Tupac Shakur is considered one of the most influential artists of our time. Although he died in 1996, he continues to inspire a generation of artists around the world. One of the things that set him apart from his contemporaries was his lyrical ability. Noisey recently "unearthed" three handwritten poems from the rapper that he wrote when he was a teenager (between 1989-1991) and published them along with an essay from Jeff Weiss, the author of 2pac vs. Biggie: An Illustrated History of Rap's Greatest Battle.
Although Noisey claims the poems were previously unreleased, HipHopDX points out that the poems actually appeared in a posthumous book of the rapper's poetry, published in 1999, called The Rose That Grew From Concrete.
"Before, during, and after interviews for the book I co-wrote about 2Pac and Biggie, was given different reasons to explain his legacy," Weiss wrote. "Some said that he was the greatest rapper ever because he was the only one intellectually and stylistically rich enough to teach a college course on. Others couldn't articulate it; they just pounded on their chest and said, Pac 'hits me right here.'"
Tupac's mentor and manager Leila Steinberg also published images of the three aforementioned poems and many others in an interview on Citizens of Humanity.
"I wanted to get the book published while he was still alive," Steinberg said of The Rose that Grew from Concrete. "I'd been reading those poems in classroom workshops for years. I'd open an assembly to 2,000 kids by reading the Tupac poem 'Lady Liberty Needs Glasses' and have kids talk about what he meant by that. There are now classes at every Ivy League school on Tupac! Two hundred years from now when people want to understand what was happening in race, politics and music, they will study Tupac."
Read some of Tupac's poetry below, and let us know what you think in the comments section!
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