{"id":84779,"date":"2025-10-17T17:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/84779\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:52:08","slug":"tupac-shakurs-early-life-in-baltimore-new-biography-excerpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/84779\/","title":{"rendered":"Tupac Shakur’s Early Life in Baltimore: New Biography Excerpt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe story of Tupac<\/a> Shakur has been told many times since his tragic death at just 25 following a drive-by shooting in 1996. Yet a life so big and complicated is always ripe for further exploration. Jeff Pearlman\u2019s new biography, Only God Can Judge Me<\/a>: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur<\/a>, is a 400-page deep dive into Shakur\u2019s brief and tumultuous existence, from his childhood in New York City, Baltimore, and the Bay Area to his early brushes with fame, the development of his gangsta rap persona, and his scrapes with the law. While the sweeping narrative may be familiar, the book is chock full of details that will surprise even the most ardent Tupac fans \u2014 a consequence of Pearlman\u2019s three-year reporting odyssey, which took him across the country and back again, and saw him speak with nearly 700 people.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s fourth chapter, \u201cComing to Baltimore,\u201d from which this excerpt is taken, focuses on Tupac\u2019s life at the tender ages between 13 and 15, when he, his mother Afeni, and his sister Set left their hometown of New York for a fresh start. He was an awkward and vulnerable teen in a new city, toggling between his fierce independence \u2014 defiance, even \u2014 and his desire to fit in. The timeframe marks the emergence of his creative voice, when he began revealing his poetry musings to the wider world and performing as a rapper.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u200bAlthough nearly forty years have passed since Afeni Shakur and her two children moved to 3955 Greenmount Avenue, in Baltimore\u2019s Pen Lucy neighborhood, on the city\u2019s northeast side, time remains frozen. A small patch of grass before her row house is overgrown and blended with the shattered glass of a broken beer bottle, a Hershey wrapper, two frayed lollipop sticks. The cement staircase appears as cracked now as it was in 1984. The air smells of rust and salt.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is Black Baltimore,\u201d Phyllis Cannady, a sixty-three-year-old woman on a nearby porch, tells a white reporter. \u201cWelcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith little money to her name and no particular plan in place, in November 1984 Afeni and her children, Tupac and his half-sister Set, moved into the 1,798-square-foot row house, which was occupied by a cousin, Lisa, and her son, Jamal \u2014 both of whom moved out within a matter of weeks.<\/p>\n

\n\tWere one to read the day\u2019s sparkly travel brochures, he would learn of a magical municipality featuring the splendor of Inner Harbor, the excitement of Cal Ripken Jr. and Baltimore Orioles baseball, the deliciousness of steamed crabs. Yet to be white and wealthy is to know an upper-crust Baltimore that never existed to the denizens of Greenmount Avenue. All one needs to do is scan through copies of the Baltimore Afro-American, the weekly Black newspaper of record at the time, to understand. With rare exception, the articles called for people to fight drug addiction, escape homelessness, embrace Jesus. The headlines bled trauma \u2014 shootout at social services and no suspects yet in the Pimlico Five executions and grocers in city county cited for food stamp violations. Beneath two Baltimores, the columnist R. B. Jones once wrote, \u201cThere has [sic] always been two Baltimores. That is an irrefutable fact and people get upset when they hear it. But it\u2019s the truth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThe three Shakurs entered their new home for the first time sight unseen \u2014 and it was not a tableau to behold. The place was a dump, with paint chipping from the ceilings, floors slanted at strange angles, rodent droppings situated along the floorboards, and paper-thin walls that welcomed in bitter winter air. There was no phone. No heating unit. The pipes froze. Once Lisa and Jamal moved out, Tupac slept mattress to floor in a coffin-sized bedroom, while his mother and sister laid out their mattresses and box springs in the dining room.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was nothing good about that home,\u201d said Set Shakur. \u201cIt was disgusting from the start. Everything in our lives was traumatic. That move \u2014 trauma. All trauma.\u201d In particular, she recalled the rats \u2014 toaster-sized creatures who entered and exited the kitchen through gaping holes in the floor. Years later, Set could still hear the haunting nighttime sounds of monstrous vermin tiptoeing through the house. \u201cThose rats ate our food,\u201d she recalled. \u201cAnd once they got in it, we couldn\u2019t touch it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tTo his credit, Tupac made his little room work. Before leaving, Jamal had covered the cement floor with a greenish-blue Astroturf. The walls were paper-like plywood, and Tupac decorated them with images of his heroes \u2014 Bruce Lee, LL Cool J, New Edition, Sheila E. \u201cIn every corner,\u201d wrote Tupac biographer Staci Robinson, \u201cwere cups half-filled with sunflower-seed shells, a habit he had developed shortly before they left New York.