Tupac Shakur's Revolutionary Notes
"While others giggled and joked I would watch & take notes"
Tupac Shakur (1971-1996) was born to lead a revolution.
His mother, Afeni Shakur, was a prominent Black Panther,1 who was arrested with the Panther 21. Afeni, a brilliant public speaker, represented herself in court even though she wasn’t a lawyer. In her cross-examination, she eviscerated the police informants who set-up the Panthers. Afeni’s, and the other Panthers’ charges were dismissed, but she had already spent two years behind bars.
A month later, Afeni gave birth to Tupac, who would later say:
…I was cultivated in prison, my embryo was in prison.2
Tupac was also cultivated in the heart of a crumbling social justice movement. He watched as the Panthers lost power. He saw Panthers—including his god parents—locked up for crimes of which they would later be found innocent. He saw his mother betrayed by other Panthers. And he saw the failures of trickle down economics in the urban neighborhoods he grew up in. All of this instilled in Tupac a deep commitment to social justice.
His early music was explicitly political. And it all stemmed from his relationship with his mother, explored in this excellent documentary series. Watch the trailer, if only for the clips of Tupac as an endearing high school student.
Tupac’s life ended in the cross-fires of gang violence, but his ending should not define his life. Instead, I will focus on Tupac’s vibrant politics and his poetic brilliance.
Tupac’s “The New Afrikan Panthers” Notebook
Tupac might have become a prominent political leader if his music career hadn’t been so successful. For a time, he was the national chairman of the New Afrikan Panthers—a group that “aimed to raise consciousness in Black youth through intensive lectures on Black history and critical-thinking discussions that evoked pride and resilience.”3 As was his practice, Tupac devoted a notebook to this project:
Tupac’s charisma and intelligence made him a born leader. From the start, his poetic talent was entwined with his commitment to social justice. For example, when his godfather, Jamal Joseph, was incarcerated, an 11-year-old Tupac created a book of poems for him.
The young Tupac dedicates the book to his family
Who are imprisoned for trying to build a better nation for me.
Tupac encourages Joseph to stay strong and proudly shows off his test scores, as an aside, he writes,
By the way I’m in the 6th grade
I’ll be twelve in June 16, 1983
Tupac had just learned about the Japanese haiku4 and includes his own verses on dreaming, on faith, and on being Black:
Faith
Faith is what we need
it keep us alive day by day
Faith is important
Black
Black is our color
We were born black in Africa
I am black and proud
At the end, Tupac declares himself to be a “Future Freedom Fighter.”
Tupac would continue writing poetry through his adolescence and into adulthood. It remained an outlet for his rage at the inequality he saw around him. He also wrote many love poems, which I’ll explore in this week’s postscript.
Tupac’s Poetry (circa 1998)
“The Rose that Grew from Concrete,” Tupac’s most famous poem, represents the struggles he endured living in poverty in East Harlem and then in Baltimore, where his mother succumbed to a drug addiction that would cripple her for years. Of course, Tupac is the rose in this “autobiographical” verse:
Did u hear about the rose that grew from a crack
in the concrete
Proving nature’s laws wrong it learned 2 walk
without having feet
Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams
it learned 2 breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
When no one else even cared!
Listen to the poet, Nikki Giovanni, recite Tupac’s verse:
In another poem, Tupac claims that “Lady Liberty needs glasses.” The poem considers why a country that proclaims to love freedom keeps so many of its people in chains. The answer, Tupac wryly suggests is that Lady Liberty needs to get her vision checked.
Liberty Needs Glasses
excuse me but lady liberty needs glasses
And so does Mrs. Justice by her side
Both the broads r blind as bats
Stumbling thru the system
Justice bumped into Mutulu and
Trippin on Geronimo Pratt
But stepped right over Oliver
And his crooked partner Ronnie
Justice stubbed her big toe on Mandela
And liberty was misquoted by the Indians
Slavery was a learning phase
Forgotten with out a verdict
While justice is on a rampage
4 endangered surviving black males
I mean really if anyone really valued life
and cared about the masses
They’d take em both 2 pen optical
and get 2 pair of glasses.
