Booknotes

Professor MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, AUTHOR, "HOLLER IF YOU HEAR ME: SEARCHING FOR TUPAC SHAKUR": : Well, because he's disappeared from the common light of our public life, and he's also a--a murdered figure who still has a shroud of mystery around him. And I wanted to find out if I could determine who this real person was, the mythology about him being a thug, about him being a poet, about him being a black revolutionary, his pedigree inherited from his mother. I wanted to figure out what's the real Tupac Shakur about, who was he, what drove him, what passions ignited him and, ultimately, what was the meaning of his life.

Prof. DYSON: September 13th, 1996.

Prof. DYSON: He was murdered in a drive-by. He was driving--well, Suge Knight, his record company label head, was driving a 750 black BMW, and Shakur was riding, unfortunately, shotgun, and someone drove up in an automobile and, according to either story, stuck a hand out and fired several fir--rounds into the car door or got out and then actually shot at the car door with Mr. Shakur there, trying to get into the back seat, Mr. Knight pulling him down. And two bullets went through him, and he lingered for six days, but technically from the 6th through the 13th, seven days. He died on Friday, September 13th.

Prof. DYSON: He was 25 years old.

Prof. DYSON: Well, I think that, first of all, his--the--the kind of numerology that he delved into on his last pu--posthumously pu--published album, which was "Makaveli," so he adopted the Machiavelli character, although he changed the spelling, M-A-K-A-V-E-L-I. And people thought, well, since Machiavelli in "The Prince" talks about faking one's own death to maintain power, that Tupac Shakur knew that he was going to, quote, "be alleged to have died," and therefore, he faked his own death to escape the rat race he was involved in, to escape the thug life, viciousness that he had become involved in and to escape his record contract with a company that had got him out of jail, but that now he wanted to leave for greener pastures.

But furthermore, I think, young people believe that Tupac is alive because he's the first black person to integrate this immortal class of figures like JFK and Elvis who, are believed to still be alive by their fans. There was something charismatic and tragic about Tupac at the same time, and many of his fans believe that given, his own addiction to drama, that this was the ultimate drama: to--to escape by pretending that one was dead, so that one could move on in different spheres of one's life. But in the case of Tupac, especially for young black people, I think partly what's going on is the deflection of the reality of death; that is, that people who make some of the decisions and choices he made end up being murdered as a result--as a consequence of the--the lifestyle that they live. And I think Tupac certainly was a representative of a destructive as well as edifying lifestyle for young black people.

Prof. DYSON: Absolutely. You know, he was a young man who was born in the ghetto of New York, in Harlem, to a mother who was a revolutionary Black Panther figure, who was accused of--along with 20--20 other Black Panther figures--of attempting to blow up fire stations and to bomb railway stations and so on in New York City. So she was taken to trial along with her co-defendants. She represented herself and represented the rest of the Panther 21, as they were called, and she showed an enormously intelligent defense of their position and got them off.

Right after that, a--a month after that, Tupac was born, named after an Incan Conquistador whose body was ripped apart by Spanish conquerors. So here was a very powerful figure, Afeni Shakur, who became the darling of the left liberal wing of American politics for, you know, maybe a couple--maybe about a year. After that, she was left to her own wits. She became a--a legal assistant, as it was then known, and tried to support her family, but had to go on welfare; had a daughter, Sekyiwa, in 1975, with Mutula Shakur, who himself was a black--revolutionary Black Panther.

So Tupac was nurtured in an environment where he believed that black people should struggle for self-determination, that they should struggle against white supremacy, that--that they should oppose it with everything that was in them: their head, their heart, their soul, their bodies.

As he grew up, his mother became a--addicted to crack cocaine. As a result of her addiction to crack cocaine, Tupac suffered a series of, shall we say, you know, domestic setba--domestic setbacks. He went from home to home. He was homeless. By the time he was 13, he had lived in 20 different places. He went on to become a serious actor, joining the 127th Street Ensemble in New York, where he performed the part of Travis in "A Raisin in the Sun," the play by Lorraine Hansberry, for Jesse Jackson's 1984 campaign. So early on, he enjoyed the spotlight and enjoyed his comradery with these famous black figures.

He went on to leave New York at about the age of 15, moved to Baltimore with his mother and became a--a member of the Baltimore School of Arts there, which is a very renowned school. And he was an--an--an enormously gifted actor. Everybody there says he was tremendous. Even in a school that was known for its extraordinary thespian talent, he stood out because of his spookiness, because of his intensity, because of his mastery of his craft. He also studied ballet and art, began to write poetry, began to rap a bit, met the actress that would eventually become Jada Pinkett Smith, who became one of his close friend; moved from there at age 17 to Marin City in California, and there attended what they call Mount Tem High School, one of the elite schools in a very, very nicely sequestered school district there and was known also for his acting, but became disillusioned with school because it no longer fit his view of the world. And his view of the world was, `I'm a young black person trying to struggle for an authentic identity and to articulate my viewpoints about the world, and it's not being supported in school.' So he became a rapper after that.

Prof. DYSON: It's a--an Arabic term, Tupac Amaru, a shining prince. And Shakur was the common Muslim name adopted by many of the members of the Black Panther Party. Mutula Shakur, Assata Shakur, who was formerly known as Joanne Chesimard, who was accused of murdering a--a policeman in New Jersey, a state patrolman, and is now living in Cuba and is--in fact, one of the theories about Tupac's disappearance is that he's in Cuba with his a--adopted godmother, Assata Shakur, chilling out from the vicious chaos of his life.

