![]() ![]() In his lifetime, the rapper veered from bone-hard social commentary to bonehead thug talk, from crass blather to sweet ‘n’ low sentimentality. Afeni Shakur, the rapper’s mother, acts as co-executive producer on his posthumous projects, and Shakur’s estate could legitimately argue that they have every right to keep his legacy alive. Shakur’s virtual resurrection satisfies almost every quota required by the death myth machinery: the riot-in-cell-block-9 chic of Robert Johnson, the Morrison-ian rumours of a faked exit, the coal-to-stone alchemy that minted money out of Hendrix’s sloppiest archives.Īnd yet, this isn’t a clear-cut ethical question. These are all weak records, but that’s not really the point. Last winter’s The Rose That Grew From Concrete spoken word tribute album, with its contributions from Danny Glover and the cast of The Lion King, served as a further index of how to milk a dead man. The following year’s Still I Rise, a dog of a record even by Shakur’s standards, went platinum. The Greatest Hits compilation has done twice that since 1998. The 1997 double album compilation R U Still Down? (Remember Me) went quadruple platinum. ![]() UTEOT comes from a seemingly inexhaustible store of Tupac out-takes and afterlife cash-ins. ![]() Culled from tracks recorded between his release from prison in 1995 and his death the following year, it is the first of two volumes of out-takes from the rapper’s Makaveli period – the second will be released later this year. The latest posthumous Tupac album Until The End Of Time sold almost half a million copies in its first week on the racks last March. Black America mightn’t have wanted a martyr like Tupac Shakur but they got him anyway.įive years after his death, one of hip-hop’s most iconic and controversial figures is doing bigger box office than ever. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |