Tupac is one of my favorite musicians. I admire him for more than his popular songs or his posthumous glorification or martyr status but because he was a complex man who allowed his audience to see all facades of himself. He unapologetic when he ‘Got Around’ (in reference to Tupac’s song, “I Get Around”) nor did he lose his candor when he recorded “Dear Mama” nor was he unashamed to emphatically demand for black people to “Keep Ya Head Up.”
After his death a book of his poetry was released entitled, The Rose the Grew From Concrete.
A few years ago I wrote an interpretation of that poem for an Educational Studies course I was taking, which dealt with the shortcomings of schooling for inner city children. Here is a piece of what I had to say:
In the United States there is a cruel joke played on many minority inner city youth. They live in a land overflowing with milk and honey, yet they are denied enough meager scraps to sustain themselves. Temptations plague them worse than the apple that enticed Eve of Biblical times. These students are the underprivileged and marginalized. The ones cast in the shadows when company comes. They are the dark stain upon America’s pristine image. Yet, they are here.
These are the roses Tupac Amaru Shakur wrote about. Daily, they defy the odds that are put up as roadblocks to their success. They rise from gang ridden high-rise projects. They rise from sewage-laden parks. They rise from drug addicted and alcoholic parents. They rise from rape and molestation. They rise through all the muck and mire life could possibly throw at them. It is no wonder that their rose petals are rough and bruised in places. In the midst of their miracle, America does not see that they are amazing for simply surviving. America sees these flowers as defective; they do not bloom as full as others that were planted on fertile land. They don’t have the thorns needed to protect themselves from the troubles life will surely bring. We as gardeners have an obligation to nurture all our flowers, regardless of their physical aesthetic or where within our garden they may bloom.
Though my words were very incisive, I think they speak to a raw emotion I felt at that time, just leaving an inadequate public school education just months before I wrote this. I share this because I think it most aptly speaks to the kind of world/head-space Tupac was most likely in when he wrote the poem a few decades ago. Further, the rose that he personifies typifies the magical nature that takes black art into the realm of Afrofuturism. Tupac is imagining a world where young black boys and girls are able to overcome all of life’s unfair obstacles and are able to show the world their true beauty.