Prof. DYSON: Afeni Shakur, right.

Prof. DYSON: She lives now in a--in Stone Mountain, Georgia, with--in a house that Tupac bought her with the proceeds from the down payment on his first three albums for Death Row Records. Death Row had--label head Suge Knight, which is now called Tha Records, not Death Row Records, since he has been released from jail. He was in prison for--for--for four years. He went to prison where Tupac was in Rikers Island and the Clinton Correctional Facility and had him sign a three-page, handwritten contract that was the basis of their relationship--professional relationship and the last company for--for which Tupac worked. So he signed that contract. He said, `I need a house for my mother.' And so a house was purchased for Tupac's mother, and that's the house in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Prof. DYSON: Very much so. She was very cooperative. I thank Geronimo Pratt, another Black Panther who served 27 years in prison until he was released a--a--a client of a then young, unknown attorney, Johnnie Cochran. So Geronimo Pratt forged a connection between me and Ms. Shakur, and she was quite cooperative and very moving and touching and quite honest about her own faults, her own f--frailties and her own troubles.

Prof. DYSON: She's in her early 50s.

Prof. DYSON: Well, because she understands that Tupac was a--in--in the words of Hegel, a world historical figure; he was a very important young man, even though mainstream society may not have been attuned to his importance. She understood that this was a figure who was not only important for African-American youth or for pop culture, but he is a figure in whom we can see the contesting will of somebody who wants to be smart and intelligent, on the one hand, and on the other hand, somebody who got caught up in some self-destructive habits. She sees her son as an exemplar of the best and the brightest of African-American culture, and she sees him as a symbol of a generation that continues to fight for legitimacy in a culture that often doesn't recognize it.

Prof. DYSON: Yes, I guess, they--they are songs. Right. True.

Prof. DYSON: Well, Tupac had written his mother a nine-page letter when she indicated that she was in recovery for her crack addiction. And he said to her, `I appreciate what you've done, but you can't expect me overnight to accept your word that you will stay clean simply because you said so.' And so he struggled mightily. This is right when he was becoming famous--struggled mightily with her decision to go into rehabilitation and whether or not it was a legitimate one. He certainly understood later on that it was.

So this was his way of making up with her in public, of forgiving her, of offering an olive branch, so to speak, to--to bring more tranquility to their domestic relationship. And so this "Dear Mama" was him speaking from his heart, a--a--a gesture of love, a gesture of also criticism, but an acknowledgment that, `You are a serious woman, and that there have been serious odds against you.'

Prof. DYSON: Never met him.

Prof. DYSON: All right. (Audio excerpt from Tupac Shakur's "Dear Mama") (Graphic on screen) When I was young me & my mama had beef 17 years old kicked out on the streets Though back at the time, I never thought I'd see her face Ain't a woman alive that could take my mama's place Suspended from school; and scared to go home, I was a fool with the big boys, breakin all the rules

I shed tears with my baby sister Over the years we was poorer than the the other little kids And even though we had different daddies, the same drama When things went wrong we'd blame mama I reminisce on the stress I caused, it was hell Huggin on my mama from a jail cell And who'd think in elementary

Heeey! I see the penitentiary, one day And runnin from the police, that's right Mama catch me, put a whoopin to my backside And even as a crack fiend, Mama You always was a black queen, Mama I finally understand for a women it ain't easy tryin to raise a man

You always was committed A poor single mother on welfare, tell me how you did it There's no way I can pay you back But the plan is to show you that I understand You are appreciated Dear Mama

Prof. DYSON: Oh, extraordinarily so.

Prof. DYSON: Well, he made a--a--a ton of money and spent a ton of money because he had, you know, some argued up to 40 friends and relatives that he was taking care of at the time of his death. But his second album debuted at the top of the charts. His third album, "Me Against The World," debuted when he was in prison for a charge--a conviction of sexual abuse. He had been charged with sodomy and rape, but he was a--acquitted of those charges and accused of forcibly touching a woman's buttocks.

So he--his album debuted at the top of the charts, and his next album, "All Eyez on Me," which was the first double album in the history of hip-hop culture, went on to sell something like seven million copies. So he was extraordinarily popular, made it into a--a--a--a huge you sum of money and spent a huge sum of money because he was a very compassionate young man who believed that he was responsible for taking care of his family.

Prof. DYSON: Well, there's--that was the argument. Death Row Records claimed that Tupac owed them money as a result of his lavish lifestyle, living in the Peninsula Hotel, the cars that he purchased.

Prof. DYSON: The Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, California. And the cars that he purchased, and just lavishing gifts on women and so on. Whereas, the estate that was headed by Afeni Shakur, his mother, claimed that he was owed millions of dollars. So they went to court and finally settled by giving the rights of that music to Afeni Shakur and Amaru Records, but he certainly has generated millions of dollars since his death and continues to--his estate continues to collect money.

Prof. DYSON: He went to prison because the night that Tupac Shakur was murdered, they were attending a Bruce Seldon fight and a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas at the MGM. At the MGM, as they were exiting the fight, somebody told Tupac Shakur, `We think we see a guy who snatched one of the Death Row pendants,' from one of their fellow artists. Tupac then pursued him. His name was Orlando Anderson. All of them--that is, the--the entourage of Tupac and Suge Knight, began to get in kicks and hits and to a--a--assail the young man. He pressed no charges. He was allegedly a member of the Crips. Suge Knight was allegedly a member of the Bloods. And Tupac was closely allied with him. And he was brought up on charges of--of violating his probation. He had a pri--previous charge involving guns and so on. So he was sent to jail for nine years. He served about four and a half years of that sentence.

