Icon no 7: Tupac Shakur (Part B)

(Rapper, writer, actor: 16/6/71 - 13/9/96)

In part A, I looked at the role of judgment and condemnation in the life of Tupac, beginning before his birth. I also found that his emotional needs might have become collateral damage at a time of legal struggles, oppression, intergenerational trauma and drug addiction. Part B will look at the role of persona and performance in Tupac specifically as an escape from this start in life.

The relentless drive

If we were to go back to 1986 and visit Tamalpais High School, California, we might find Ms Owens teaching her English class. There is a reading of Shakespeare’s Othello. But as a 16-year-old boy is delivering Othello’s conversation with himself about whether or not to kill Desdemona, Ms Owens stops the reading to say something to the class about his delivery:

“You will never, in your lifetime, hear an Othello read as well as you have heard just now.”¹

The 16-year-old is Tupac. But this is not an average word of praise from one human being to another. Something out of the ordinary has happened.

The point of this post is not that Tupac was a great performer. He was an incredible performer and an icon by the age of 25. But this blog asks about the function of performance and idealisation specifically as an escape from trauma. Narcissism theory says that the child finds an escape from unsafe experiences of emotional vulnerability and judgment. Narcissistic strategies grow as the child is judged also as special, based not on their internal individual reactions and feelings, but on something more external. In Tupac’s case this was perhaps his heritage, looks and other signs that Afeni saw in him perhaps even before birth. Secondly, the child is shown specific ways to use performance and persona to distance themselves from vulnerability and the shame of judgment. How specifically did Tupac find performance and persona as a solution to an emotional problem?

“I caught the bug…any time I can express myself I can let some of the pain go from a childhood like mine”¹ (Tupac)

We know that from birth, Tupac watched and listened as his mother spoke powerfully and passionately at rallies and meetings. I suspect these would be the exciting and fulfilling times for Afeni – perhaps lifting her mood. Tupac would have noticed the difference. When Tupac was 11, his stepfather Mutulu taught him the art of Haiku, a Japanese poetic form. Tupac not only began writing haiku poems about his imprisoned heroes, but he signed them “Tupac Shakur – future freedom fighter”. Tupac was soon writing songs such as First Step with his half-sister Sekyiwa. Very quickly there were two futures planned – freedom fighter and singer. Acting was also in his sights. Watching TV, Tupac used to think,

“if I could be an actor and I could be like those actors, I could have some of their joy…I wouldn’t feel as lonely.”¹

Performance was taking shape as an escape strategy from pain. At the age of 12, Tupac went to watch his older cousin rehearsing with the 127^th Street Repertory Ensemble for A Raisin in the Sun. When a minor child’s part came up, Tupac was invited to audition, and he rehearsed intently to get the part. As the youngest cast member, Tupac was befriended by an actress who had worked with actor Sidney Poitier and “was in awe, hanging on every word”.¹ Tupac’s cousin Bill later remembered that,

”he studied for that and went on stage in front of thousands of people and aced it…at that moment I knew he was a special kid.”¹

A child judged at home in a family condemned by authorities and marginalised by society, Tupac was finding out how to gain not acceptance but admiration. Perhaps a move to acceptance was not only unachievable, but just not far enough. Four years later, he would appear in A Raisin in the Sun again – this time in the lead role.

At 15, having left New York, Tupac started at Baltimore School of Arts. For the first time it was his talent, through audition, that earned him the school place - not living in a good area, being the right colour, or having enough money. What would this have felt like? What value did this place on the abilities he had started to develop - to engage and capture attention?

With his new partner Mouse, Tupac entered a rapping battle with the established crew in the school and won. Again – his ability to perform could get him acceptance and respect. His talent was perhaps his first experience of having any power in the world aside from early games with his little sister. In the background was a mother whose greatest achievement and recognition had come through performing, in a situation where her talent was again the only power she had – against not a school rap crew but the NYPD. Afeni and Tupac alike must have valued performance – an only source of power - in a particularly intense way. But what exactly was this ability they developed?

