label boss at Bad Boy Records, Sean "Puffy" Combs — ratcheting up the tension between East and West Coast rap, in what was fast becoming hip hop's most famous — and ugliest — beef.
Violent Death in Vegas
Things came to a head on September 7, 1996 when Tupac was shot again. This time he would not survive. He was in Vegas with Knight to watch a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand hotel. There was a scuffle after the bout between a member of the Crips gang and Tupac. Knight, who was involved with the rival Bloods gang, and members of his entourage also piled in. Later, as a car that Tupac was sharing with Knight stopped at a red light, a man emerged from another car and fired 13 shots, hitting Tupac in the hand, pelvis and chest. He died at the hospital six days later. His girlfriend Kidada — daughter of Quincy Jones — and his mother Afeni were both with him in his final days. He left no children.
Tupac's body was cremated and members of his old band Outlawz made the controversial claim that they had smoked some of his ashes in honor of him. As for the rest of the rapper's remains, his mother announced she would scatter her son's ashes in Soweto, South Africa — the "birthplace of his ancestors" — on the 10th anniversary of his murder. However, she later changed the date to June 16, 1997 (Tupac's 26th birthday as well as the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising), citing personal reasons.
Tupac's murder has never been solved; conspiracy theories have raged ever since. (And so has the ugly profiteering — the BMW in which Tupac was riding when he was fatally shot went on sale in February 2017 on the memorabilia site Moments in Time, priced at $1.5 million.) On March 9, 1997, six months after Tupac died, Biggie Smalls was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. His murder has never been solved, either.
Posthumous Albums & Musical Legacy
Tupac's fifth album — Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory — was released just eight weeks after his death. It would also reach No. 1. It was the first of six posthumous studio albums, up to and including Pac's Life in 2006 — two more than Tupac managed when he was alive. He has sold more than 75 million albums to date.
On April 7, 2017 Tupac Shakur received one of music's highest honors by being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A worthy inclusion for a rapper held by many to have been the greatest of all time.
A biopic, All Eyez on Me, directed by Benny Boom and starring Demetrius Shipp Jr., was released in 2017. A six-part series Biography Presents: Who Killed Tupac?, which follows civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump as he conducts an investigation into key theories behind Tupac's 1996 killing, will air on A&E on November 21st.
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