The Rose
& The Rebel

Born Lesane Parish Crooks on June 16, 1971, in East Harlem, New York City, Tupac Amaru Shakur entered the world already steeped in revolution. His mother, Afeni Shakur, was an active member of the Black Panther Party who had been acquitted of conspiracy charges just a month before giving birth. From his earliest days, Tupac was, as the Library of Congress later noted, "born into the movement."

At thirteen, the family relocated to Baltimore, where Tupac enrolled in the Baltimore School for the Arts. There he studied acting, poetry, jazz, and ballet — and befriended a young Jada Pinkett. He discovered rap during his Baltimore years, performing under the name MC New York, before the family moved again to Marin City, California, near Oakland.

By twenty, Tupac had joined Digital Underground as a roadie and backup dancer, parlaying that exposure into a solo deal with Interscope Records. His debut album, 2Pacalypse Now (1991), announced a fearless voice willing to confront police brutality, poverty, and systemic racism head-on. Within five years he would release four solo studio albums, star in six feature films, and sell tens of millions of records — all while navigating legal battles, a near-fatal shooting, and the escalating East Coast–West Coast rivalry that would ultimately claim his life.

On September 7, 1996, Tupac was shot in a drive-by in Las Vegas. He died six days later at the age of twenty-five. In the decades since, his influence has only grown: two Diamond-certified albums, induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the first solo hip-hop artist in his first year of eligibility, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and "Dear Mama" preserved in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry — the first hip-hop recording by a solo artist to receive that honor.