Prof. DYSON: Well, I--I'm a fan--a huge fan of hip-hop. I was a teen father.

Prof. DYSON: Well, hip-hop is the term assigned to rap music--not only rap music, but the larger culture out of which rap music issues. Some say Ko--DJ Kool Herc came up with the term. Some say o--oth--who is a famous person within rap music. Some say it was somebody else. But the term suggests something about the beat, the rhythm, the passion of urban street life. And I was a huge fan of that kind of music because I was a teen father. I knew my son was attracted to that. I wanted to find a way to be able to reach him, to bridge the gulf, generationally speaking. But also because I was a--a--a member of a family that was deeply into music. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, in the inner city there, and so my father and mother listened to everything from blues to jazz and R&B, so I was deeply attracted to the music.

Prof. DYSON: I was 19 years old.

Prof. DYSON: He is 23 years old.

Prof. DYSON: Right. That's--that's him. That's Michael Eric Dyson II. He said, `Pops, you know, Dad, had you met Tupac, I think he might have lived.'

Prof. DYSON: Well, that's the generosity of a son thinking that his father has the answer for young people who may be in trouble, given some of his own experiences and the way I've been able to manage some of the chaos in his own life, but also because of our--the mutual love and admiration we share. And he--he--you know, he understood that I loved hip-hop culture and that I had enormous love for Tupac Shakur. Long before he died, I was attracted to him as a person who didn't possess the greatest skills in terms of what rap music is about--poetic meters, intense focus on using metaphor and simile and all of these other rhetorical flourishes that are common to the lyric conventions of hip-hop. But he had a heart that was huge and a vision that was--was catholic, small C, and a vision that was complex. And I was attracted to that vision, and he knew I was attracted to this young man. So he felt that had I been able, as a Baptist minister, as well as a professor and as well as a father and as a black man, been able to reach out to him, perhaps he might have been saved.

Prof. DYSON: I'm in Chicago. I teach at DePaul University, and I live in Chicago, Illinois.

Prof. DYSON: I teach religious studies. I teach classes. I'm a university professor, which means pretty much I can teach in any department I choose. I'm--my base is in religion and in philosophy, and I teach courses in critical race theory, courses on popular culture, courses on the radical legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. recently.

Prof. DYSON: My undergraduate is from Carson-Newman College, a small Southern Baptist school 30 miles outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, in Jefferson City, Tennessee. I did a BA there. My MA and PhD are from Princeton University in religion.

Prof. DYSON: I left Princeton to teach at Hartford Seminary for a year, and after I left--and direct a poverty program. And then left Hartford to go to Chicago for the first time for three years from '89 to '92 to teach at Chicago Theological Seminary. I left there in '92 to teach at Brown University for two years. And then there on to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for three years, teach--I taught at Columbia University of New York for two years. And now I've been in Chicago--this is going on my third seme--third year.

Prof. DYSON: Yes.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Sure.

Prof. DYSON: A homey is one's friend, one's associate, and it's the kind of ebonocized or ghetto discourse, the hip-hop ghetto discourse that suggests this is my homeboy. It's a shorting of homeboy. And homeboy is the sig--signifying a friend, a friend close to the heart, somebody that I grew up with, somebody that's in my neighborhood that I kick it with. "Kick it with," associate with. And so homey is the shortened version of that.

Prof. DYSON: A ho is, in--in many ways in hip-hop discourse, a derisive term referring to a female of loose sexuality. That's its specific and technical term. More loosely, it's used for young black women or Latino women perhaps within the hip-hop and ghetto culture who are viewed to be easily accessible sexually.

Prof. DYSON: A bitch is a woman who is viewed as--that's interesting--a--a woman who is viewed as not only a ho, but a person who will be quite nasty and temperamental in the aftermath of whatever sexual transaction might take place. On the other hand, given the kind of patriarchal culture that is--that is just endemic to so much hip-hop, a bitch may be a woman who refuses to engage in sexual exchange and liaison with a--with a young man or one who since--has a sense of her own dignity and possesses a sense of her own identity who doesn't give in easily to the whim and caprice of a man. So bitch is a pejorative term, a nasty term, a derisive term, used for a wide variety of women. Unfortunately, even in this, quote, "positive songs"--think of the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Me & My Bitch," he didn't mean that derisively. He meant it as a term of endearment. Some women in--in hip-hop call themselves bitches, each other bitches. And many of the men who call women bitches don't mean anything negatively by it. That's the kind of terminological twists that have gone on in hip-hop culture that are very controversial.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Right, right.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Well, I think that there's something sensual and something earthy about the--the F-word, the MF-word, in particular. Technically, of course, F-U-C-K, fornicating under consent of the king. So it's a kind of twist of a King James terminology into the--the transience black culture. What's interesting is that there's a sensual characteristic--it--it's a--it's a catch-all term. It can be something negative, it can be something positive. `Hey, you my MF,' or, `Watch out, MF.' So it's an all-purpose term that has allowed a wide range of emotion to be condensed into its--into its use. And so I think that--that many African-American so-called ghetto-centric youth--that is people who are attached to the ghetto, to the inner city and not just there, by the way--find a kind of verbal release kind of--an erotic attachment to this very sensual and very charged terminology.

