Tupac's Death

Brady Hargrove

2/24/12

Writ 1200

The Death of Tupac

            The death of Tupac Shakur has been debated upon since the day of his death and is still an unsolved mystery to this day. The death of the “Guinness World Record holder: Most Successful Gangsta Rapper” was never investigated police, but has been looked into only by private investigators and some of his die-hard fans. This already raises questions of why the police never tried to solve the mystery of who killed one of the most famous people in the world, 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 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.

            The long debated things of why Tupac may have staged his death have mainly taken 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. 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 it 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 analyzing this death and trying to find the true behind it all and have been posting an overwhelming amount of information about it onto the Internet. All it takes to for the first related search on Google to be “Is Tupac Alive” is to type into the search bar “Is Tu” from that 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 bulk of the writing that would take place in an article. These sites are able to use their images as proof that Tupac is alive and leave it up to the reader or viewer on whether or not to believe the photo, and the author puts almost little or no effort into explaining why this picture is actually Tupac and if the picture was even taken after the death of him. 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 then on undoubtedly believe Tupac is alive, pictures are a great tool a evidence in these situation but is not enough for a full decisive tool to prove Tupac is alive. It is from here that other authors collect these photos and use them to help the ideas they have a forward the pictures into other places and t the same time get their ideas out into the Internet public.

            There have been many websites created completely about 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 bring up the fact that yes all these things they are bringing up could be a coincidence or 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 before he died exactly 7 months before his death, and his death took place on Friday the 13^th.  It also took 7 days in the Hospital for Tupac to die, and even though a large amount of people claimed to had gone and visit Tupac in the Hospital there are no photos of him ever being there. Tupac was shot on September 7^th and died at 4:03, 4+3=7, and he died at the age of 25, 2+5=7.   The title of the new album by Tupac that was 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, and all the new songs and videos released were supposed to be previous works of Tupac in the archives. But what record company would want to invest all that money into the songs and videos 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 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 a big setup, and if he did he choice the correct city to do it in. 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.

            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 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 to also spread ideas. Even though major media has not had a large contribution to this story they still keep slightly involved and would also maybe even notice all the conspiracy on the Internet and write about that instead. Because this is a story that many may just not care enough about, but for those who do care can still find a large source of information from other places.

            If I were to synthesize on the death of Tupac after reading all the acts I think I would be forced to look at in the clearest possible way. Since the Internet lacks sides of the story that Tupac is dead other than the fact that he is literally dead leads me to think that Tupac is still alive. There are too many weird coincidences that occurred over my research that points the fact that Tupac and Suge planned this whole event to make Tupac more famous and protects others in his life from his enemies. The fact that Tupac has continued releasing music, has had pictures taken of him, did an interview with CNN, rapped about how he died, and rapped about events that took place after his death add up to the point that Tupac would have had to be able to see into the future and then create a look alike of him for after he died. 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 no one ever tried finding 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? This may be one of those things where no one will really know for sure, except those close enough to Tupac.

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>.

Taking an Approach

After reading “Taking an Approach” it became clear to me that this was something that people use in their writing at all times. It sounds like the culmination of all the strategies you learn from reading others work and taking those strategies and using them in your own work to help qualify your point with others ideas. This more specifically is done a lot in writing blogs and news stories, because in blogs you can see that the author is taking someone else’s ideas and helping it to improve their point. Also in news a lot of the time they can be taking stories from witnesses of an event and taking their quotes to help expand their idea and prove their point. As students we do this all the time when writing research papers because we need the ideas of others to help make our own and then you can take the ideas that helped you get to your point of view and use those to qualify yourself. And it is clear a lot of them time where people are getting these ideas so they cite them in their paper for the reader to go to and to specifically where their ideas came from and give recognition to where they got them from.

This idea seems very similar to “Forwarding” because there you also take someone else’s ideas to help expand your point. The difference between them I fell must be that “Forwarding” is used more when writing short answers or responses to someone’s work, and “Taking an Approach” is used more as place to start your idea and then you have the freedom to go from there and expand on your own ideas.

Revision-America The Illiterate

Originally when I wrote about America The Illiterate I was strongly against the idea that America could be so illiterate but after taking this class for a longer time and thinking about it more I have realized the illiteracy that really takes place.

It may be true that people are writing more and reading more in the current times, but what have we gained from it? One thing we have got is a new sort of language that is taking over internet posts and texts (lol, ttyl, ect.). As I have been reading more articles on the internet it makes more and more unbearable for me to go onto Facebook and read the posts from people and the irrelevance to life that most people post about. A lot of things I notice are people posting controversial topics about famous people that have no relevance to most peoples daily life and yet they allow into their lives and put to much effort into thinking about these topics. I think if people began using Facebook as a place to talk about the news and important current events it could make Facebook much better and keep interested with their controversial topics while keeping involved with the real world and think about things that effect them on a daily basis. There are great resources on the internet to get news from sources that are reliable and still written in an entertaining way now. It is possible though that me noticing this is just apart a life and realizing what is really important, and my friends on Facebook may be a little behind me in realizing the things that are most important in their lives. 

Countering

Harris’ writing about Countering almost sounded very similar to debating but when done in the way Harris explains, it will add to the conversation rather than making it like a win/lose debate. With Countering instead of justifying what you have just read you take the idea and add your own spin on it that may disagree with what the writing is saying but done to add new ideas to the conversation and to get the writer to possible think differently about what they originally wrote. Harris justifies this idea when he says countering, “suggest a different way of thinking.” This idea seems to be key when powerful writers in blogs are talking about something in the National news or about something from a reliable source, because if the writer just refuses the original idea in all ways and does not explain why he thinks the way he does, and how his ideas are better than others, then the blogger may seem ignorant and closed minded so no one will want to go there to get a full perspective on a topic. In a way Countering can help try to stop bias and help people look at things from a more similar view. Countering gains a lot of new ideas about a topic and helps give it a lot freedom to go in many different directions, but Countering can possibly lead to the loss of ideas and may get people looking in too many different directions leaving people with no idea what to believe. 

Forwarding

After reading the section "Forwarding" it was a pretty clear message of what Harris was trying to say, because he continues to use many metaphors to help get the reader involved and help them understand what he is trying to say. What I got from it is that it works how a lot messaging systems now a day work because you are forwarding someone else's work to other people, but adding your personal opinion and touch on the idea. Many things work like this now, like on forums, Facebook, E-mail, and other forms of communication because when someone posts something or send something to you, you can comment and add your own ideas to it. Harris explains this when he says “…you are less entering into conversation with him than with fellow readers of his work…You are recirculating his writing.” It is as if you are not thinking so much about what the writer has to say, but rather commenting on what others have to say about it and continuing the conversation from there. This stays with the original idea Harris talked about earlier in the book about writing being more of a conversation and rewriting others work.

This is a very common thing in blogs because they are taking ideas from the news and other places and putting their own spin and ideas in on the topic and posting it for others to read and comment back their ideas they have. Forwarding adds a huge amount to the possibilities about a subject, but does not seem to have a lot of room to expand to new different ideas, and instead just keeps you focused on one main topic. Forwarding also does a great job of spreading the ideas of others to large groups of people.