Tupac invested in the BSA ‘Introduction to Acting’ class run by the theatre programme director David Hicken. David, an expert on performing talent, chooses his words carefully to assess Tupac’s unique qualities as a teenager – before fame itself had affected any influence:

“You can call it charisma or talent or whatever. It’s a mixture of that, but there’s that extra ingredient, and that’s the power to influence, power to control [the] behaviour of others”¹

What does this acting teacher mean by ‘control’? It sounds to me like he observed Tupac’s ability to suggest powerfully so that the listener is consumed in some way. Is this a kind of leadership? His mother was a leader and saw this in him. But there is another piece of context to the teacher’s observation: he was observing Tupac respond to being laughed at by a fellow pupil. This charisma and talent was switched on powerfully when Tupac felt judged or perhaps humiliated. This might be a glimpse of Tupac’s strategy of moving, on the map of narcissism, from ‘judged’ (with a corresponding feeling that had become intolerable) to the safety of charisma, performance and control.

Yes, Tupac given opportunities to act, sing or rap, would rehearse intently. But it seems also that there was something more automatic – something that was at times even more impressive. Jada Pinkett Smith, a close friend of the teenage Tupac, recalled that “once you paid attention to him, he kind of sucked you in”¹. Because of its more automatic uncontrolled nature, I suspect this charismatic power was not developed through rehearsal but through experiences of judgment or neglect that could not be tolerated by a child. What is wrong with birthing talent out of trauma? Nothing, of course. As long as you can control the side effects of trauma being its birthplace.

The map of narcissism²*

The Shakurs had to move again. But in Marin City, California, 17-year-old Tupac was soon describing himself as an actor in a documentary about urban youth. Directing Tupac in Chekhov’s The Bear, tutor David Smith found that after worrying whether Tupac would remember his lines, he “dazzled everybody in the place with that charismatic charm.”¹

As fame slowly grew closer to the 17-year-old, he was also being groomed as a politician – by the New Afrikan Panther movement. This totally different leadership role excited Tupac. And his music management TNT saw that if he didn’t get taken on tour with someone (anyone) – they would lose him to politics. A job as a roady with rap group Digital Underground was arranged for him urgently. But as fame became close enough to touch, Tupac found it difficult to rein in his desire to be centre stage. When he was first invited to rap onstage with the group as a guest, he rapped over the lines of the headline artists. When told to stop, he could not restrain himself, but protested instead that his ideas had been better. After more than one attempt at telling Tupac this was not ok, he was sacked as road crew and told to go home.

No brakes

Before fame, we can see an incredible drive in Tupac to perform and to be recognised – to the extent that it would trip him up. I think these details show how irrepressible his need was. It was too urgent. It had an element of survival and I think this takes us back to trauma. Tupac’s need to be in that role could not step aside for etiquette or the needs of others. If this was ultimately a flee from judgment and shame (see theory post), how did he cope when it backfired, and he was told to go home? It seems he had to deny this reality, pretending it had not happened and stayed on the tour (Robinson). As with other icons, it is the urgency of the charisma and persona that insists on success. But this urgency can also become a thorn in the icon’s side.

With actor Tim Roth in Gridlock’d

Tupac’s first manager, Atron Gregory, described the intensity of the drive:

“Tupac’s indiscriminate intensity would prove fruitful in his art but far less productive outside the recording and acting studios”³

John Singleton directed the film Poetic Justice in which Tupac starred with Janet Jackson. He saw Tupac as having developed a persona that couldn’t be reined in when it needed to be:

“He wanted to be a poet; he wanted to be an actor…But for the sake of the whole rap game, I think in my mind, he crafted an image [of gangsta] for himself. He started to live that image out, and that’s what led to a lot of his troubles.”³

The persona of one of Tupac’s rap rivals, Sean “Puffy” Combs, seemed to turn a corner that Tupac’s did not. After building his own ‘thug credentials’ (and a company called Bad Boy Records), Sean abandoned his established moniker – perhaps after the wakeup call of two court cases. He returned as P Diddy. Was this an attempt at “renunciation of his previous thug persona” and its grandiosity? Would Sean Combs mature into a persona that attracted less danger and needed less admiration and power? And was this something Tupac just could not do? Why not?

