Word: gangstas
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...sign something special is going on. So it goes with the firebrand rapper Tupac Shakur, whose celebrity has swelled into a mystique of near Elvis-like intensity since his death in a Las Vegas drive-by in 1996 at age 25. Shakur was an electrifying rapper whose flashes of gangsta bravado (like the petulant song Hit 'Em Up) were counterbalanced by a gentle sweetness (the tender ode Dear Mama). This seesaw battle--played out in his music and his life--made him a fascinatingly complicated figure, and the urge to hold on to him is understandable...
...Meanwhile, the New York Theatre Workshop--whose past hits include Rent--has just unveiled a play about him that could spark even more interest. Up Against the Wind dramatizes the turbulent final years of Shakur's life--his increasingly sharp verbal skills, his growing attraction to gangsta rap and his fateful signing with Death Row Records. Shakur is turning up in bookstores too: a collection of his poems--The Rose That Grew from Concrete--published last year by Simon & Schuster, drew enthusiastic reader reviews. And it won't be long before a Shakur bio plays on the screen...
...Marguerite and her son Royce are traveling in a beat-up Volkswagen beetle on their way to Mama Slocumb’s (Whoopi Goldberg) house when they run out of gas. While waiting for Ray Bud to rescue them, they begin to listen to music. In accordance with his gangsta get-up, Royce tunes the radio to a rap radio station. Baffled, his mother changes the station to gospel music with the hand that is not clutching her unabridged Bible. Soon, the two are vying for control of the knob, until Aunt Marguerite accidentally pulls the knob...
...reigning queen of gangsta rap, sweeps into the New York City radio station Hot 97 with the same you-can't-stop-me air Allen Iverson has when he steps onto a basketball court. She's dressed way past the nines--she's hovering around the elevens--in purple boots, purple Anna Sui leather pants and a black mink coat. Her hair, once platinum blond, is arranged in cornrows dyed a shade of red that almost makes the braids appear to glow, like space-heater coils. Eve does an on-air interview hyping her new CD, Scorpion (Ruff Ryders/Interscope...
...talent and a gift for promotion, that he's adept at coining catchphrases and setting trends. I know that he has a gospel album in the works. I wonder if, post-trial, he's going to try and do work that's more significant and complex than the pop gangsta stuff he's churned out in the past...