The same way with the other word; that is the N-word. And Tupac used that word quite frequently. In--in the larger white supremacist discourse, it's called nigger. But Tupac and many African-American youth--and not only youth--talked about it as nigga, N-I-G-G-A. Now he said in one of his songs, "Words of Wisdom," N-I-G-G-A meant for him never ignorant, getting goals accomplished. Some black people don't buy that. They see altogether negative connotations associated with the word, no matter how many black people try to transform it into something different. That's why in my book, I talk about those who are reservationists, who have reservations about the term, and those who are revisionists, those who say, `No, we can do something with it.' Like gay and lesbian people take the word `queer,' which is meant as a pejorative and something negative, and say, `You're darn right I'm queer,' and use it as a term that is positive. Black people have attempted throughout their own history to take and seize the term nigger and turn it around to make it something positive.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Right. Right, right.

Prof. DYSON: Well, that was his term. That was his belief. That was his inscription on his body to suggest that he was down with his homeys in all 50 states. All black people who were part of the ghetto economy, the illicit, the underground economy, selling drugs, being a thug or just black people caught in the environs of the inner city, he was representing them. Fifty Niggaz behind me in all 50 states. That is, black people in every state of the United States of America are joined into my body and joined with me in the struggle against the odds.

Prof. DYSON: Yeah.

Prof. DYSON: Thug Life.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Well, for Tupac, a--a thug was a person who had nothing. It was--it was more useful than the term gangsta. Gangsta was the term as--associated with so-called hard-core rap by the mainstream media, but Tupac believed that thug was much more resonant because it was suggestive of an illicit economy, an underground economy and a black person who had nothing and who was willing to hustle for anything that he could get. Thug life, for him, meant something very specific. It meant the hate--it--it was another acronym. The hate you gave little infants F's everyone. And so his point was that a thug was a person who had nothing to lose, a thug was a person, who, as a result of mistreatment by the American government, was--had risen to become its worst nightmare, and becoming its worst nightmare was intelligent about the ways in which it resisted the forces of oppression. So he believed that something positive was going on when he talked about being a thug.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Right, right. Right.

Prof. DYSON: It's universal. It's a low-slung sagging jeans that is imitative of the prison culture. One of the reasons...

Prof. DYSON: Right. Absolutely. Shoelaces not in the shoes. That was a result--of course, in prison, they didn't want people to hang themselves. No belts on the trousers. So in one sense, partly, it is inspired by prison culture, and the way in which prison culture, of course, is so tied up with black masculine culture for the last 25 years, given the extraordinarily disproportionate numbers of black men who are in prison. So that filtered back through, prison culture, and the irony, of course, is that black men who were--who--and--and Latino men who helped perpetuate that culture can't enjoy the enormous sums of money that are reaped as a result of, you know, the--the designers who make, you know, money off of that, you know, Tommy Hilfiger and others who make enormous money off of that. So it's very controversial in these conditions.

Prof. DYSON: A white designer who has made enormous sums of money off of the styles and dress of African-American culture.

Prof. DYSON: Absolutely. Well, there--there are even conspiracy theories out there and rumors about Tommy Hilfiger. One quote said that Tommy Hilfiger went on "Oprah" and suggested that he didn't like the very black people that were attracted to his dress. Of course, that was easily discounted because he never appeared on "Oprah" to say those words. But the--that was a way, I think, of the everyday black person to discount the way in which Tommy Hilfiger has made enormous sums of money off of black culture and reaped enormous benefit without being perceived to be part of that culture or at least giving back to it or at least even attracted to it. So there was some kind of gossip that was a form of social critique directed to him.

Prof. DYSON: Right. Exactly. That was a--a way of showing love and affection and as a nickname.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Well, you know, the Jesus piece, as the hip-hoppers call it, the rappers call it, the cross, that is usually diamond-encrusted or with platinum. My son even has one, certainly not nearly as expensive as that one. But it's suggestive of the religious traditions of black culture. It's suggestive of a style and a trend within hip-hop where one gives kudos to God, even as one talks about killing one's neighbor. But it's also suggestive of Tupac's deep and profound spirituality. And there it is again. Him always professing a belief in God, a non-traditional, an unorthodox one to be sure, but nonetheless a deeply spiritual person who was preoccupied with God on many of his albums. There's a--a song called "Only God Can Judge Me Now," where he says, `Somebody help me. Tell me where to go from here because even thugs cry, but do the Lord care?' So he was deeply and profoundly obsessed with God in much of his music.

Prof. DYSON: Deeply political. In fact, he began as a very political animal. Tupac began as a kind of, you know, rapper who was more associated with the, quote, "positive and political rap" of, say, a person like Chuck D. Chuck D is the head rapper of the group Public Enemy which rose to prominence in the late '80s and early '90s in America, and X-Clan, another group from the East, that was deeply and profoundly cultural and political, African-centered, conscious of their cultural roots and deeply determined to bring, you know, change to American society. So Tupac initially was just part of that because he was a child of a Black Panther. He talked about being the child of a Black Panther. He has a song on--"Holler If You Hear Me," from which my book is--title is taken where he says, `Just the other day, I got lynched by some crooked cops, and to this day those same cops on the beat getting major pay. But when I get my check, they takin' tax out so we payin' the pigs to knock the blacks out.' So he was deeply political. Even as he evolved and grew to embrace thug culture, he was always political in the midst of that.

Prof. DYSON: Right. Yeah.

Prof. DYSON: Right. I attempted to interview him, not on the most auspicious occasions, but I attempted to get at him at a free concert he was giving for one of the shoe companies for whom he endorsed shoes, and...

