Brady Hargrove
2/24/12
Writ 1200
The Death of Tupac
The death of Tupac Shakur has been debated about since the day of his death, and his death is still an unsolved mystery to this day. The death of the “Guinness World Record holder: Most Successful Gangsta Rapper” was never investigated by police, but has been looked into only by private investigators and some of his die-hard fans. This seems interesting to me because why would the police never try to solve the mystery of who killed one of the most famous people in the world at the time, and why his close friends never met with investigators to give first hand witness accounts of the shooting? What is fact though is the series of events that took place before just before Tupac was shoot: After Tupac had been at a boxing match at the MGM Grand and had got into a fight with Crip gang members, Tupac left the hotel to go to one of the clubs owned by Death Row record label. On the way while Suge Knight was driving Tupac to the club the following occurred, Cars boxed in Knight’s car in front and back of him. To the left of the BMW was a Chrysler sedan with four young black women seated inside. They smiled at Knight and Shakur, and the two men smiled back. Then a white late model Cadillac pulled up to the right of the BMW. In it were three or four men. One man stuck a handgun out from the left rear window, and fired thirteen bullets into the BMW. Five bullets pierced the passenger door. Tupac tried to get into the back seat, but he was wearing his seat belt. He was hit three times, once in his chest, another in his right hip, and the third in his right hand. Knight was hit in the back of his neck. Two of the BMW’s tires were shot out. The Cadillac then made a right turn onto Koval Lane and took off. Hearing the gunshots, police arrived at the scene. No one was ever able to show photo evidence of Tupac actually shot and no witnesses saw Tupac being taken to the Hospital.
The long debate of why Tupac may have staged his death has mainly occurred because of the events that followed Tupac’s death. Many media streams have ran with this idea, including an article from CNN: An Unexpected Twist: Tupac Shakur Alive and Well, which was released in 2005 talking about an interview done in Beverly Hills with the apparent “resurrected” Tupac. How could such an interview happen if Tupac was dead? Also many other websites exist that are completely devoted to stating the seemingly infinite amount of coincidences that took place involving Tupac’s death. This story seems to be one of the original Internet based conspiracy stories and has a very high traffic rate for being searched on the internet. It might be possible that Tupac is still living to this day, but it is certainly true that this story has been taken by thousands of people who are analyzing this death and trying to find the true behind it all. People have been posting an overwhelming amount of information about his death on the Internet; and all it takes for the first related search on Google to be “Is Tupac Alive” is to type into the search bar “Is Tu”, from those four letters Google has already received enough web traffic to guess that Tupac is what you are searching for. The amount of web pages that exist is enormous, and the amount of different theories and similar information is also quite large.
If we start at first only searching for images of Tupac after his death we can just start there with a large amount of information from links to sites of the stories for when and how these pictures occurred. This type of media is much different from those who have conspiracies about Tupac’s death, because the image is almost the explanation and the bulk of the writing that would take place in an article trying to explain a theory about his death because you are looking at what you believe to be proof of his existence and the explanation is visibly represented. These sites are able to use their images as proof that Tupac is alive and leave it up to the viewer to either believe the photo is real or believe the photo is fake and the author puts almost little or no effort into explaining why this picture is actually Tupac, and they do not explain if the picture was even taken after his death. When examining a story like this and finding so much evidence that can prove either side it is hard for me to be able to see a picture and then from that picture undoubtedly believe Tupac is alive. Pictures are a great tool of evidence in these situations but is not enough for a full decisive tool to prove Tupac is alive. Also if you believe a picture of him alive it would be hard to believe because there is a picture of Tupac’s dead body on the Internet. Although there has been evidence from review of the photo to believe the body is not actually Tupac. It is from here that other authors collect these photos and use them to help the ideas they have and forward the pictures into other places and at the same time get their ideas out into the Internet public.
There have been many websites created that are completely devoted to the death of Tupac and explaining what and why they believe Tupac faked his death. Most of these sites use photos and facts to back up their points, and the authors on these sites do admit the fact that all these facts they are talking about could be a coincidence, or also the fact that we could all just be very blind to what happened to Tupac. There are many weird things that happened just before and after Tupac’s death that raise a lot of question. First, Tupac released his last album exactly 7 months before his death. His death took place on Friday the 13th, and it also took 7 days in the Hospital for Tupac to die, and even though a large amount of people have claimed to had gone and visited Tupac in the Hospital there are no photos of him ever being there. Tupac was shot on September 7th and died at 4:03, 4+3=7, and he died at the age of 25, 2+5=7. The title of the album Tupac released after his death was “The 7 Day Theory.” Also when Suge Knight went to put his name on the album he put it under Simon, which is one of the names in the Bible for one of the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. Tupac also released 7 albums between his death and November 2002, which was more than Eminem, Pearl Jam, or Dr. Dre. All the new songs and videos released were supposed to be previous works of Tupac from the archives, but what record company would want to invest all that money into songs and videos to just have them in the archives until he died? Also before he died Tupac started going by the name “Makaveli” after the old famous philosopher Machiavelli who believed the faking one’s death was a sure way to eliminate one’s enemies. Tupac had been in jail just for 2 years just prior to his death and told people he would not be the same when he came out of jail, and he was not. He read a lot about Machiavelli and began rapping lyrics that are believed to be foreshadowing the faking of his death. After Tupac was “dead” the albums he released had interesting titles such as, Empty Coffin, Death Faker, and Still I’m Breathin’. As the facts begin to poor out it becomes hard to believe that Tupac was really shot and killed and that he really may have created such a big setup. Also if Tupac did chose to stage his death he chose the correct city to do it in, because Las Vegas would have been the perfect place to get doctors and lawyers to pay off to help create this fake death, and it is interesting that no one has ever collected on Tupac’s life insurance that is estimated to be worth 72 million dollars. The news sphere is able to create all these stories and share facts to help combine ideas and help make a conspiracy story such as this much more believable.