In 1991, Tupac brought his lyrical talents to hip hop, when Digital Underground gave him his first break. During this time, he recorded his first songs in preparation for his debut album, 2Pacalypse.
Tupac’s “2Pacalypse Now” Notebook (1991)
Tupac’s business card described him as “the Lyrical Lunatic” first and the “New African Panthers National Chairman” second—a ranking of his commitments in his early 20s.
Tupac planned his debut album in the following notebook, which he decorated with prints from the digital underground, 2Pac stamps, and his business card.
On the following page, we find Tupac working through the order of songs.
The notebook also contains verses titled “Never Surrenda.” I particularly love the following lines—all about the value of taking notes!
While others giggled and joked I would watch & take notes
Never surrenda! That’s my motto as I grew strong…
He reveals that producers encouraged him to abandon his political message in favor of making dance music. Of course, that’s not what Tupac did, as he explains. They said,
Just make a beat that they can dance 2
Don’t worry ‘bout a message the music will enhance u
They said they’d sign me long as I don’t yell out
But I refused cuz 2Pac ain’t no sell out…
As evidence of Tupac’s commitment to his politics, he wrote “Brenda’s Got a Baby” for his first album. It’s a song based on a news story about a young, Black single mother that brought Tupac to tears. He scribbled the lyrics in his trailer while filming Juice.
It includes lines that recall his poem, “The Rose that Grew from Concrete”:
just because you’re in the ghetto doesn’t mean you can’t grow
Here’s the powerful music video that begins with the words “Based on a true story” and ends with a photograph of the real Brenda:
“Brenda’s Got a Baby” lives up to the ideals of the New Afrikan Panthers as Tupac tries to educate and inspire. It is, in a sense, a love letter to his community and the struggle of single mothers (like his own).
In this week’s postscript, I’ll delve deeper into Tupac’s love notes, including his song “Dear Mama.” For now, I hope this post has given you a deeper appreciation of where Tupac came from and the politics that motivated his career.
Notes on Tupac’s Notes
Always carry a notebook: Friends recall how Tupac always had a notebook on him. For example, Staci Robinson, who recently published the first authorized biography of Tupac, recollects how
…he showed up at our door with a backpack and blue notebook…Each day, my roommates and I would leave for school or work while he stayed in our apartment alone writing feverishly in that notebook.5
Dedicate a notebook to each project: Tupac started a notebook for each project. All of his records have dedicated notebooks in which he sketched out lyrics, set lists, and ideas for music videos.
But don’t feel constrained to only write about that one thing in the notebook: Tupac’s notes move from rap lyrics to heartfelt love poems. He’d also fill his notebooks with doodles and sketches, like the following page from the notebook he used to imagine his third album, “Me Against the World.”
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Till Monday,
P.S. Paid subscribers, look out for a post later this week on Tupac’s love notes (including one to his best friends from high school, Jada Pinkett)
The Black Panthers were a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary group that formed in the 1960s to protect and uplift the Black community. They were known for their militant open-carry policies as well as their free breakfast programs for children. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover considered the Black Panthers to be the single greatest threat to America, so he authorized an illegal counter-intelligence program called COINTELPRO, which was designed to infiltrate, criminalize, and undermine groups like the Panther party.
Tupac: Resurrection, ed. by Jacob Hoye and Karolyn Ali, Atria Books, 2006, p. 6
Staci Robinson, Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography, 2023, p. 144.
Haiku are poems in three lines, with five, seven, and five syllables. As a loan word, “haiku” is the singular and plural form.
Robinson, Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography, xii.
This is an epic example of what can blossom from teaching children poetry! I work with a nonprofit and one of our community programs is offering free poetry workshops for schools in low-income areas of LA. It's such underrated but important work! But Tupac is and was just so special in his own right. Thank you for the in-depth exploration. I really enjoy your writing 🌟
Jillian,
I knew nothing about Tupac except that he was killed by gang violence. So thank you for an introductory education through his notes and music.
That music video was riveting and a powerful statement that equality of opportunity is a myth for so many (something I plan to write about soon.)