\u201d By near any measure, the quarters were condemnable. Yet for a kid who had never had a room to himself (or, really, anything to himself), there was magic to it. It was a dump. His dump.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Afeni set about finding a job, Tupac entered yet another school \u2014 he enrolled as an eighth grader at Roland Park Middle School three months after the academic year began. Located three miles away on Roland Avenue, the school was known as a \u201ccitywide magnet,\u201d which meant students from across Baltimore could attend. Approximately six hundred young teens composed Tupac\u2019s grade, and classes were capped at thirty per room. \u201cIt was a really good school,\u201d recalled Donyale Smith, Tupac\u2019s classmate. \u201cWe had Black kids, Asian kids, white kids, Hispanic kids. It was definitely more of a mix than most kids were probably used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat diversity, however, was limited. Homeroom placement was designated by test scores, and Smith rightly recalled that her homeroom class with Tupac was filled by twenty-eight Black students \u2014 and a gawky white kid named William Yates. \u201cI hate to say it,\u201d she said, \u201cbut a lot of the kids I was with were always in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that moment I felt terrible, because I realized he was embarrassed of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brian Gault, a friend from Dunbar High School<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was a lot of wealthy white kids who had all the advantages,\u201d added Shawna McCoy, a classmate. \u201cEvery year they\u2019d come to the poor neighborhoods and take the best and brightest of us Black kids. Then they\u2019d put us all in a class together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac arrived in November, and immediately stood out. His name, to begin with, was unusual. What the heck was a Too Pack? But it was more than that. Though later in life he embodied a large persona, at Roland Park he was a runt. \u201cTiny,\u201d recalled Michelle Carter, a classmate. \u201cWith feet that pointed out. He literally walked like a duck.\u201d He also smelled bad \u2014 a kid in need of a deodorant stick. \u201cA lot of the students used to look at him like being a bum,\u201d Carter said. \u201cYou could tell he didn\u2019t have much money. He didn\u2019t have stylish clothing.\u201d Tupac owned two pairs of thrift-store-purchased pants \u2014 Lee jeans and black suit pants. Both were too long. He styled his hair in a mangled high-top fade, but it was sloppy and slanted, with no true definition. \u201cAnd his teeth were really bad,\u201d said Carter. \u201cKinda gross.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac wore braces. But not normal, quality orthodontist-approved braces. These were more like bargain-basement metal plates that filled a portion of his mouth. His teeth were spread apart and stained, Carter recalled, almost as if someone had painted them to match a glass of iced coffee. At an age when boys start liking girls and girls start liking boys, nobody showed the slightest bit of interest in Tupac. He asked multiple classmates out, and was summarily rejected. \u201cGirls laughed about him,\u201d Carter said. \u201cI didn\u2019t. He was nice. But the smell, the teeth, no money, so small. Tupac was no catch, I can tell you that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen he wasn\u2019t being ridiculed and ignored, Tupac was writing. Always writing. Classmates remember him walking through the hallways carrying a notepad, jotting down words and thoughts with a blue Bic pen. When asked, he told people he was creating a play for his future as an actor (according to an old Roland Park Middle School library record, in February 1985 Tupac twice took out The Young Actors\u2019 Workbook, by Judith Roberts Seto). There was no reason to believe him. Or not believe him. He was the quiet new smelly kid with the screwy name. He was marginalized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, one day during Mrs. Gee\u2019s math class, Tupac Shakur emerged. Carter was sitting in her chair, listening to a lesson, when Octavius Johnson, a classmate who had a crush on her, started to fire off insults. It was adolescent jilted lover stuff \u2014 \u201cWhy are you being a bitch? Stop being such a bitch\u201d \u2014 but the undersized, stained-gap-toothed kid heard enough.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYo, don\u2019t talk to her like that!\u201d he barked. \u201cDon\u2019t call her that!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson \u2014 bigger, presumably stronger \u2014 asked Tupac what he planned on doing about it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWell,\u201d Tupac said, \u201chow about I fuck you up?