What a fabulous book. Enjoyed the structure. It had me reading endlessly. Read very fast. Loved it. Highly recommend.

This was a great read I loved the personal accounts of Tupac's life from friends. I found out things I did not know and it made me love him even more.

This was a great read I loved the personal accounts of Tupac's life from friends. I found out things I did not know and it made me love him even more.

“If we'll go see a movie about Mongolian nomads, why don't we ever go see a movie about rap music?”

So said the Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) a few years ago, back when the hashtag #oscarssowhite was in the news. The bit about Mongolian nomads is not hyperbole – we had seen an actual movie from Mongolia about nomads only a year or two before. That's how I ended up seeing “Straight Outta Compton”.

I wish I could say that I came away from “Straight Outta Compton” with a profound understanding of the problems of African-Americans, or something like that, but I didn't. However, through a very unlikely set of circumstances, less than a month after I saw the movie, I met the actor who played Eazy-E. When I told him that I (a jowly middle-aged white guy in a suit) had seen “Straight Outta Compton”, his astonishment was comical in the extreme. He then very charmingly shot the breeze for quite some time with self and LSW before attempting to teach me how to shake hands, etc., in the manner of certain African-Americans that I have seen on stage and screen. I failed the class miserably.

“This is not the way of my people,” I explained, as he laughed.

I approached this book with all of the above in mind, thinking, well, while it's unlikely that I will gain any profound insights from this, you never know when and how attempting to expand your experience will pay unexpected dividends.

Now, I have had personal trainer who is African-American. I started with him at the gym in person, and I was really surprised how much I enjoyed it. When the pandemic hit, I made a special effort to arrange remote classes. He is excellent at his job, but our experience does not overlap much, so sometimes small talk is awkward. Occasionally, without warning, he will insert into our exercise rest-break banter a bit of trivia from the life of Tupac Shakur, like, “Did you know Tupac dated Madonna?” (I didn't). I am usually at a loss for a response – a situation he enjoys. He's yanking my chain a little, but it's all in good fun.

One day recently, while cruising the latest free book offerings from Netgalley, I noticed this book. I thought: I did not hesitate read a book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire or the beheading of Marie Antoinette to partially remedy my ignorance. Why not read about Tupac Shakur for the same reason?

Also, I anticipated a satisfyingly shocked reaction from my personal trainer when I told him about what I was reading. I was not disappointed.

All of the above is to say: I'm a 60-year-old Caucasian with little to no previous experience with the subject matter. I listened to most of Tupac's songs on YouTube while reading this book, and recognized none of them. I did not know the song “Changes”, but, when I listened to it, I recognized it as one I heard often during the troubles which followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. In short, I don't think that I am what the writer was picturing if he tried to imagine the typical reader of this book. But still, I enjoyed it.

If you are as un-Tupac-saavy as I am, it might help you to read his Wikipedia entry before starting. Of course, the Tupac that emerges from the book is a more complex character than that of the Wikipedia entry. In the last year of his life, he seems to have gone pretty deep into behavior resembling the gangsta thug stereotype, but before that he was a smart, even sweet, young man. He went to a performing arts high school in Baltimore, danced ballet, and performed Shakespeare. His high school English teacher remembers him fondly. He showed up early for recording sessions at studios, in stark contrast to most musicians. He was a fan of the soundtrack album of “The Lion King”, singing along with enthusiasm. He was polite to music industry lawyers, even when he didn't have to be.

In this book, there are a lot of the references to albums, artists, movies, directors, and other apparently important figures that meant nothing to me, but I was able to follow the story well enough without stopping to search the internet for everything I didn't understand.

The book is an oral history, meaning, most of it is interviews with people who knew Tupac or intersected with his life, often in unexpected ways. I thought that many of the most memorable and interesting interviews were with the random people whom fate threw into Tupac's path, for example, the NY emergency room hospital doctor who treated him when he was shot in 1994, one of the jurors from his 1993 trial for sexual assault, the Las Vegas journalist who was first on the scene when he was fatally shot in 1996.

As a bookish and introverted guy, I mostly understand the word by reading about it, and I was happy to have this opportunity to take a look into a part of the world that in some ways is lying in plain sight but in other ways is completely hidden. As with my earlier experience at the movies, I don't feel that I have any special insight now, but I hope that reading this book will somehow provide a little puzzle piece that will help widen my perspective, improve my understanding, and increase my empathy. Failing that, at least I can hope to pleasantly surprise somebody.

I received a free electronic galley copy of this book from Simon & Schuster via Netgalley. Thanks to all.

Thank you NetGalley for the digital eARC. I was in the middle of reading this book when DMX passed away and I could not stop thinking about how little we know what goes on in these celebrities personal lives. From the outside it looks so great. Money, cars, jewelry ...but this book about Tupac goes deeper. It is a collection of interviews from people who knew him "when"... and it paints a portrait of a gentle genius. I wish everyone knew this side of him.