Tupac Shakur: Poetry and Emotion

Everything I ever learned about being the ideal poet I learned from Tupac Shakur. As a lifelong Pac fan if anyone were to ask me what made him so effective in his artistry I would say it was his poetic style and emotional effectiveness.

A lot of people who aren’t really Tupac fans or just don’t know a lot about him don’t understand why he was so effective and impactful, but if you research his life story it’ll make a lot of sense. Pac’s life story sounds like something right out of a movie. He came from a family of Black revolutionaries who fought for the rights and advancement of African Americans. Most of them ended up in the prison system, including his mother Afeni who fought and won her own case in court while she was pregnant with Tupac. Quite a story right? After Pac was born his mother raised him and his sister in a very poor and unhealthy environment from coast to coast.

Tupac learned to express the pain of the struggles he endured during his childhood through his love for the arts. Hip Hop was where he found his voice and after being a roadie for the Hip Hip group Digital Underground Tupac began a solo career where he would literally make his presence felt. As a rapper Tupac was very skilled as what us Hip Hop heads would call a dope emcee, but it was the lyrical content and emotion behind his delivery that made Tupac stand out.

🎶Growing up as an inner city brother where every other had a pops and a mother

I was the product of a heated lover

Nobody knew how deep it screwed me

And since my pops never knew me, my family didn't know what to do with me

Was I somebody they despised?

Curious look in their eye as if they wonder if I'm dead or alive

And poor momma can't control me

"Quit tryin' to save my soul, I wanna roll with my homies!"🎶- Tupac (The Streets R Deathrow).

Whether Pac was rapping about the struggles of the inner city, being a young Black male running around in the streets, or dealing with the mental, emotional and spiritual issues with his inner self, Tupac made sure you could feel his every expression with heaviness in his voice. When his voice hit your eardrums. You felt hurt when he talked about his hurt, you felt joy and inspiration when he talked about joy and inspiration. The way Pac rapped wasn’t like that of the typical Hip Hop lyricist. Pac’s flow was more like that of the spoken word. Every lyric he ever rapped was something you could imagine someone reciting at a public poetry readingHe never needed an instrumental to rap. Instead, an instrumental was needed to work around his voice.

“Pac was different man. He wasn’t just rapping bars, he was telling you his life. He could come with this crazy anger. Then he could switch it up and give you something so deep and emotional.”- Eminem.

I remember understanding Tupac during my youngest years. His voice hit my ears like an audiobook. His word were like a shard blade piercing the flesh, making the instrumentals he rapped over feel like you were listening to the background score of a dramatic movie. As someone who has been rapping and is now an author Tupac is one of my biggest influences as a writer. People always tell me that my writing is very emotionally effective and I always make an effort to tell them that Tupac is who taught me to be so emotionally impactful.

When I wrote my first book ever, which is a collection of poetry, I kept Pac in mind through the entire process. I made it my mission to make sure that everyone not only read my words, but could emotionally connect with everything I had to say, even if it wasn’t personally relatable. I have Tupac Shakur to thank for this inspiration. He’s not only one of the greatest and most impactful human beings to walk the earth, but the purest embodiment of poetry and emotion ever expressed musically. I’ll never be convinced that he’s not the greatest poet that ever lived. On this day that would’ve been his 55th birthday that poetry and emotion lives larger than ever.

🎶Somebody save me, lost and crazy

Scared to drop a seed hopin' I ain't cursed my babies

Maybe now niggas feel me now, picture my pain

Embrace my words, make the world change

And still I smile🎶 - Tupac (Smile).