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson opened his mouth to laugh, and Tupac shocked everyone in attendance by firing off a left fist into his teeth. Down went Johnson.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTupac beat him up,\u201d Carter said. \u201cBeat him up good. I knew Tupac liked me, because he told me once. But \u2026 I dunno. I think he liked every girl at one time or another.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut I can always say Tupac Shakur punched someone in my defense. That\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAS HE NAVIGATED his way through life, Tupac Shakur rarely spoke of his brief time at Roland Park. It was seven largely miserable months, and when his last day wrapped, he left and refused to look back.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet, through the brown teeth and the raggedy clothing and the indifference of the opposite sex, Tupac found someone within the long gray hallways whose presence would prove life-changing. Like Tupac, Dana \u201cMouse\u201d Smith was an eighth grader in Mrs. Gee\u2019s homeroom class. Also like Tupac, he was a creative soul, always writing in a notepad, always jotting down thoughts and observations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen he wasn\u2019t at school, Tupac could be found in his bedroom, on his mattress, listening to rap, studying rap, writing rap. A boom box he\u2019d long ago received remained his prized possession, and the buttons were smoothed down from Tupac pressing play, then stop, then rewind, then play, then stop and rewind and play again. He didn\u2019t enjoy academics, but he loved studying music.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough he thought of himself, rap-wise, as MC New York, with the move south came the adaptation of a second hip-hop name: Casanova Kid. It was unintentional irony \u2014 Tupac Shakur was anything but a Casanova. Yet, as a fan of LL Cool J, the ultimate hip-hop ladies\u2019 man, Tupac liked the idea of shape-shifting and becoming something he wasn\u2019t. If, in real life, he was the impoverished, gap-toothed son of a drug addict, on paper he could be anything he chose. Music, he learned, was the ultimate mental vacation.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt Roland Park, Tupac\u2019s English teacher was a stern woman named Thomasina Porter. He and Carter sat next to one another in the class, and bonded over their disdain for the instructor. \u201cShe was mean just to be mean,\u201d Carter recalled. \u201cShe liked embarrassing students.\u201d As an assignment, Porter had all students write a poem, with the knowledge that, come Monday, they\u2019d be reading it aloud to the class. One by one, with sweaty palms and cracking adolescent voices, the pupils rose and read.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it was his turn, Tupac stood. His poem was an ode to the joy of summer, only instead of reading it, he rapped it. Mouse, sitting a few rows up, was gobsmacked. \u201cIt was like a rap, but it was a poem,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThe poem was nothing like anybody had heard before. We looked at this guy, you know, with the flop-sided hairdo and half braces. And everybody just looked at him a little bit different after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLater that day, while riding the bus back home, Mouse and Tupac got to talking for the first time. Unlike the newcomer, whose approach to music was strictly lyrical, Mouse practiced the art of beatboxing, which in the moment was being perfected and mainstreamed by Darren \u201cThe Human Beat Box\u201d Robinson of the hip-hop trio the Fat Boys. Tupac had absorbed endless hours of music, but never before had he been in the presence of a peer who could create so many beeps, blurps, and murmurs. The boys bonded quickly (Mouse wisely insisted Tupac stick with MC New York, not Casanova), and were soon spending much of their free time together. Though neither teen was even remotely wealthy, Mouse\u2019s life was blanketed with a security Tupac\u2019s lacked. He lived in a three-bedroom apartment with two uncles, a sister, his mother, his aunt, and two grandparents. And even though money was tight, Mouse\u2019s grandmother made sure he attended school in the latest fashions.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith no spare dough for musical development, Tupac and Mouse relied on ingenuity. In a small park near their homes in the Pen Lucy neighborhood sat a large plastic bubble-like structure. Initially designed as a play place for tots, it had been overtaken by the homeless and used as a bathroom. \u201cIt smelled like piss,\u201d Mouse recalled. \u201cBut the acoustics were crazy. You couldn\u2019t get acoustics like that nowhere.