All Eyez On Me Album CoverIt’s amazing to me that today, Tupac Shakur would’ve been 39 years old. I can’t fathom that for whatever reason. It seems like just yesterday, the rap star was gunned down in Las Vegas. But what it means is that it happened many years ago, and I’ve aged and he hasn’t. You can only remember him for what you saw of him, and that was a young 20s rebel and one of the biggest rap stars of the mid 90s, Bishop from Juice, or Lucky from Poetic Justice.
The love is still there, and more so than when he was alive. That’s the definition of a true legend.
On my Facebook page, I asked a simple question to all of my friends.
What is your favorite 2Pac song?
If figured that I would get a handful of responses, but I received responses from 25 different people, including my own dad. Yes, even my dad has a favorite Tupac Shakur song.
The favorites ranged from his two big early hits, Keep Ya Head Up and I Get Around, his get out of jail record, California Love, songs that came out after he already passed away like Changes, I Wonder If Heaven Got A Ghetto, and Thugz Mansion, and songs that weren’t necessarily singles like Pain and Soon As I Get Home, which was released on the oft-forgotten posthumous release Pac’s Life.
So what is my favorite Tupac track of all time?
Well, I’d known about Pac since his first release, 2Pacalypse Now, because of Brenda’s Got A Baby. But I didn’t really latch on to the dude’s music until I Get Around, which was one of the most fun rap songs I’d ever heard. And then after that, Keep Your Head Up, which was his ode to women.
With both of those singles coming out back-to-back, you saw this immediate portrayal about what made him unique. He was a bi-polar rap star who could talk about groupie love on one song and then respecting women on another. It was near hypocritical, but honest at the same time. He could be down with living a “rock star” life, but at the same time understand where the ills in society are.
The reason I’m picking I Get Around as my favorite is because it’s the first song I identify with 2Pac. When I think of him, it’s this song and this video, with him running around in some white shorts with no shirt on, that comes to my mind first.
As my buddy Celmatic always says, “Rest in power.” List of all the song choices from my Facebook friends: I Get Around (4 times) Keep Ya Head Up (3 times) California Love (2 times) Life Goes On (2 times) Thugz Mansion (2 times) Run Tha Streetz (2 times) I Wonder If Heaven Got A Ghetto (2 times) Hit ‘Em Up (2 times) Dear Mama Soon As I Get Home If I Die 2nite Changes Unconditional Love So Many Tears How Do You Want It Death Around The Corner Bury Me A G Still Ballin What’z Ya Phone # Ambitionz Az A Ridah Pain
Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan was always the band’s resident geek. A former pre-med student who left Rutgers to study at Juilliard, he ventured into musical theater in 2002 when he, along with playwright and lyricist Joe DiPietro, started work on a musical called Memphis, the story of a white radio DJ (based loosely on real life DJ Dewey Phillips, one of the first white DJs to play black music) and a black singer who fall in love in the Jim Crow south at the moment of rock ‘n’ roll’s ascendancy. Following several regional theater productions, the show finally opened on Broadway last fall. Tonight, it was nominated for 8 Tony Awards and won four including the night’s top prize for Best Musical. Bryan himself won for Best Score and (with Daryl Waters) Best Orchestrations. Early in the night’s broadcast, Jon Bon Jovi (and an entire Bon Jovi concert audience) wished his bandmate well via satellite.
And apparently the well-wishes worked. Memphis won out against 11-time nominee Fela!, based on the life and music of Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti. Among that musical’s many producers were Jay-Z and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Though they left without trophies, the three Fela! producers got a lot of special attention from some of the performers. Lea Michele of Glee serenaded Jay-Z and Beyonce with “Don’t Rain on My Parade”, and, earlier, Douglas Hodge, who went on to win Best Actor in a Leading Role (Musical), playing drag queen Albin in La Cage aux Folles (the part Nathan Lane played in The Birdcage) delivered one of the night’s best laughs when s/he started to take a seat in Will Smith’s lap only to leap suddenly away with a coy glance to his crotch.
The first five minutes of the broadcast looked more like the Grammys than the Tonys, culminating with Green Day‘s appearance on stage to rip through the song “Holiday” with the cast of American Idiot, the musical based on the band’s 2004 concept album. The musical was only nominated for three awards (including Best Musical), and only took home an award for Best Lighting Design. The fourth Best Musical nominee was Million Dollar Quartet, a stage re-creation of a legendary Sun Studios session that brought together Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash for a historic, one-off rockabilly summit in 1956. Levi Kreis, the cast’s Jerry Lee Lewis, won for Best Actor in a Featured Role (Musical).
