Tupac Shakur (1971 – 1996)
American rapper and actor.
This new Makaveli album I got comin' out, I'm takin' on niggas. It's like, my dopest album ever.
If you thought about it I'm hardly the villian, I'm hardly the one you should be scared of. It's the guy who can't talk, it's the guy without a job, it's the one with scares in his face, not the one clean cut, you know what I mean you should worry about a lot of other things, but not me.
Coming to grips with my past, it was hard. I don't feel like what I did was so evil, I just feel like the way I was living, and my mentality, was part of my progression to be a man.
The guns are turning away from Europe and Russia and Iran and Iraq and there turning to us.
You grew up, we grew up B.C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? You don't have parents... You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product.
The reason I sell 6 million records, the reason I could go to jail and come out without a scratch, the reason I can walk around, the reason I am who I am today is because I can look directly in to my face and find my soul, it's there, it's not sold, i didn't sell it, it's still within me, I still feel it, my heart is still connected to my body.
Some people say I was a thug and a gangsta. Other people remember me as a poet and a born leader. But I'm saying to you measure a man by his actions fully, through his whole life, from the beginning to the end.
Listen to the words people say in their lyrics, and tell me, if that's some real shit, if that's real to you, you know what I mean. Listen to what they sayin', don't just bob your head to the beat, peep the game, and listen to what Im saying. Hold us accountable for it.
Trust nobody, TRUST NO BODY.
I think that I'm really, I was a reactionary, and now I don't do that any more. Same person but I don't react, before I reacted, I didn't like the cameras, I spitt.
Marlon Brando is not a gangsta' actor, he's an actor. Axl Rose and them are not gangsta' rock n rollers, they're rock n rollers right. So I'm a rapper, this is what I do, I'm an artist.
It's not just about you taking care of "your" child. It's about you taking care of these children.
I'm known as a survivor now, I hope so, for the jail thing, bullets and everything, controversies and everything, I hope so. And I wanna be in the future known as somebody.. You know I want people to be talking about me like you know: " remember when he was real bad, remember when Tupac was real bad". You know what I mean, they do that about a lot of actors now, like John Travolta I read stories like "remember you were wild". And all these other people, and now they're like sweet hearts. We all should get that chance, I just want my chance.
No, you don't wanna get me started. Jell-O with hair all in the mold. I'd be like, "Damn, man, how are you gonna mess up Jell-O?" Jell-O is so wholesome and family-like. It just ruins it for me. To have a hair in there, yeah. I mean, I'm like, "Come on, Bill Cosby pumps this, man!"
It's a constant man-ego-check going on in the streets, in this world.
I'm not thuggin' for me, I'm thuggin' for my family, I pay all the bills, I feed my whole family, wrong or right, I do and I can't stop.
It doesn't say that. Where are you at? Right there... oh. I didn't say that. That's not what it says. -Tupac
I got shot. I always felt like I'd be shot. Somebody was trying to do me some harm because a lot of people don't like me. But I didn't think it was gonna happen at that particular moment.
Everybody's at war with different things… I'm at war with my own heart sometimes.
Don't support the phonies, support the real.