\u201d Armed with their boom boxes and cassette tapes, the boys braved the stench and recorded songs. Mouse knew his pal had talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike so many of the other students at Roland Park, Mouse didn\u2019t sit in judgment of Tupac. He saw the holes in the kitchen and didn\u2019t care. He was well aware of Tupac\u2019s financial situation, and didn\u2019t care. Tupac\u2019s home life was a disaster \u2014 on the times people came across Afeni, she was often smoking a Newport and\/or high from the latest hit. \u201cAfeni was cracked out in Baltimore,\u201d said Yaasmyn Fula, her longtime friend. \u201cSometimes I\u2019d come down from New York, get the kids for the weekend, then bring them back.\u201d Afeni wanted to get clean. Tried to get clean. Aspired to straighten out. \u201cAfeni was a very complex person,\u201d said Watani Tyehimba, another longtime family friend. \u201cShe would give you the shirt off her back, but she\u2019d also take your shirt.\u201d Afeni enrolled in a program to learn data entry on computers, then took a temporary, low-paying job entering information for a law firm. Despite pride and hubris begging her otherwise, for the first time she filed for welfare and food stamps. At one juncture she sent Tupac to a pawnshop to sell off some gold earrings, then used the money to buy meat and a few bags of potatoes. There was no other choice \u2014 her children needed to eat.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTheir lives,\u201d said Fula, \u201cwere without hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Tupac, music was an escape from it all. He needed it desperately.<\/p>\n

\n\tTHEY CALLED THEMSELVES the East-Side Crew.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd while it was hardly original (Tupac and Mouse were from the northeast side of Baltimore), the name made perfect 1985 sense.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis was a year when rap music was heavily into crews. There was 2 Live Crew. Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew. The Juice Crew. Tuff Crew. Find a multi-person hip-hip outfit, odds were you\u2019d find yourself a crew.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, yeah, long before Tupac Shakur emerged as an international icon, he was one-third (with Mouse and a boy named Kevin McLeary) of the East-Side Crew, preparing to make its professional (i.e., in front of people with actual ears) musical debut on a February night in 1985, at the Cherry Hill Recreation Center in South Baltimore.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got two goals. I wanna put some damn heat in my house, and I wanna be able to afford studio time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tupac Shakur, according to Brian Gault<\/p>\n

\n\tAll these decades later, the beforehand details are blurry, but the event itself is not. The headliner would be a Brooklyn-based Jamaican named Kurtis el Khaleel, whose song \u201cFresh Is the Word\u201d was about to land itself on the Billboard Hot Dance Single Sales chart. Up-and-comer status gifted el Khaleel\u2019s group, Mantronix, with the glory of a four-hundred-dollar gig at the rec center, home to youth basketball games, baton-twirling competitions, after-school child care, and \u2014 on occasion \u2014 community concerts.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Tupac and Mouse, opportunity was opportunity. This wasn\u2019t about money (there was none) or record deals (there would be none). It was about the chance.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt went well. They played five songs, and, Mouse recalled years later, \u201cWe really didn\u2019t get any boos or nothing.\u201d They sounded professional, moved stiffly, received enough applause to feel good about themselves. Afterward, they were approached by Virgil Simms, Mantronix\u2019s manager and a Jive Records A&R executive, who praised the teens for their poise. He expressed some light interest in signing them to a management deal, but \u2014\u00a0 according to another childhood friend, Darrin Bastfield \u2014 Afeni was resolute that her thirteen-year-old son would focus on school, not a music career.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTupac,\u201d Mouse recalled, \u201ccried about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIN SEPTEMBER OF 1985, Tupac enrolled for his freshman year of high school. He was now fourteen, but saddled with tragic dental work and an Olive Oyl physique. \u201cScrawny dude,\u201d said Laray Rose, a classmate. His new stomping ground was Paul Laurence Dunbar High, located a half-hour city bus ride away. In Baltimore\u2019s pre-desegregation days, Dunbar had been one of two Black high schools, and it maintained a sterling reputation well into the 1980s. Much like Roland Park, Dunbar drew students from myriad neighborhoods. It was fairly big (approximately 1,300 total students), Black (there were no whites in Tupac\u2019s freshman class of 239), and well regarded for its affiliation with the around-the-corner Johns Hopkins Medical Center (Dunbar had a top-shelf nursing apprenticeship program) and its nationally praised basketball program. \u201cIt was known as one of the best academic institutions for the Black students of Baltimore,\u201d said Alejandro Danois, author of The Boys of Dunbar. \u201cDunbar served as a hub for the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs had been the case at the start of eighth grade, Tupac showed up at Dunbar knowing nobody. Mouse, his best (and only) close friend, attended Northern High School. Tupac was on his own.