Maybe this was Tupac’s absolution to his killers. What could have gone through his mind during the times he regained consciousness in the hospital? No one will ever know, although all of us who listened to his music over the years and related to his ups and down feel like we knew him well enough to almost guess his last thoughts.

For me, the news of the shooting on that busy Las Vegas night reached me almost two weeks late and by the time it sank in, he’d already passed over to the other side. Thousands of miles away I felt that death like it was my own flesh and blood, maybe all the more so because here in central Africa where I’d spent that last year, I felt so far removed from the teeming shufflings of America’s inner city that it’s almost like another planet. Of course, an increasing number of youths here are getting into Rap music and once in a while you catch a glimpse of a colourful tee-shirt with Ice Cube or Pac’s frown etched on it, big size. Also the setting up of MCM Africa, a TV station playing recent and older clips almost right through the night has considerably raised the awareness of the youths here about what’s going down on the other side of the big ocean. Back to front baseball caps and dance moves right out of Coolio’s and R. Kelly’s clips are now much more common, to my great delight. Yet, it’s still not quite there, and it took me a few weeks before I finally got two cassettes copied from Pac’s latest offering. I got blown over right away; the power of the tracks, the potency of the lyrics grabbed me by the guts, got me singing along, bounced me over from one song to the next and playing the entire set of twenty-six tracks over and over again. I can’t remember being that hooked on one man’s music for a long time. Up to the time of writing this, I still play at least a dozen of the songs every day.

What has changed for me since learning of Tupac’s death is the intensity I feel from his words. The more I listen to that double CD and the more I’m convinced Pac knew he didn’t have a lot of time left. I realise a lot of people still see him as nothing but a straight ‘thug’, to go by his own term, but anyone having really followed the man’s rise knows he was a much more complex being than that.

And that is where the role of the media in Tupac’s fate comes in. To a record company executive, Tupac Shakur was the champagne and the caviar all in one. And they played his ‘untamed-street-boy-turned-star’ persona to the max. How much of the responsibility for Pac’s death rests on the manipulating heads of the media and record company big shots is yet to be appreciated. How much control did Pac have on the way he was portrayed, I wonder. Sure, the man was no fool; he wanted his records to sell, he wanted the money, the fame and the attention, who wouldn’t? But that is the trap in the celebrity game.

How many people who now talk so knowledgeably of Tupac and his life really know his background really realise what his formative years were like. Of course I wasn’t there neither to see it, but we who have grown up from an early age steeped in the cold reality of the inner cities streets know just what it took for a kid like him to make his dreams come real. You have to have experienced hunger, fear, slept rough, done things out of powerlessness and poverty to know what Pac felt like. When he talked about ‘Keeping it real’, that’s exactly what he meant because he had no time for those who went ‘soft’ once their bread was buttered. That was Tupac’s creed and that was all he knew. And that was maybe what brought him so many problems from all those would-be rappers, filled with envy, greed and resentment, those who would have given and done anything to be in his shoes without possessing an ounce of his talent.

Because it is talent we are talking about here. For someone from his background to be that articulate, you’ve got to talk about ‘gift’. The sensitivity in Tupac’s lyrics came from the place where all great artists through the ages draw their inspiration - their soul. But that’s not all; what can be said about his acting. I recalled what I felt like just after seeing ‘Juice’ for the first time. The unconditional movie-lover I am, just wasn’t prepared for what happened on that screen. This was no acting, this was real. I mean, Pac didn’t have to move a muscle to make a scene work. All you had to do is stick a camera on him, and without speaking a single word, even keeping completely still, the man had you riveted to your seat. His subsequent films confirmed just how naturally gifted for the screen Tupac was. Check this out: he even managed to make Janet Jackson look like an actress in ‘Poetic Justice’ (and God knows I haven’t got anything against Janet, she’s got a good voice, but acting...?)

So what is the point of all this, just another praiseful belated eulogy? No. That’s not why I’m writing my first lines in almost two years, I wouldn’t be so vain as to think the world needs another comment on his death from me. I haven’t been able to read all that’s been written about Tupac since his death, but like I said at the beginning, I felt that man. In fact, I haven’t been touched by lyrics that way since Bob Marley’s last LP. (“Headley’s tripping now” I can hear many readers smirk…) No, I’m serious. The comparison is certainly no disrespect or no easy gimmick. For millions of youngsters, that was the kind of impact Tupac’s songs had.

Look further; what do you think Tupac would have been like in, say ten years’ time? Can you imagine what he would have become? I read that last interview and the things he came up with were heavy. And you can bet he wasn’t posturing. Tupac wasn’t like that. That man was going to hit on the politics in a big way, turn the tables of the fat Black community leaders-politicians over. The worst part of it is I believe they knew it and while not liking his ways and straight-talking, craved the influence he had on America’s disenfranchised Black youths. I read some of what some of them have said about his death but I wonder how sad many of them really were that he left the scene.

I also know many people (no names here…) talking about, “he brought it upon himself...”, wisely shaking their heads with a sad glint in their eyes. Sure…What did he bring upon himself exactly? He was totally original, wouldn’t dance to nobody’s tune and didn’t need to imitate anyone. Tupac never begged, he had it all and raised himself from nowhere to the spot they all would like to occupy. And what if he used the language he grew up with? So what if he walked the walk he talked? What we must realise here is that change is the essence of life and just like everyone of us does, Pac reacted to his many experiences. He changed, maybe not getting better all the time, but always sharper, correcting his mistakes with all the honesty he always displayed.

The sad irony is that the very people who shot him probably deprived their own children

(and ours) of a leader that could have showed the up and coming generation of Black youths the trappings of the system, someone with credentials, someone ‘real’. Whoever killed him, or paid for his killing, just don’t know…Like I said, I’m too cut off from the scene right now to really learn what happened, but whether it was a Blood/Crips thing, a personal thing or an East Coast/ West Coast thing, it just doesn’t make no sense. Nothing was achieved by that. All those who coveted his place in the Rap world won’t get there because it was never a matter of ‘fronting’ but of substance.

It is all senseless and nothing I write here is going to make anyone wiser. Yet, I sense that in many people’s head something happened when they saw the pictures on their television sets, a feeling of despair, of grief, of hopelessness that someday might just become a breath of willpower, a scream that will get them up and walking, talking and acting so that other gifted Black youths be given the chance to finish growing and pulling their brothers up and away from the mire of self-loathing and selfishness. Only God will judge.

Victor Headley. The Republic of Congo August 1999.