Tupac was at war with the entirety of the world around him. He showed up for the jury’s verdict two days later in a wheelchair and freshly bloodied bandages.ĭespite the heinousness of his crimes, it’s easy to understand how and why the rap press and rap listeners avoided processing them at the time. 30, 1994, while waiting in the lobby of Quad Recording Studios in Times Square for a session with Puff Daddy and Notorious B.I.G., though, things changed: Tupac was shot five times and robbed. In the middle of this high-profile, high-stakes trial, Tupac, of course, found time to record. The term Tupac began serving in February 1995 was a one-and-a-half to four-year sentence for a conviction of first-degree sexual abuse stemming from a November 1993 incident where he and his road manager, Charles Fuller, groped a woman in his room at the Parker Meridien Hotel in Manhattan. This was a man on the ascent, a supremely multi-talented, multi-medium artist with the magnetic charisma of Alexander the Great or Shaka Zulu, and his rise from teenage obscurity to rap’s biggest star was as tumultuous and infamous as it was meteoric.
People knew he was working towards something great - perhaps even historical - yet his budding superstardom had yet to enter full blossom. He had a pair of gold records, supporting or co-starring roles in four movies that were hits in urban markets, and had begun to be recognized - for better or worse - as the voice of young black men in America. Not yet 24-years-old, Tupac was already a multi-faceted star. So he sat, stewed, barked, raged and grew angrier. His status as a folk hero, more cause célèbre than celebrity, meant his movements were limited by involuntary protective custody status. Yet here he was: shackled in the chains of Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. He was a man possessed by boundless energy, a person defined by his Faustian hunger for more than mere existence, one who clearly knew he had so little time in this world. 95A1140: 5’11”, 145 pounds, pacing his cell, chain-smoking Newports, devouring dozens of magazines and newspapers and writing furiously in his notebook. On Valentine’s Day 1995, Tupac Amaru Shakur became Inmate No.