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the first day of school, Dunbar\u2019s freshmen were told to wait outside in a single-file line, and enter the building one by one. \u201cTupac was standing behind me,\u201d recalled Devena Allen, a classmate. \u201cI looked down and I was like, Why is he standing like that? He had these crazy feet that pointed in weird angles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAllen was far from bashful.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBoy, your feet are crooked,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac looked down. He was wearing pin-striped Lee jeans and brown thrift-store-purchased dress shoes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d she asked. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTupac Shakur,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTupac Shakur?\u201d she said. \u201cWhat kind of name is that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy mother was a Black Panther,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt means strong and powerful warrior.\u201d (That\u2019s not exactly what it means. But close enough.)<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac said his family had recently relocated from New York, and that he didn\u2019t want to be there.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t care about this school,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean shit to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the next several weeks, he made sure to let everyone know he had no desire to attend Dunbar. He also created a story explaining why the Shakurs came to Baltimore. According to young Tupac, the violence of New York ran them out of town \u2014 \u201cHe told me someone got shot in his house up in New York and died,\u201d recalled Steven Gregory, a classmate. \u201cSo they escaped to Baltimore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was not true. But if his classmates figured him to be a street-hardened kid out of the Big Apple, who did it hurt? It certainly wasn\u2019t the first time Tupac created a narrative for himself, and it wouldn\u2019t be the last. Strolling from class to class, he introduced himself as \u201cMC New York,\u201d and bragged not merely of his work as part of the East-Side Crew, but as an inevitable future star. \u201cHe would say all the time that he was gonna be famous,\u201d said Gregory. \u201c\u2018I\u2019m gonna be famous, bro! You\u2019re gonna remember me, bro!\u2019 It wasn\u2019t a guess to him. He was certain of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac lived multiple rap existences. Outside of school, he could be found alongside Mouse, working on new rhymes, new beats, trying to uncover opportunities to perform. That October, he spotted a flyer that read, in bold black lettering, rap contest! Baltimore\u2019s Enoch Pratt Free Library was celebrating its one hundredth anniversary with a special competition \u2014 write and perform the best library-themed rap song, win $100!<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tIn the hallways of Baltimore School for the Arts<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJojo Perryman<\/p>\n

\n\tAs soon as he heard of the opportunity, Tupac hunkered down in his bedroom, lined notebook paper before him, black pen in hand. Beneath the title library rap, he wrote away:<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause reading and writing are important to me
That\u2019s why I visit the Pratt Library<\/p>\n

\n\tIt took the fourteen-year-old no more than thirty minutes. He submitted \u201cLibrary Rap\u201d a day later, survived the semifinals, and was invited to perform the song at the Pratt Library\u2019s Pennsylvania Avenue branch the following week. With a hundred or so onlookers seated in chairs positioned in a semicircle in the library lobby, the contestants took turns busting rhymes. Some were good. Most were bad. A few were awful. The East-Side Crew \u2014 Tupac, Mouse, and McLeary \u2014 reached the finals, where they squared off against a platoon of adorable preteen girls whose song was simple and unimaginative and\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLibrary Rap\u201d took second.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a gut punch. Mouse handled the setback well. His friend, however, did not.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTupac,\u201d he recalled, \u201cwanted to stop rapping forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAS A STUDENT, Tupac was forgettable. His grades were in the Cs and high Ds, and he missed a good number of classes. During first-period homeroom, he picked out a chair in the back row, right next to Brian Gault, a fellow freshman. Within days, the two figured out that if they left campus for lunch (students were granted this luxury), school officials never updated attendance rolls to mark their return. \u201cThat created a monster as far as Tupac and some of the stuff we did,\u201d said Gault. \u201cWe left and just never came back.