Tupac's teenage love letters sold at auction

Tupac Amaru Shakur was only 25 years old when he died.

The rapper lost his life in the East Coast vs. West Coast hip hop feud, which left several famous rappers in the 90s dead.

Shakur left behind not only hip-hop classics, but also letters and poems that were auctioned by Sotheby's on March 30.

Some items on auction hailed from long before he was famous.

At the age of 11, for example, he wrote haikus for his godfather, who was in prison due to his activities with the Black Panther Party. The manuscript of haikus, signed "Tupac Shakur, Future Freedom Fighter," sold for $302,400 (€271,000) at the auction.

Others are love letters from his teenage years, when he was particularly taken with a girl named Cosima.

The letters also reveal his close friendship with Jada Pinkett, who is now married to actor Will Smith, and who was just involved in a scandal at the 94th Oscars.

A family of fighters

Shakur was born in Harlem, New York, to Afeni Shakur and Billy Garland, both active members of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1970s. Shakur grew up with the Panthers as his de-facto family and lived with the trauma of seeing many of them arrested, imprisoned and killed. His mother was a talented speaker for the movement and named him after the Incan revolutionary Túpac Amaru II.

One letter on sale at Sotheby's reflects the world Shakur grew up in. "This is dedicated to my family who are imprisoned for trying to build a better nation for me," writes the 11-year-old.

One of the letters, written when Shakur was older, traces his initial doubts about himself and his talent. He mentions in them that his mother worked late into the night and that he had to take care of his cousins, that he had no time to practice rapping.

The future superstar even thought of giving up music: "My manager said to me that she didn't want me to retire from rap, but I think I do because I can't handle so much rejection…"

A promising start

Tupac kept at it though. When he is 15, he moved to Baltimore, to a quiet, mostly white part of town. In this middle-class environment, Tupac attended an arts school with an artistic-musical focus. Literature, ballet and theater fascinated him.

When he was 17, the family moved to Marin City, California, where at Tamalpais High School, Shakur attended Leila Steinberg's poetry workshop, The Microphone Sessions. Steinberg recognized his talent and took him under her wing, teaching him about poetry and mentoring him as his rap career took off. Steinberg helped him land a recording contract and he began to call himself 2Pac.

In 1991, the first album "2Pacalypse Now" was released. Two years later, he had a breakthrough with "Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z."

In the meantime he lived in Los Angeles, and at 22 became committed to women's rights and helping children and young people in need.

In his song "Keep Ya Head Up," he sides with oppressed and abused women. But the young rapper also ran into trouble with police and violent confrontations brought him to court several times.

The beginning of the East Coast vs. West Coast feud

By 1994, Shakur was famous.

In November of that year, while in a studio in New York with East Coast rappers The Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls, and Puff Daddy, the group is shot at. Tupac takes five bullets but survives. He accuses the other two of having organized the assassination. The event is considered the beginning of the East Coast vs. West Coast feud.

At first it is a relatively harmless war: The musicians insult one another in their songs. Eventually, the conflict turned bloody.

When Tupac's third album, "Me Against The World," came out, the rapper was in jail for sexual harassment. The record reached number one on the U.S. Billboard charts.

One of its singles is the immortal hip-hop classic "Dear Mama." In it, he describes his love for his mother as well as the challenges in their relationship, including her struggles with addiction. 

Later, he agreed to write three albums for a record label in exchange for his bail of $1.4 million. The next album, "All Eyez On Me," was produced by Dr. Dre. In it, Tupac celebrates his gangster lifestyle, with songs like "California Love" seeing commercial success.

A free man, on September 7, 1996, while stopped at a traffic light in Las Vegas, a passing car opened fire on Shakur's BMW. He was hit by several bullets and succumbed to his injuries in the hospital six days later.

Tupac's East Coast rival, The Notorious B.I.G., comes under suspicion. He himself died in a drive-by shooting a few months later.

Even today it remains unclear who is responsible for the murder of Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. Conspiracy theories abound, including one that says Shakur is still alive and living on a Caribbean island.

Tupac, the legend

The unsolved murder has certainly contributed to the creation of legends around the rapper.

He remains an idol in the hip hop scene, especially to many young artists, despite his paradoxes.

Five albums were released after his death — the last in 2006 — and four of them reached platinum and gold status in the US and England.

Since Tupac's assassination, the bullet-riddled BMW has changed hands several times, including at auction, where the car went under the hammer for $1.5 million (€1.35 million) in 2017.

 

This article was originally written in German.