It is in songs like this where Tupac is open about all kinds of issues and struggles black people have to deal with and how it seems like no matter how hard they try, the society they live in will never change.
In this song, Tupac does not hesitate to rap about racism, hypocrisy, and injustices that are prevalent in American society. One of his songs, "Changes," discusses issues ranging from the "War on Drugs" and police brutality, to how there seems to be little positive changes for black people. He understood that he had power in his music and that he wanted to share what he knows and wake up his community so that they can become enlightened and better themselves. Tupac used his music to openly address the problems black people in America face, whether they be struggles caused by outside parties or issues within its own community. What really makes the music of Tupac Shakur relevant and powerful is the fact that it resonates with the black community all across the United States. Tupac Shakur used his music as a way of not just rapping about fame, wealth, and material things, but used his art as a means of communicating about the harsh realities of life. Of all the many influential African-American rappers to have emerged since the inception of the genre, perhaps the most compelling and relevant artist was that of Tupac Shakur. Of all the philosophers people can think of, people would never expect such profound insight to come from the mind of a rap and hip-hop artist.
#Thug life meaning series#
While these memes don’t depict the original thug life philosophy, some of the videos recognize that thug life is supposed to be a positive achievement, as opposed to a negative one.īy 2015, online thug life memes mutated into a series of images showing privileged, suburban white kids, captioned with Tupac’s quote “I didn’t choose the thug life, the thug life chose me.” The joke, of course, is that privileged kids haven’t lived a thug life, and are merely appropriating the struggles of black people in an attempt to appear “cool.When one thinks of philosophy that holds a tremendous amount of weight and meaning to it, one usually would expect it to come from the minds of Socrates or Plato. In the videos, the impressive incident is then followed by the video slowing down, zooming in on the subject’s face, and playing a clip of music from Tupac, the Geto Boys, or another rap artist of the 1990s thug life heyday. In 2014, a thug-life online meme took off, where videos showed a child, animal, or person doing something unexpected, inappropriate, or extraordinary, such as a crow swearing in English or Bill Gates jumping over a chair. Tupac’s use of thug life as a rallying cry for the oppressed continues to be referenced in hip-hop and popular culture today. Since Tupac’s death, the phrase and philosophy behind thug life has continued to influence many, including the singer Rihanna, who had THUG LIFE tattooed on her fingers in 2016. That came from my family and that’s what thug life is. We want to do it by self-defense and by any means necessary. I’m a thug, and my definition of thug comes from half of the street element and half of the Panther element, half of the independence movement. I don’t consider myself to be straight militant.
In 1993, Shakur joined with friends Big Syke, the Rated R, Mopreme Shakur, and Macadoshis to form the group Thug Life, who released a now certified Gold album, Thug Life: Volume 1 in 1994. The term was popularized in hip-hop culture, where thug life goes hand-in-hand with iconic rapper Tupac Shakur, or 2Pac. These communities started reclaiming the word thug as a countercultural rebellion against racism, adopting the term as a form of self-empowerment and protest. According to African American Studies professor Michael Jeffries, this connection between being black and being a “thug” rose particularly during the same era in which mass incarceration rose to record levels. The word thug took on a racialized subtext in the latter half of the 20th century, especially for impoverished black people living in urban communities, regardless of whether these people engaged in criminal behavior or not. Thug life is a term used with pride, to describe a person who started out with nothing and built themselves up to be something.
Though the term thug life is commonly misinterpreted to mean “criminal life,” this is not actually the intention of the phrase.
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