\u201d Because Tupac lived closer to Dunbar than Gault, the two would ditch campus, take the bus to Greenmount Avenue, sit on the front porch, and smoke weed. One frigid day, Gault requested to use the bathroom.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFuck,\u201d Tupac replied. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you go when we passed a store?\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt didn\u2019t dawn on me then,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I have to go now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac scowled at his friend. \u201cFuck,\u201d he said. \u201cCome on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac unlocked the front door and poked his head inside. Nobody was home. \u201cGo on,\u201d he said to Gault. \u201cBathroom is in the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe entered \u2014 and what hit him wasn\u2019t the mess (it was messy) or the stench (it smelled terrible). No, it was the temperature. If it was thirty degrees outside, it had to be ten degrees inside. \u201cIt was way colder in there than it was in the fresh air,\u201d Gault said. \u201cFucking unbearable. Humans shouldn\u2019t have lived there. And, at that moment, I felt terrible, because I realized he was embarrassed of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a poem for everything. Try me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tupac Shakur, according to Brian Gault<\/p>\n

\n\tOftentimes, Tupac and Gault wound up whiling away lunch (and beyond) at the Old Town Mall, a run-down shopping center two hops and a skip from Dunbar. They spent hours inside the arcade, working their way up from Glass Joe and Piston Hurricane in Punch-Out!! Tupac loved the arcade \u2014 the smells, the sounds, the lights. It felt life-affirming. One day, in between games, he nudged Gault and said: \u201cI\u2019ve got two goals. Just two. I wanna put some damn heat in my house, and I wanna be able to afford studio time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGault was surprised. \u201cStudio time?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMan, I would live in the studio,\u201d Tupac said. \u201cI don\u2019t care if it\u2019s a fucking shed out back. I would never, ever leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThough he was only fourteen, Gault\u2019s heart broke for his friend. Like Mouse, he didn\u2019t come from wealth. But Gault always knew there\u2019d be food on the table and heat making winter nights tolerable. \u201cTupac\u2019s life was awful,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were no comforts.\u201d Sometimes, Tupac stared longingly at the mall\u2019s store windows, knowing he could afford none of it. Warm winter jackets taunted him. A six-pack of socks, a satchel of clean Fruit of the Loom underwear, cozy pajamas \u2014 nothing was within reach. Even shoppers nibbling on a slice of pizza seemed to be mocking him. He couldn\u2019t afford it.<\/p>\n

\n\tGault was an intermediary for a bunch of neighborhood guys who sold drugs, and he asked Tupac if he\u2019d like to make some extra money slinging product. \u201cI didn\u2019t love the idea,\u201d Gault said. \u201cBut he was so poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOh, fuck, yeah!\u201d Tupac said. \u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGault told Tupac he would hook him up with the lightest drug possible (marijuana), but that he could not, under any circumstances, deal from the corners of Greenmount.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhy not?\u201d Tupac asked.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBro,\u201d Gault replied, \u201cyou\u2019re not from around here and you\u2019re not very street-smart. Those dudes on your block will never let you get away with it. They\u2019ll fuck you up and leave you dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI ain\u2019t afraid of them,\u201d Tupac fired back.<\/p>\n

\n\tGault wasn\u2019t having it. Tupac talked tough. But it wasn\u2019t real machismo. It was pretend. \u201cI\u2019m not hooking you up to see you get killed,\u201d Gault said. \u201cSeriously, you\u2019re not that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the next couple of weeks, Gault connected Tupac with the bare minimum amount of weed \u2014 roughly twenty-five dollars\u2019 worth per week. He was inarguably the worst drug dealer in the history of Maryland \u2014 a state founded in 1632. He didn\u2019t know how to approach people, or when. He wasn\u2019t sure how to charge customers, or collect. In two months as a dealer, he made less than a hundred dollars. \u201cHe also got some extra work sweeping the ground out front of a convenience store,\u201d Gault recalled. \u201cCigarette butts and stuff. Which was a good thing, because his future wasn\u2019t on the street corner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGault was not musically inclined, but he felt he knew talent when he saw it. And what he saw in his new friend was brilliance. During his time at Dunbar, Tupac arrived most mornings with three thick binders jammed with loose-leaf paper. He\u2019d caress them as one does a newborn. One day Gault asked, \u201cPac, what is all this shit?