This is justice for me,” she said in 2005. His mother considered them a waste of time. Conspiracies about his killers flourished. Tupac Shakur died in a still-unsolved drive-by shooting in 1996, at age 25. “Ain’t a woman alive that could take my mama’s place.” “You are appreciated,” he says, rapping about the sacrifices she made for him and his sister, Sekyiwa Shakur. Tupac, in turn, revered his mother, praising her in his 1995 elegy, “Dear Mama,” a hit song many fans recalled Tuesday in tweets and posts. If not for the arts, my child would’ve been lost.”īut Afeni Shakur left a deep impression on her son, helping to shape a world view that later made him stand out among other young rappers, with songs reflecting his own rebellious attitude toward racism, poverty, violence and other social problems.
“I wasn’t available to do the right things for my son. “Arts can save children, no matter what’s going on in their homes,” she told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview. Still, she managed to enroll Tupac in arts schools and other programs where he honed the musical and acting skills that would make him a hip-hop icon. She named him Tupac Amaru, after the last Incan emperor, who led a rebellion and refused to surrender to Spanish conquistadors.Īs Afeni Shakur bounced from New York City to Baltimore to California, she became addicted to drugs and struggled as a single mother. All the charges were ultimately dismissed, and her son was born soon after she left jail. Recalling the case years later, she said they were accused of conspiring to commit murder and arson, to blow up the Bronx Botanical Garden and the Abercrombie & Fitch and Macy’s department stores, and even police stations. Dear Mama: Afeni Shakur, mother of rapper Tupac Shakur, dies – Orange County Register