I Cried So Many Tears
The Documentary 'Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur' Opened Up Old Wounds In This Old White Man
It is neither irony nor coincidence that the greatest American poet of my generation was gestated in a prison cell as his mother served time for a crime against our Government. This is merely information. Tupac Amaru Shakur was not born in a state prison. His mother was released before the birth of her only child. Instead, he was born in a cultural prison where his skin color marked him for a life of material poverty that would not hold him past his teenage years.
Tupac knew great poverty in his life and felt the lure and illusion of great wealth. Tupac knew peace, and he knew war. He knew love and hatred were not different sides of the same coin but that Love is the specie of Heaven while gold is the Devil’s dollar. All of this lived inside Tupac, and he left all of it to us in his music. Regardless of your skin color, where you were born, who you love, or what set you claim, Tupac’s music is a gift to you. But this is not a story with a happy ending.
Tupac’s twenty-five years on this Earth were filled with the long torture of being Black while possessing a human spirit that would not be restrained or made to bow by any force generated from human minds, neither gods nor governments. There have been many great artists, and many still live among us. But few rebels punch a hole in time and let the light shine in for all times and all people. These are our legends, and Tupac Amaru Shakur remains a legend. His music will speak generations from now when the haters and fakers of this world have all passed away into obscure memories that left no lasting mark upon the world and its people.
I am an old, Generation X white man, one of a sea of multi-colored young people who first encountered Tupac in Digital Underground’s Same Song, then marveled at his performances in the films Juice and Poetic Justice. We listened to his music on the Above The Rim and The Show soundtrack. We bought his first album and then Thug Life. With his next album, some of us even recognized that Gangster Rap was starting to grow up from violence and depravity, and we grew up with it. Though still violent and depraved in our hearts, we felt this shift and thought of our mothers when we listened to Dear Mama. We were blown away by the opulence of his talent on All Eyez On Me, a double album that remains a marvel of art. And we were melted in mercury when we learned of Tupac’s violent and unnecessary death. Some of us felt the absence of God when we learned Tupac was gone. The void left in his wake was the opposite of turning on a light.
I did mention this wasn’t a happy ending, but it is not without hope.
Tupac Shakur left the world four hundred songs, created feverishly in a few years of inspired effort that rivals what James Joyce and Tolkien put into their books. Sadly, like all American Black men, Tupac was a victim of his generation. Blaming an entire generation for the world's faults is easy, yet most generations ambitiously take credit for their accomplishments while avoiding the blame. In this spirit, I want it to be known that there was a short period of time in America when teenagers came together through music that pierced our cultural walls. We listened to each other through the soundtrack of our time.
My Generation X hasn’t done much to save this world or make it any better. We’ve seen it grow much worse as the sins of the American Civil War and its half-hearted Reconstruction have come to roost yet again. We thought it was done. I never imagined that I would see my country descend into the shadows of a Civil War that we all thought was settled. Yet, here we are. Because the Boomers never gave us a real chance to do anything of worth or value, we now look at them with derision and disgust, watching two octogenarian millionaires fight over ephemeral power like Grumpy Old Men on meth and Adderal. It’s disgusting and should rip our hearts out daily, those of us with any heart left.
But my generation did listen to our artists. We lay on our bedroom floors, put headphones on, and dreamed of what it would be like kissing someone beautiful to all those songs in all those genres, dreaming of fighting and fucking to that music. We lived our young lives to a complex soundtrack. We blew our speakers out, trying to get our parents to hear this music, to feel it the way we felt it. And some of us keep this fire burning deep in our hearts while the music plays now to the soundtrack of the ending of America and the beginning of something new in its wake.
There’s a void that feels like the absence of God, but perhaps it’s just an echo from the past, a bass beat bouncing off a concrete wall in an alley on the poor side of town. Perhaps, we can choose what to fill this void with so that maybe this is a happy ending.
If we continue to allow these songs and stories into our hearts, projecting them into the world from our dumb phones and big old cabinet speakers, we can pass them on to you, our children, because you are our faith in the future.
Tupac dreamed of a Thug Mansion in every State of America, where young people could go, those born into violence they should not have inherited and could feel mercy and inclusion. And because mercy has no skin color, his vision calls out to the core of our shared humanity. The voice in the vision says, “Children, you must keep this fire lit because the night is dark, cold, and long until dawn. Turn up the music. Let’s huddle close together and sing these beautiful songs until the Sun comes up for us all.”
Rest In Peace, Tupac Shakur, An American Legend (1971-1996)
Rest In Peace, and Happy Mother’s Day to Afeni Shakur and all of you Mommas!
Shout out to
for promoting this documentary in his Substack . It might have been a while before I learned this ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ documentary was available.You can watch all five episodes of Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur on Hulu via FX.
The Director was very kind to retweet a link to this essay. That is super cool!
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