Prof. DYSON: Well, I, you know, tried to--all the other channels of writing and talking and calling folk and so on, and getting other stars to call him, and using whatever little leverage I had as a--as an intellectual of--of--of--of--who's notorious, perhaps, but nothing worked. So what I did is, I attended this concert, and somebody who had seen me in a hotel knew me and saw me and said, `Look, I'll get you into the--to the green room, so to speak, and you can go from there.' So I went there and...

Prof. DYSON: This young--oh, Snoop Dogg?

Prof. DYSON: Snoop Dogg is one of the most famous West Coast rappers who has a kind of Southern cadence to his talk, and a--and a flow: `One, two, three, and to the fo'. Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre is at the do' ready to make an entrance, so back on up, 'cause you know we're about to rip stuff up.' So he has that slow cadence that is an index of the great black migration that I'm sure his parents participated in. They call it a `Calibama' accent, California, Alabama and the Southern regions joined together. So Snoop Dogg is a very famous rapper who was part of Death Row, who also recorded with Tupac Shakur a couple of three songs, and I wanted to talk to him because I knew he was a friend of Tupac's; I knew he had appeared in his videos. I knew they were mutually supportive of one another and admiring of one another.

But he also is in tremendous disagreement and in a very tense relationship with Suge Knight, who is his former label head. Tu--Snoop Dogg left Death Row Records when Suge Knight went to jail and then joined with Master P's Priority Records in New Orleans, and so--now he has his own record label--so there was tremendous tension, and they were at odds. So anybody coming up to him to speak about Tupac Shakur, the des--or the Death Row days, I think sent a red flag up to him, and he was quite cautious about that and I wasn't able to--to get him. You know, I--he was walking along. I had a couple of words with him, but nothing from him.

So I--I ended up interviewing people around him, and it was just as useful if not more useful to me for my book and for the purposes of getting a keener insight into who Tupac really was. So I met with Larenz Tate, the tremendous, brilliant young actor who's acted in several films, including "Dead Presidents," the Hughes brothers' monumental film about black participation in Vietnam and then the--the dreadful consequences of returning home. I talked to him, and he gave me some insight about Tupac as, quote, "the black Elvis." I spoke to Ray J, the younger brother of Brandy Norwood, the singer and actor on the recently canceled "Moesha" show, and he stars on it himself, and he talked Tupac's thug life being attractive to him because a thug, for him, meant being young and black and getting money.

But I also spoke to Big Tre D, and that was probably the most moving interview I did in that--that day and perhaps with the exception of Afeni Shakur throughout the entire 60 interviews I did. And I approached him; he was a Jheri-curled in the--that's the style of hair that was lightly permed in the late '80s that was common in black culture that men and women wore.

And so he was a throwback, so to speak, of the late '80s with his cap on, there with his little daughter, freckled face, you know, gang--thug life, but he was a very gentle man. And I sat down to speak with him, and after speaking with him and he told me about Tupac's genius and his work ethic and his spirituality and the tragedy of his not being able to enjoy the rest of his life like Michael Jackson or Donald Trump to see the millions of dollars and the kudos that would come his way and the accolades that would accumulate, he--after he finished, he began to cry, silently sobbing into the napkins that I provided for him for a good 20 minutes, just tears streaming down his eyes, reddening his eyes. His daughter was in quite a bit of consternation thinking that I had somehow done something negative or awful to her father. But it was very moving to me to see this so-called hard figure just wordlessly pouring his anguish into this cloth, speaking so much about the passion and love that Tupac generated in so many people.

Prof. DYSON: Well--in terms of the book or in terms of the culture itself?

Prof. DYSON: Yeah.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: Absolutely.

Prof. DYSON: Right. Right.

Prof. DYSON: It's deeply divided. I mean, there's a deep division in black America precisely over hip-hop culture and the--the tremendous tensions that go between the civil rights generation, so-called, and the hip-hop culture. That's why my book on Martin Luther King Jr., I talked about King and the hip-hop generation. I lot of people got--a lot of black people thought, you know, `That's really sacrilegious. How ridiculous is that? And it doesn't have the real intellectual payoff that you might think.' And my point was not to bring Dr. King down, so-called, to Tupac Shakur's level. They're not moral equivalents. I wasn't that silly. What I was trying to suggest is that some of the same faults and foibles that we forgive King for we nail these young kids for, and they're in the process of growing up in public, and I wanted do suggest that.

There's a deep division in black America about the virtue or the value of hip-hop culture. I happen to think that it's a much more complex phenomenon that needs to be supported and that needs to be criticized, to be sure, but also needs to be examined for its complexity. And if we have one broad stroke with which we paint the entire culture against the canopy of our disdain, then we're really dismissing what is essentially the most powerful form of popular culture for the last 25 years and certainly the most invigorating black popular culture of the last, you know, at least couple decades.

Prof. DYSON: He was at--at one level. He was...

Prof. DYSON: Well, because he used terrible names to talk about women. He had tremendous resentment and disdain for--and I coined this term--`femaphobia,' which is like homophobia. It's not quite misogyny, which is the cruel hatred of women, or sexism, or these sentiments expressed against women, or patriarchy, which is the systematic belief that men's perspectives ought to be the norm for the entire society. What I meant by femaphobia was there's a kind of resentment and a kind of fear of women that you see nurtured in many of these enclaves of civic terror called ghettos and slums, and Tupac participated in that.

But he was a misogynist as well, because I think, you know, by using terms like `bitch' and `ho' for women, but also by suggesting that they should be at his beck and call sexually, you know, belied a certain kind of negative viewpoint of women. But he was also embracing them. You listen to "Dear Mama" and the beauty and the touching nature of his, you know, celebration of his mother, or "Keep Your Head Up"--`I give a shout to my sisters on welfare. If no one cares, Tupac cares.' So he was both a misogynist and a person who could deeply and profoundly embrace women.

