Am I the only person on earth that thinks Tupac is a boring, overrated hack?

Yes. If anything. 'Pac's underrated. "Hit 'Em Up" alone puts him in with the immortals. His weaker tracks are extremely weak, I'll grant, but his best ones are miracles of tone & shading. Also, his lines scan better than anybody's except Ice Cubes.

Er.

But more importantly: Are you the same Blue Earth Minnesota Matt Helgeson who used to hang out in my dorm room back in the day? Holy shit!

So, since you won't win me over with any "Tupac was actually a really good rapper" arguments, someone please to explain to me The Meaning Of Tupac As Cultural Icon. Because around my way pretty-boy Fame-school kids who went around pretending to be tough guys just got put in the "Corny 4-Eva" category...and never escaped.

well...I'd say "bad scanning = probably some sad-ass hip hip." Jay-Z scans nicely, Nas a little less so; Ice Cube, letter-perfect; Eminem seems to understand some fairly advanced metrical techniques (sprung rhythm, variously weighted stresses [like those at play in "I Am"]).

It really isn't the Tupac meme that gets me. It's how punk rock he is. Yes, I'm talking about "Hit 'Em Up" again. Damn but I love "Hit 'Em Up." California Love is great too. Also, Tupac was friends with Shock G, which means he knows Humpty Hump, which scores him about thirty million coolness points.

I'm clearly a corny dinosaur motherfucker for preferring Rakim.

Give me Q-Tip anyday. His vocal timbre on "Electric Relaxation." Mmmmmmmm Hmmmmmmm.

stevem my point was, and remains, that it's just as difficult/challenging/impressive to play a character who's a lot like yourself/your persona as it is to play a character with whom you have v. little in common...ever been told to "just be yourself" and consequently felt self-conscious? not saying 2Pac=Olivier or anything but yeah, playing a character similar to one's public persona doesn't diminish the quality of one's acting.

Ah well, I'm off to CD Go Round, just as soon as I absorb this great new stuff from Klute and the Klezmatics and Sykes and Kumbia Kings....

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ahem.

(also shouldn't it be "It feels goooooood puttin' money in your MAIL BOX?" which illustrates right there there's more to how he does things than drawling the last two syllables.)

Yes, Rakim could be called better on various technical type aspects, but the totality of what 'Pac did adds up to so much more.

And you can dismiss all that Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished stuff as trite, or whatever, but it was clearly meaningful to many many people...

That was like 91, I was summarily blown away....and then summarily unimpressed. "Keep Your Head Up" is an amazingly progressive song--arguably the most feminist record ever recorded by a male rapper. But Pac is unfortunately very similar to 50 Cent in many respects. His promotion is more about mystique, image, legend and myth.

He really illustrates an unfortunate junction between black power, black leftism and gangsterism--i.e. the idea that criminals are the blackest among us because they are the ones white folks fear most. That is a powerful powerful--if fallacious--notion in the black community. It's equally as powerful in the white community, but for different--yet equally disturbing--reasons.

White racial paranoia is perhaps the only power black people percieve themselves as having. Pac wedded that idea to racial essentialism, and his Black Panther lineage was cited as his license to do so.

That marketing genius is often confused with actual skills. But hey, hip-hop isn't the only arena where people confuse hype with acumen.

"but it was clearly meaningful to many many people..."

Same could be said about Puff Daddy. Doesn't make him a great MC.

Ta-Nehisi

What is the most famous musical artist you've never heard?

tupac ---> eminem??

also yeah california love and also hit 'em up and somma the other early stuff. also 2nd best use of the "broken wings" sample.

worst thing about 2pac: nas's shit acoustic "duet" with him.

TNC: I'm actually pretty dubious about this idea of pac playing on white race-fear, etc. I mean if you wanna go all staggerlee then just start with NWA etc., or hell "The Day The N---z Took Over" especially but really all of The Chronic (which is what makes it so damn powerful) and then into the whole gangsta cannon. Pac actually gets big-ups usually for making gangsta so much more conflicted than it had been prior, and for trying to rescue something positive from its nihilism.

