"I didn't create thug life," Tupac Shakur once proclaimed. "I diagnosed it." A charismatic African-American leading man and one of the most potent and admired rap artists of his day, Shakur was born the son of Afeni Shakur, a political activist and high-ranking member of the Black Panthers who was in jail while pregnant with her son, perhaps instilling an awareness of oppression and political struggle in utero. Shakur began acting at age 13 in a benefit performance of Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" and later studied acting at the Baltimore School of the Arts (Jada Pinkett was a classmate).
In his late teens, he moved to San Francisco with his family and joined the rap group Digital Underground, where his socially conscious lyrics earned him the nickname 'Rebel of the Underground'. Shakur released his first solo album, "2Pacalypse Now", in 1991, and the following year co-starred in his feature debut "Juice", as the trigger happy antagonist Bishop. He followed up with John Singleton's sophomore effort "Poetic Justice" (1992), as Lucky, a single-father postal carrier, who falls in love with Justice (Janet Jackson). Subsequent film appearances included "Above the Rim" (1994), as a basketball hustler, and the direct-to-video "Bullet" (1995), as a drug dealer.
Before his untimely death from gunshot wounds in September 1996 at age 25 in Las Vegas--apparently the result of a long-brewing feud between East Coast and West Coast rap musicians and moguls--Shakur had completed filming two features: "Gang Related", as a murderous cop, and Vondie Curtis Hall's "GRIDLOCK'd", as a junkie trying to go straight. After his death he would become a popular subject of non-fiction film, TV and video projects, including "Biggie and Tupac" (2002), by the scruffy, celebrated but controversial documentarian Nick Bromfield ("Kurt and Courtney," "Heidi Fliess, Hollywood Madam"), who compellingly presents one theory on the murder of Shakur and the subsequent 1997 slaying of his rival Biggie Smalls a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G.
In 2003 the life and music of the late rapper would be the centerpiece of MTV Film's "Tupac: Ressurection," a documentary illuminating Shakur's enduring legacy (at that date he remained the best-selling rap artist, and his album quintupled since his 1996 death) "in his own words," through media interviews, home movies, photographs, recited poetry and, of course, a soundtrack filled with rap music by Shakur and other like-minded artists. In the film Shakur comes across as a painfully honest performer with a strong sense of his won destiny--he believed he was born for greatness yet also expected an early demise-- and director Lauren Lazin's stirring film, shaped by a deep regard for her subject, conveys a sense of gratitude for his life and art while asking how both might have evolved if given the chance.