Prof. DYSON: Yes. Well, Tupac, as all artists, was profoundly, you know, expressive through his body, but even more so, the tattoos on his body represented his projection to the world of black masculine identity, what it meant to live to the lethal limits of thug life, what it meant to be a nobody, what it meant to be a "nigger," what it meant to be somebody who had ca--aspersions cast against him. So he wanted to represent, symbolically, black identity, black youth identity and more specifically, black male identity. But his body was very crucial to his message, his beautiful eyes, his eyelashes. You know, he was seen as a pretty young black man who was coming up, and--and that caused him quite a bit of consternation because, you know, the association, the er--the homoerotic association, so he wanted to distance himself--himself from that.

But women were attracted to him profoundly because of his sexuality and because of his sensuality, because of his beautiful skin, his beautiful smile, his amazingly charismatic presence. And that body, of course, was the source of both pleasure and pain to him. I think he lived rather uneasily in his body. He didn't--he rarely, if ever, bragged about being good-looking, as some rappers are wont to do. He didn't talk about his sexual prowess in relationship to his good looks. It was only as a result of his connection to thug life, because thugs are to have many women, to love none of them and to get around, so to speak, that is, to be promiscuous. And in that sense he talked about wo--female sexuality, but he never spoke about it in terms of his own belief and his own beauty, because I think he was quite uncomfortable with that, as Danielle Smith, a former editor of Vibe magazine, made quite clear.

Prof. DYSON: Right. The bandanna. Another...

Prof. DYSON: That's associated with gang culture in LA, and before Tupac, the bandanna was seen as a--as a very negative and provocative headgear, but after him it became quite popular and people beyond gang culture began to adopt it as a source of style.

Prof. DYSON: I hope it educates people about the complexity of this young man. I hope it opens their eyes and their minds to receive some of his messages, while still being critical of him, as I am in the book. I have an entire chapter about his extraordinarily--extraordinarily powerful intelligence, the way he read voraciously. He was--he consumed books in a fashion that is associated with professors and not necessarily with ghetto residents. And I wanted to reject and repudiate the vicious stereotypes that prevail about not only Tupac but this culture in general.

I'm not suggesting that all of them, or even most of them read as much as he does, but I think that they are highly intelligent. If you listen to some of the narratives of a person like Mos Def, who's quoted on the back of my book, when he said "You can laugh and criticize Michael Jackson if you want to. Woody Allen molested and married his stepdaughter. Same press kicking dirt on Michael's name show Woody and Soon-Yi at the playoff game." So there's high intelligence in there. There's narrative complexity, there's poetic intensity, and in Tupac, here was a figure who read widely--feminist theory, he read George Orwell, he read James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni. He read broadly in self-healing arts, in method acting. I just wanted to suggest that this was a complex, beautiful, self-destructive, confused, edifying young man who brought both the glory and the grief of black culture to live in one body.

Prof. DYSON: Leila (pronounced lay-la) Steinberg. Leila S...

Prof. DYSON: Yes, Leila Steinberg. Leila Steinberg is a multiethnic white woman who lives--who lived then in Oakland, California, or in m...

Prof. DYSON: We're talking about in the late '80s. We're talking about--and she lived there before Tupac, but Tupac moved there in the late '80s, and he met her in a park one day. She was a teacher who gave workshops in the local schools because she had children in those schools. She wanted to make sure that they were being sufficiently addressed in regard to their educational needs. And so she volunteered initially, and then began to give--began to give workshops on writing and poetry and rhythms and so on. And she met Tupac one day in a park in Marin City.

Prof. DYSON: A white woman, yes. And she had danced with him the previous night unbeknownst to her or Tupac.

Prof. DYSON: Well, because her husband was--her then-husband was a DJ, and they gave parties, so not only did she teach in school during the day, but at night she and her husband gave parties that drew up to 10,000 kids.

Prof. DYSON: And he was a black man, so they were interracially married. And she was deeply attracted to hip-hop culture because of its honesty, its visceral attachment to black yer--urban and street culture, and because as an artist, she knew that this art spoke the truth to power and to the powerless.

And so that night a beautiful young man came to dance with her on the dance floor. Because she was so absorbed in her own responsibilities that night didn't get a chance to get his name, but the next day when she was reading her book in the park, Winnie Mandela's book, "Part of My Soul Went With Him," he came up and said, `What do you know about Winnie Mandela?'

Prof. DYSON: She's--now she's 40 years old, and--so Tupac was then 17 and she was in the--near 30. And she said, `Well, I--you know, I've just started to read the book,' and he began to quote to her passages from the book verbatim, so she was deeply struck. So they struck up a conversation, one thing led to another. He went to her workshop that afternoon, and then in short order moved in with her. She had been looking for a rapper to bring some kind of social conscientiousness joined to political responsibility to the classroom as well as her workshops, and she found her figure in Tupac and she became his first manager.

And even though she turned him over to Atron Gregory, who was then managing a group called Digital Underground, which was based in Oakland, California, she turned him over--turned Tupac over to him, she stayed in contact with him, continued to give him advice, continued to chide him, continued to argue with him about his choices and decisions.

