YOUTH OUTLOOK

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On the Grapevine, Over the Internet --
Tupac Still Lives

By Michael Datcher

Date: 12-06-96

Across African American communities, the grapevine has it that Tupac Shakur, gunned down in Las Vegas last September, is still alive. Why do so many black people insist on this? PNS commentator Michael Datcher, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and co-editor of "Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur," offers his thoughts on the need to believe Tupac did not die.

LOS ANGELES -- "Tupac Shakur is alive!"

Almost two months after the 25-year-old rapper was gunned down in Las Vegas, the grapevine in African American communities is abuzz with the news -- Tupac is still with us. Of course, I am traveling on a book tour for Tough Love, an anthology on Shakur, so perhaps I attract the fanatics. Still, the spectrum of African Americans who want to believe it, insist on it, is mind-boggling.

In New York, a thirtysomething black professional asks me if I think Tupac is really dead. When I tell him, "yes," he leaps into his cross-examination.

"Did anyone, besides the immediate family and the doctor, see the body after he was pronounced dead?

"Were there witnesses to the supposed cremation of the body?

"Why all the secrecy?"

In Philadelphia, a young black man, a fan of the rapper, had his own explanation. "Tupac's not dead. He was making all that money and people were out to get him. He needed a way out -- I heard he was in Brazil, just kickin' it on the beach."

And on the Internet, worldwide, Chuck D., the respected rapper proclaims "Tupac Lives." Among his "18 Reasons Why Tupac Is Still Alive" is the fact that Tupac's last album was recorded under the name "Makaveli," a play on "Machiavelli," the 15th century philosopher who staged his own death.

On the official record, Tupac was pronounced dead on Friday, September 13, at 4:03 in the afternoon at a Las Vegas hospital. Cause of death was four bullet wounds.

If he was faking, Shakur would have had to rise from the gurney and walk past thousands of concerned fans.

This did not happen.

What did happen is more interesting. Why are so many rational black people claiming that Tupac Shakur did not die? The answer is that they are having a hard time letting go of what he meant to them.

As the Harlem-based writer Tony Medina put it, Tupac has now become "a metaphor for the frustrated, confused, divided determination of a generation of angry youth whose revolutionary potential had been torn away from them with their umbilical cords at birth."

Black people, especially those who are young and live in cities, saw Tupac struggling in public with the baggage of being young and black in America. They embraced his attempt to "be his own man" and carve out a future of his own design -- against the odds which see two thirds of black men in jail or dead before they reach middle age.

They were interested in Tupac's rise because they saw themselves in his struggle, his dream. When Shakur died, a part of them died, too.

Making it even harder to let go of Tupac is the fact that he had survived so much -- not only routine racism, but a life of petty crime, even being shot five times in ambush -- and survived to produce a double CD album, "All Eyez on Me," which sold over five million copies. He had two feature films in the can, "Gridlock" and "Gang Related."

He was also becoming more involved in political activity. Last year, he helped plan a benefit concert designed to raise money to defeat California's anti-affirmative action initiative, Prop. 209.

Tupac made this connection clear in his last interview, published in VIBE. "I represent five million f*** sales, and no politician is checking for us. By the next election, I promise, I'll be sitting across from all the candidates."

Tupac seemed to be growing. He was not only beating the odds, he was doing it in front of millions of people who were pulling for him -- pulling so hard that some still see Tupac Shakur alive and well and kickin' it on the beaches of Brazil.