For Tupac, the persona and idealisation began increasingly to backfire. At the Soul Train Music Awards of 1996, Tupac only collected the second of two awards. As the first award for album Me Against the World was being announced, he was in a confrontation in the car par in which a gun was pulled. The strategies for achieving distance from judgment and vulnerability were breaking down – causing the experiences they were perhaps designed to avoid. Biographer Dyson thinks that Tupac’s intellectual strength conspired with his intense striving for respect and his embrace of the thug persona to get him into trouble in his gangsta community:

“[With his] wilful disregard of safety through provocative machismo and irritating bluster in gang circles where symbolic gestures were lost on males who had no sense of metaphor.”³

Red light

I have in the past thought of Tupac as so different to people like Chaplin, so different to Brando and Lennon, so different to Jackson. But narcissism in the performing arts creates a persona and personas are developed specifically to be unique. Tupac honed a persona till it was etched across his torso: ‘THUG LIFE’ (the ‘I’ being a bullet). I was always left with a sense that the gangsta rapper was all that he was. But whether in acting, politics, poetry, music or even comedy, it was performance and fame that got established in him as a road of escape and a way of being.

Whilst a persona is constructed to be unique, what lies beneath it is perhaps something more shared with others who have a need to be on a world stage. Like Monroe, Lennon, Chaplin and Brando, Tupac was born into a harsh, emotionally neglectful existence. Like Monroe, Jackson, Chaplin and Lennon, Tupac was, whilst being neglected, singled out as a special child. Like Chaplin, Jackson and Lennon, Tupac was taught to admire heroic distant parental figures. Tupac was not the only one to attract both idealisation and condemnation. And Like Lennon and Chaplin, he was particularly harsh on himself. Like Lennon and Monroe, he used drugs and alcohol to maintain himself. Tupac was not the only one accused of sexual exploitation. Not the only one to be violent. And, tragically, not the only one to be shot dead. On the night of 13^th September 1996 in Las Vegas, a white Cadillac belonging to the Southside Crips gang pulled up next to the 25-year old’s black BMW at a red light.

In mainstream media today what gets emphasised about narcissism is its perpetrator face (see performers and perpetrators post). Whilst I could focus on that side of Tupac, I think that the artistic phenomenon of Tupac we celebrate today is also in part a consequence of narcissism. The intensity of the flight into performance owes much to the overwhelming experiences from which flight was necessary. The trauma of racism cannot be an exception. Power is sought most urgently, where powerlessness and vulnerability have been most unsafe. The sleeve notes of Tupac’s latest biography summarise a story of “dizzying success and its devastating consequences”¹. This is a more typical media explanation for the premature demise of a celebrity. Looking through a lens of narcissism though, at Tupac’s story, suggests that some of the devastation came before the success.

In some ways this blog is a harsh place for the mothers of those motivated to become iconically famous. But Afeni is different to the other mothers I have described. She recovered and kept her voice. And not only this, but even after everything that happened to this boy, she humbled herself:

“I didn’t do a great job of it, or a good job of it, or maybe he would be here…I’m a recovering addict. So, it’s very important for me to look and examine each horrible thing, with my eyes open and not lying to myself.”³

If there was trauma and consequent narcissism in the Shakur family, here is Afeni choosing an altogether different strategy. But she is engaging perhaps with shame. This might sound like a contradiction to the narrative that says that Afeni should not feel shame – not in response to oppression which should itself have been condemned. But it seems to me that Afeni is drawing a circle around just that behaviour that was ‘her call’ – provoked like hell as it was. And in order to stop a cycle, she is bravely taking responsibility for herself. And Afeni had come to the conclusion that it was a helpful thing for her to do – for herself. Of all the parents I have described in this blog, Tupac’s mother is the only one who seems to have achieved this. I can only imagine the personal work it took to bring her to this kind of strength. Time ran out for Tupac; a man with so much more to give. But in his mother, we see develop a certain kind of strength - that many of today’s leaders, in our present culture of narcissism, could themselves aspire to.

Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own unless otherwise stated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any institution I have been employed by. The content here is for information and should not be interpreted as advice.

*Ryle did not apply this approach only to narcissism. If this mapping approach has been used in your own therapy, this does not mean that you have narcissistic difficulties.

References

1. Robinson, S. (2023). Tupac Shakur: The Authorised Biography. Century.

2. Ryle, A. & Kerr, I.B. (2002). Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Wiley.

3. Dyson, M.E. (2001). Holler If You Hear Me. Searching for Tupac Shakur. Plexus.