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPoetry,\u201d he replied. \u201cI have a poem for everything.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBullshit,\u201d Gault said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTry me,\u201d Tupac replied.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd it was crazy, because I\u2019d say \u2018Valentine\u2019s Day,\u2019 and Tupac would go through his binders and pull out a beautiful Valentine\u2019s Day poem,\u201d said Gault. \u201cI\u2019d say, \u2018Death,\u2019 and there\u2019d be a poem about dying. And it wasn\u2019t rap. It was poetry. But I don\u2019t think Tupac necessarily saw rap and poetry as different entities. He was a poet, therefore he was a rapper. He was a rapper, therefore he was a poet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen he was hanging with Mouse, Tupac was part of the East-Side Crew. At Dunbar, he found different guys to perform with. Though rap had yet to fully break through to mainstream America, inside his urban high school it was the music of youth. From Public Enemy and Salt-N-Pepa to Run-DMC and Kool Moe Dee, hip-hop reigned.<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac formed a particular kinship with James Moore, a fellow freshman whom everyone at Dunbar knew as \u201cChico.\u201d Born into poverty in the shadow of old Memorial Stadium, Chico had light mocha skin, greenish-brown eyes, and a tail that dangled from the back of his head. \u201cHe looked just like J. T. Taylor from Kool and the Gang,\u201d Laray Rose, a classmate, said. \u201cJust smaller.\u201d On those days when he didn\u2019t cut out for lunch, Tupac would find a chair inside the cafeteria alongside Rose and Moore. \u201cI had this really nervous habit of making beats on the table,\u201d Rose recalled. \u201cJust with my hands \u2014 Bop! Bop! Pa-bop! Bop! We\u2019d be laughing about it, and then Tupac would start rapping over it. Then Chico would start rapping over it, too. Everything came together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRose, Chico, and Tupac made their official debut at the annual Dunbar talent show, a staple event held in the school auditorium that brought out singers and rappers, dancers and actors, jugglers and ventriloquists. \u201cIt was the thing,\u201d said Timothy Simon, a classmate. \u201cIf you wanted to express yourself, this was the place.\u201d As freshmen, Rose, Chico, and Tupac were relative unknowns. Newcomers tended to watch the show, not participate. \u201cNinth grade, you\u2019re supposed to keep quiet,\u201d said Gault. \u201cNot Pac.\u201d Most of the other acts featured students dressed up in costumes or snazzy duds. Tupac wore the same outfit he\u2019d had on at school during the day \u2014 Lee jeans, black shirt. Though classmates don\u2019t remember the precise song, many recall Tupac grabbing the microphone, stepping forward, \u201cand owning it,\u201d said Yolando Moody, a freshman. \u201cI knew he liked rap and I knew he wanted to rap. But I didn\u2019t know he could rap. It shocked me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe trio won (\u201cNo money,\u201d said Rose. \u201cJust glory\u201d), and proceeded to perform three or four more times at small house parties.<\/p>\n

\n\tMostly, Tupac and his friends kicked back, smoked weed, talked shit, and dreamed of bigger things. One day, he and Simon were sitting on the porch, sharing a spliff. They could spend hours ruminating on all topics from MCs to movie stars to Dunbar\u2019s coed hotness.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re talking, and Tupac gets real serious,\u201d recalled Simon. \u201cHe told me he had a dream the night before that he was doing a show and fifty thousand people were watching. He said it was the greatest dream ever. The kind you don\u2019t want to end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTupac, Simon said, took a long drag. \u201cYou think it can happen?\u201d he asked his friend.<\/p>\n

\n\tSimon was no expert on the process of making it big. He was, like Tupac, a poor Black teenager in Baltimore just trying to navigate high school. But he lived for rap, and listening to Tupac bust rhymes felt bigger than Greenmount, bigger than Dunbar, bigger than Baltimore.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBro,\u201d he said, \u201cif anyone around here can do it, it\u2019s you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tExcerpted from the book Only God Can Judge Me by Jeff Pearlman, to be published Oct. 21. Copyright \u00a9 2025 by Jeff Pearlman. From Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Reprinted by permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The story of Tupac Shakur has been told many times since his tragic death at just 25 following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[40629,156,157,111,139,69,64652,64653],"class_list":{"0":"post-84779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-book-excerpt","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-tupac","15":"tag-tupac-shakur"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}