Prof. DYSON: She was deeply wounded, but she knew it was coming. She felt that death was knocking on his door. He had given to her a poem called "In the Event of My Demise," written when he was 21--21 years old. And so she knew that in some fashion, some way, that Tupac's death, even though she tried to deny it, was almost inevitable, made inevitable by the choices he made, rendered inevitable by the lifestyle he was living and the people with whom he associated.

Prof. DYSON: Well, there are all kind of theories.

Prof. DYSON: Yeah. You know what, after poring over all of this stuff, I think that what happened that night in the MGM, at the Bruce Seldon-Mike Ty...

Prof. DYSON: Right--Mice Tys--Mike Tyson fight in Vegas, is that when Tupac led the volley of fists against this young man, Orlando Anderson, who was a Crip, part of a gang out there, the rival gang to the Bloods out there in LA, I think that he sought revenge that night, or at least somebody in the Crips sought revenge that night and, you know, as a result of that gang warfare, rode up on Tupac, so to speak, by drive-by and exacted revenge. But that's just a theory. I have no proof of that at all, but given the kind of gang retribution that goes on very commonly in Los Angeles between the Bloods and the Crips, it would not be a far-fetched theory to suggest that it was in response to his beating of this young man.

Prof. DYSON: Well, I'm critical of the self-instructive choices that he made in regard to talking about women the way he does, and I devote an entire chapter to his complex views on women. I'm critical of him in terms of trying to be a, quote, "real nigger" and reducing an authentic black person to a person who lives in the ghetto. Having come from the ghetto myself, I understand that inclination and appreciate his giving visibility to those who are often denied access to the mainstream culture as legitimately positive people, but at the same time to reduce the complexity of black culture to the ghetto and to suggest that if you're not acting as if you are in the ghetto and more importantly, that the ghetto is all about being a thug or a pimp or a player, so to speak, a person who's promiscuous with women, as opposed to somebody who attends Sunday school or takes lessons with the local musician, to reduce the complexity of the ghetto to even a thug I think is misdirected. And to see black authenticity linked primarily or exclusively to the ghetto is as misled as the bourgeois sensibilities that try to distance black people from the ghetto altogether.

Prof. DYSON: Well, certainly having the luxury and leisure to be able to--to support one's family, to have the economic wherewithal to give sustenance to the people that you love. That is remarkable, and people who have far more money than he did don't do that. So his compassion, his altruism, was extraordinary, not simply to his family but to his friends and those people that he happened to meet. And so I--I envy him that possibility.

Prof. DYSON: Sure. Even Tupac himself, in a song called "I Ain't Mad at You," talked about the--the extraordinary tensions that result when a person who had formerly been part of a ghetto clique, you know, converts to becoming a Muslim and as a result of that doesn't want to associate anymore with that lifestyle, and Tupac says, you know, that's fine, because get--I'm not mad at you. He says I'm not angry at you for wanting to get out the ghetto. There are many up-from-the-ghetto stories in hip-hop culture, similar to Booker T. Washington's "Up from Slavery," reproduced more than 100 years later, and the upward mobility and the striving of young black people.

This is why I think there's an opposite extreme of celebrating too much of materialism. You know, the bling-bling--the bling-bling is the sight that is produced when a platinum or diamond-encrusted watch reflects the light, bling, bling. And so there's a bling-bling school of rap that celebrates materialism and the acquisition of cars and so on that is just as, I think, egregiously, outrageously false as anything that goes on in their minds as being a fake Negro, that is a person who speaks a certain way and whose diction reflects a certain level of education. That is anathema to the so-called ghetto resident, and I think this bling-bling culture is a ridiculous exaggeration of the materialism that has really gutted so much of hip-hop, at least one variety of hip-hop.

Prof. DYSON: Yeah, right. In New York, right.

Prof. DYSON: Right, right, right.

Prof. DYSON: Right. Well, you know, Sean "Puffy" Combs, of course, an extraordinary entrepreneur whose empire is now over $300 million, traded on his street credibility because he started a record label, Bad Boy Records, that was the major competitor for Death Row on the West Coast. So this East Coast vs. West Coast was set up in part by the rivalry between Bad Boy, which was "Puffy" Combs' label, and Death Row, which was Suge Knight's label, and their major stars. Puffy Combs' major star was the Notorious B.I.G., better known as Biggie Smalls, nee Christopher Wallace, and...

Prof. DYSON: He was murdered in a drive-by six months after Tupac was killed, in Los Angeles, after attending the Soul Train Music Awards.

Prof. DYSON: He was East Coast. So some people see that as retribution for--and revenge for the murder of Tupac Shakur. He died in March of 1997. So he was the major star for--for Bad Boy Records. Tupac was the major star for Death Row Records, and this East Coast-West Coast rivalry was fomented by Tupac's, I think, lethal addiction to stirring up trouble, and he believed, honestly at--at some level, although I don't think he always believed it, that Biggie Smalls was responsible for the first attempt on his life, which happened in 19--I think '93. No, no, I think it was in '95, as a matter of fact, when he was shot five times when he was trying to get into a recording studio in Times Square, Quad Studio, and was obviously the victim of an attempted robbery. And he believed that--later on that Puffy and Notorious B.I.G. set him up.

So Puff Daddy traded on his street credibility. He was both the street-wise kid who could ring up enormous sales of the hardest-core rap one might imagine on the East Coast, while also trading in his Hamptons cachet by being, you know, friends with Martha Stewart or throwing tony parties out in the Hamptons. So he was both ends, and he was able to cross that cultural divide. But he played on that thug image, he played on that bad-boy image quite vigorously, but that bad-boy image redounded on him in a negative way during his recent trial, when he and a young man named Shyne Barrow, who ended up being convicted of 10 years in jail, were accused of shooting a gun at some people and sh--and hitting--What?--three people in a nightclub in New York City. Sean "Puffy" Combs was acquitted, Shyne Barrow was convicted and is now serving 10 years in prison.