All these websites compiled together onto Google makes conspiracies such as this to live on forever within a society, because anyone is able to go onto the web and post their thoughts about Tupac’s death and with everyone starting to reuse a lot of the same information and pictures, it is less about new facts and instead creating such a large population that believe it and use it as fact that it then must become fact. With out the Internet it would be hard for stories like this to carry on, and it would be hard to spread ideas about this because major news would not have looked into the story this much. Even though major media has not had a large contribution to this story they still keep slightly involved and rather than writing new conspiracies they have the media might help forward them and make an article talking about a popular idea that is being talked about a lot of the Internet, i.e. Tupac’s Death. And major media might not talk about whether they think he is alive or dead but rather how such an event can have such a large affect on some people. And for those who do care are still able find a large amount of sources of information from other places on the Internet talking about whether or not he is alive, and in that way major media just might spark the idea to a wider audience that they have reading their paper.
If I were to synthesize on the death of Tupac after reading all the articles I would be forced to look at in the clearest possible way and believe he is dead because the Internet helps explain and provide examples for the fact that Tupac is still alive. Since the Internet lacks sides of the story that Tupac is dead leads me to think that Tupac is still alive. There are too many odd coincidences that I found from my research that point to the fact that Tupac and Suge planned this whole event to make Tupac more famous and help protect others in his life from his enemies who would of wanted the closet people to him dead if he was not. The fact that Tupac has continued releasing music that is supposed to be previously recorded but has lyrics pertaining to events that happened after he died (such as the Denver broncos winning the Super Bowl), has had pictures taken of him outside the country that help support the idea that he moved to a new place to stay hidden, did an interview with CNN where we explained why he had disappeared but then disappeared again after the interview, and in his newly released music when he rapped about the exact way he died add up to the point that Tupac must not be dead. The Internet led me to my decision because on the Internet the idea of Tupac being alive and faking his death was the perfect place for a story like this to expand. After reading article after article supporting his death it made it harder and harder for me to disagree with it and soon I was forced to take it as fact. The Internet did not have as much room for the side of the story that Tupac is dead because that does not have as many directions to expand and is hard to come up with examples to prove he is dead other than the simple fact that he was shot and killed. This goes to show how the Internet can change ones mind and creates an affect that if enough people believe than why wouldn’t I? But the question that I think that should still be looked further into, and this could tie into Tupac having a large involvement with the faking of his death, is why no one ever tried finding out who killed Tupac and why none of his friends cared enough to find them? Is it because there really were no killers and it was all staged? And why was this the one night he did not wear a bulletproof vest? This may be one of those things where no one will really know for sure, except those close enough to Tupac. This story goes to show even with a lot of the same information on the Internet it does not mean it is true, and it shows the difference between the Internet stories with plenty of room to expand on, and the real stories with no room to expand on that a lot of major media has to be aware of. The Internet has the ability to change whether or not somebody died just through the recycling of information and turning fact into fiction, because the Internet can provide one side of the story since that is the only thing people will write about! That is why in todays news sphere it is important to collect from a wide variety of sources and reliable ones, because a bunch of similar unreliable ones doesn’t always makes something true.
Citations
"Is He Dead or Alive." 2pac. Web. 26 Feb. 2012. <http://tupac_a_shakur.tripod.com/2pac/id9.html>.
Wong, David. "Is Tupac Shakur Still Alive?" Cracked.com. 02 Nov. 2007. Web. 26 Feb. 2012. <http://www.cracked.com/article_15659_is-tupac-shakur-still-alive.html>.
Michaels, Scott. "The Murder of Tupac Shakur." Findadeath. Web. 26 Feb. 2012. <http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/s/tupacshakur/tupacshakur.htm>.
"Tupac Shakur." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Feb. 2012. Web. 26 Feb. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur>.
Spencer, Robert. "CNN: Unexpected Twist: Tupac Shakur Alive and Well, Pacaleala De 1 Aprilie ?" Forumul Softpedia. 02 Apr. 2005. Web. 26 Feb. 2012. <http://forum.softpedia.com/lofiversion/index.php/t53802.html>.