I mean this isn't why I like him as a rapper per se, but its worth simply factually recognizing that the rhymes work for some foax coz they see the, ahem, pain in his eyes. Which is to say that unlike 50 he doesn't seem particularly happy much less optimistic about his lifestyle, the possibility he'll live, etc. Ppl. identified with that confusion, and perhaps learned something from the degree to which he mapped the countours of America's racial fantasia. I.e. listening to pac helped you understand why you listened to NWA, and to a certain extent helped joe-suburban-mass-audience (or maybe even more likely, jill) create another fantasized heroized vision of why somebody else would listen to NWA.

I mean at worst he could come off like a wounded bird waiting for good liberals to come by and splint him etc.

that says everything I could say about 2pac and more.

I don't know that I buy the part about being confused and thus being the first to add complication gangsta rap--at the very least Ice Cube beat him to the punch. Think "Color Blind," "The Product," or--for my money of the best gangsta songs ever--"Bird In Hand." You could even make an argument for "A Good Day"--though I think by then Pac was on the scene. Ice T's cannon also boasts a bit of complication.

At any rate, from an image perspective, I don't mean to take anything away from him. I think your right in that he nailed in idea that resonated with a lot of people. Seeming conflicted is certainly part of that. But somehow, I think he brought something more.

I'm also a bit torn about "Keep Ya Head Up" especially in the context of the rest of pac's work -- aside from the pro-abortion stand it seems like a nice gloss on straight NOI men needta act like men macho caregiver etc. with occasional feints that he's uncomfortable with it. Not that I can think of any particularly more pro-woman stuff outside of the backpack cannon anyway (and v. little inside it for that matter).

Also you say "His promotion is more about mystique, image, legend and myth." but isn't that like the BEST sort of promotion ever!? And isn't the whole point of mystique, myth, etc. that it speaks to something *beyond* simple promotion? Which I guess is what you hint at, the "something more" which I thought yr. first post was all about reducing to promotion etc.

You dismiss the pro-choice stand of "Keep Ya head up." But that isn't a minor detail, if anything it's emblematic of how the song gives agency to black women, the sort of agency that people like the NOI deny. It's not sexist to say that women can use the help of the father. It is sexist to somehow seek to blame women for the lack of fathers ("black women run men out the house") or to ask them to somehow cede head of the household to a man ("black women need to be submissive"). "Keep Ya Head Up" endorses neither of those points of view. It simply--and sometimes eloquently--says, "Yo, I know it's hard raising solo. I wish these fucking black men would get thier act together and help out." That sentiment is deep because it touches on larger, but often unexpressed, idea in the black community--that the men are really holding us back. The NOI will often subtly blame women for the condition of the people, or they'll endorse an idea of patriarchy that I don't really find in that song.

As for my original point, I was saying that I don't know if Tupac's significance is in the arena of what we, admittidly vaugely, define as skills. I prefer Biggie as an MC. But Tupac may ultimately mean more. I think it's in what he offered himself up as, and subsequently was promoted as. Certainly it was significant, but ultimately I think this gangsta/revoloutionary paradigm is pretty regressive. Some will argue that it was Huey Newton's notion of the "lumpenization" of the Party that really hurt it, more than any FBI informant could.

"Now I clown around, when I hang around with the underground/Girls that say I'm down used to frown when I came around/Gas me and when they pass me, they used to dis me/Harrass me but now they ask me, if they can kiss me...."
That was like 91, I was summarily blown away....and then summarily unimpressed. "Keep Your Head Up" is an amazingly progressive song--arguably the most feminist record ever recorded by a male rapper. But Pac is unfortunately very similar to 50 Cent in many respects. His promotion is more about mystique, image, legend and myth.

He really illustrates an unfortunate junction between black power, black leftism and gangsterism--i.e. the idea that criminals are the blackest among us because they are the ones white folks fear most. That is a powerful powerful--if fallacious--notion in the black community. It's equally as powerful in the white community, but for different--yet equally disturbing--reasons.

White racial paranoia is perhaps the only power black people percieve themselves as having. Pac wedded that idea to racial essentialism, and his Black Panther lineage was cited as his license to do so.

That marketing genius is often confused with actual skills. But hey, hip-hop isn't the only arena where people confuse hype with acumen.

"but it was clearly meaningful to many many people..."

Same could be said about Puff Daddy. Doesn't make him a great MC.

Hee hee diddy

Holy shit at this thread