Tupac Shakur Language Analysis

Rap is a genre in music that consists of rhyming or being poetic over a certain unique beat. The origin of rap is significantly different from any other form of music. The flow, change, subject of the music, and the instrumentals behind the rapping has all changed with time. Most people would underestimate the complexity of the music and the evolution it has undergone. The real roots of rap music began in the late 1980’s with the “Golden Age.” It was innovative and mostly based around the party scene. Gangsta Rap followed the Golden age and was very impactful on the young culture. After the Gangsta Rap era came the time in rap referred to as Crunk Rap which combined the country sound with the party lifestyle. Conscious

copies, and I want that so badly, but I can't do that. I would be wrong to do that, knowing what I know and having the brain that I have, for me to even go and write some simple *censored* would be wrong even though I would get paid and I would get more people's money." (Patrick, Tony, n.p.) This means that Tupac has a strong will and values. He resisted the temptation to write some easy rhyming words and get peoples money. He instead followed his values and worked

The book I chose to read is Tupac Shakur:The Life & Times of an American Icon. This book hasn’t been out for very long. It’s publication date was January 26, 2010 so it is a somewhat newer book. Fred and Tayannah examined very closely and did a great deal of research to write this book. They had to examine all the theories and myths about Tupac Shakur. So i’m guessing you can imagine how hard they worked to write & publish this biography.

The song Changes was recorded by Tupac Shakur, a deceased African American hip-hop artist. He rapped about the African American subculture in America. The record label released this song in 1998; it is still popular within subcultures of America. He grew up in the 1980s, and the social policies of that period, such as the War on Drugs, influenced his music. The videos of the song were found after a quick search on YouTube. The lyrics of this song are found on the internet from Google search of “Tupac, changes”. I have read the lyrics and listened to the music. Tupac focused on “that’s just the way it is” through the song (2Pac-Changes). He wanted the African American community to change their behaviors and rise above the social perception

     On September 7, 1996, Tupac Amaru Shakur was riding in the passenger side of a black BMW driven by Marion Suge Knight, president of Death Row Records. Tupac and Suge had just finished watching Mike Tyson defeat Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Tupac was standing up through the sunroof while the car was stopped at a traffic light. The Cadillac containing the gunmen passed an entourage of Tupac’s allies, many of them bodyguards. Four unidentified men pulled alongside Suge’s car, fired 13 rounds, and sped away. No one gives chase and there were no witnesses on the street. How come? Why not, especially after a heavyweight fight? Tupac was shot in multiple places

The struggles of a single mother is not something everyone will fully understand. In the late 90’s there was huge poverty and gang violence in Los Angeles, California where Tupac grew up. Many of his songs reflect on how his experience was in this environment. In Tupac Shakur’s song, “Dear Mama” found in album, Me Against the World, for a single mother to show love for her child takes a huge struggle, especially when it was a time where gang violence was really high and fathers would leave their children. Throughout the song Tupac uses imagery to capture the feeling of pain and struggle and fluently illustrate the moments where he was young, until he grew up and realized the love his mother gave him. “Dear Mama” is also portrayed as a

Throughout the song, Tupac gives an inside look on the social problems affecting African-Americans and suggests possible solutions. In the first stanza of the song, Tupac first talks about how certain social issues are linked together; he makes a correlation between his skin color and being poor. Tupac says “I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.” Then he explains how poverty causes crime by saying “My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.” And finally, he demonstrates the relationship between police brutality and race by saying “Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.”

In “To My People”, a speech by Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Liberation Army, explains her frustrations and disappointments on how African Americans were treated and more importantly how she was treated by white authorities in the US. Her story is that she was stopped on the turnpike because of a traffic violation in 1973 in New Jersey by Trooper Foerster. During this traffic stop, Shakur was accused of shooting and killing Trooper Foerster with his own gun. Shakur was soon convicted of first degree murder and quickly fled to Cuba. While in Cuba, she wrote and delivered a speech targeted towards her “brothers and sisters” about how unfair African Americans had been treated in the United States. Assata Shakur in this speech utilized a variety of rhetorical devices to emphasize her frustrations with the accusations by the hypocritical US authorities.

To help understand Tupac’s poem, you must grasp yourself around the image of a very young boy, who has no father, grew up in the rougher parts of New York, and was barely supported by his mother.

“Rap is poetry” (xii). To any avid fan of the genre, it is a statement that seems obvious. The words could easily be the musings of a listener first introduced to the art form, not the focal point of an entire work of contemporary criticism. Yet in Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, Adam Bradley’s primary focus is this very point, the recognition of traditional poetic elements within rap music. With the global cultural and economic phenomenon that hip hop has become, it is easy to forget that the style of music is barely thirty years old, that scholarly criticism of it has existed for only half of that time. When viewed within this relatively new arena of scholarship, the importance of Bradley’s text is

1. Keyes points out that rap music derives from what she refers to as the “West African bardic tradition.” What is this tradition? What is the role of the griot in this tradition? What parallels do you see between the groit and a hip hop MC (the rapper, often the main writer of lyrics for a group)?

Tupac Shakur was one of the most influential artist of our last decade. He not only made several albums, but was also a large role in many films and a poet. Millions of people bought and still buy his albums. He was a pioneer to gangster rap, and he sang about things that mattered. Although, he was a role model and was admired by many, he also had a lot of enemies, and in the end, his enemies over powered his fans by taking his life. Some say that he may still be alive, but no one really knows.

The song ¨Changes” is written and performed by Tupac Shakur who was born June 16, 1971 and was shot down September 13, 1996. Tupac was quite successful and was known to be a gangsta rapper as well as a poetic rapper at the same time. Changes seeks the best out of both these worlds and addresses the issue of poverty and poor treatment by police that the African American community face often on a day to day basis.

Social Justice is a huge topic in our society. Its touches on important subjects such as labor laws, environmental rights (racism), poverty, etc. These topics are things that many people have views on whether they agree or disagree. Many artist took note of this and made songs about this and voiced what they thought was right or how they saw the act.

Barack Obama said, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” “Change” by Tupac Shakur talks about change is hard because people stereotype. Although, change is a difficult thing to do, one can change lifestyle if they wanted it to.