After that, Puffy had a kind of religious revelation and a conversion experience where he said, `I'm going to change my name.' You know, that's an old tradition, not only in black culture but in religious culture, but in spe--black culture especially. `I told Jesus it would be all right if he changed my name.' So Puffy had a very public conversion from Puffy to P. Diddy, and P. Diddy is just a term that--that is a term of affection that actually Biggie Smalls gave to him before he died, so he signified his conversion from the old bad-boy image to the new image of a, quote, "cleaned up, reformed rapper" who is quite more cautious about the thug image that he promoted before.

Prof. DYSON: It was New York.

Prof. DYSON: It was New York City.

Prof. DYSON: Well, the weed creed is the almost uncritical celebration of smoking ganja, of smoking marijuana in--in black ghetto culture among young people, and Latino culture as well. And the weed creed is about celebrating weed's possibilities of not only expanding one's artistic vision, but also as a symptom of one's ghetto authenticity, and Tupac consumed copious amounts of alazay and Hennessey, his drinks of choice, as well as enormous amounts of weed.

Prof. DYSON: Right.

Prof. DYSON: He certainly did. In prison, when he was serving an eight-month term for his sexual abuse, Tupac was going through a conversion of sorts himself. He renounced, after all, thug life. He talked to the journalist Kevin Powell in Vibe magazine, and he gave an interview, said, `Listen, thug life is over. It was something that was important. It was a stage in my own life, but I'm through with thug life.' And he also said that he wanted to become much more serious about his commitment to furthering his life and his goals and his ambitions, writing screen plays, and sed--etc.

But also he felt that this was the appropriate time to settle down, so he extended an invitation of marriage to Jada Pinkett and, of course, she summarily refused that, although she told me that she considered it for a while. She said, with my--given her own history, she said, of co-dependency, she--she tho--she entertained it for a while but knew that it was not the right decision. And I asked her directly, did she and Tupac ever have a relationship--excuse me--other than a friendship, and she said no.

But Tupac felt that she was a person who knew him because she was, after all, a member of the Baltimore School of--of Arts there and was a fellow actor, and she defended him to gangs there and loved him as a brother. And as a result of that he was deeply attracted and attached to her, but she turned him down. He ended up marrying a woman named Keisha Morris, but that marriage was annulled once he left prison.

Prof. DYSON: No, he did--had no children, even though he had many songs--"A Letter to My Unborn Child," "A Letter to My Firstborn"--he never got a chance to--to have a child.

Prof. DYSON: The player is that figure in black ghetto discourse who is the person who is a promiscuous person. He has several women in his stable, is not completely or exclusively available to any of them, but keeps them at his beck and call.

Prof. DYSON: The mak is an i--a kind of superplayer, but a person who is able to reproduce the vision of himself as the supreme determiner of the fate of women, and he lives off of the largesse of women. He lives off of their good graces, so if he--she allows him to pimp them or allows him to use her car, her sofa, her house and so on. He takes great delight and pleasure in controlling women.

Prof. DYSON: The hustler is more generically a figure who in one sense is the person who is capable of using his or her mother wit to make a go at life. More specifically, within ghetto discourse, the hustler is the person who will do whatever is necessary to get over and provide for himself or herself or--but usually himself and his family.

Prof. DYSON: Yes. She's quite pleased. She cooperated with me in doing this book by giving me an interview and allowing me, you know--there was--this is not a sponsored book. It's not an official book. It is an independently done book. It's an exercise in cultural criticism, but she was very cooperative, and she's very pleased that another book on her son is out there it to try to dispel some of the myths, to try to speak to his genius and to try to embrace him as a figure worthy of scholarly scrutiny.

Prof. DYSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm--I'm riveted by him. I'm drawn to him. I view him as a kind of hip-hop Marvin Gaye. His mood, his tone of voice, his beautiful eloquence, his fiery declarations and sometimes his arrogance and bravura are an interesting alchemical mix, and I think that, you know, songs like "Unconditional Love," songs like "Keep Your Head Up," songs like "Dear Mama," but also his songs that are--that prove his addiction to death--"Life Goes On," "Only God Can Judge Me Now," his religious sensibilities that are seen on his album "Makaveli" and the song "Blasphemy;" I'm just attracted to his enormous and profound complexity and the way in which he refuses to be one thing.

Prof. DYSON: Yes.

Prof. DYSON: He only discovered the identity of his father when he was shot five times and recovering in a New York hospital, when he awakened from his sleep in surgery to discover his spitting image staring at him, thinking that he was in heaven. It literally scared him out of that hou--hospital. He left that hospital that day, ostensibly to get away from people who might still be gunning for him, and he took refuge in Jasmine Guy's house, the actress.

Prof. DYSON: His father's name is Billy Garland. But he didn't know initially who his father was until, you know, he was in his 20s. He had no idea who his father was. It could have been Lumumba, the man who Afeni Shakur allegedly married. But--who is also a Black Panther organizer. It could have been Legs, who was a member of Nicky Barnes--the stable of Nicky Barnes, who was a notorious Harlem gangster, or it could have been Billy Garland, a Black Panther himself. He didn't discover until he was in his 20s right before he--a few years before he died that indeed his father--his blood father was Billy Garland.

Prof. DYSON: Thank you very kindly.