Crib Notes

More than a decade after his unsolved murder, it seems Tupac still can’t rest in peace.

A bronze statue of the rapper was vandalized over the weekend in Stone Mountain at the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts (5616 Memorial Drive). DeKalb County police report that a cross was found around the neck of the statue; but Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation representatives state both a cross and a noose were found hanging on the statue.

In a press release issued today, the foundation links the incident to other recent hate crimes that have received national attention, such as the Jena 6 case:

The noose hung around the statue’s neck is an imitation of other cases recently reported in the media after a surge of hate crimes. The statue was also plastered with handbills of garbled rants that include references to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina as well as vague threats against various record companies and rappers. The manner of the attack indicates it is the work of one or more individuals.

A male found inebriated at the site Monday morning has been arrested by DeKalb police in connection with the vandalism. The investigation continues. Ironically, the center was supposed to serve as the primary site for a Monday rally to bring attention to the amount of killings by police in DeKalb County last year.

In other Tupac news, Kevin Hackie, one of the rapper’s former bodyguards, publicly admitted at a recent L.A. screening of the new DVD documentary, Tupac: Assassination, that he was an undercover FBI agent during his employment as a bodyguard with Tupac’s label Death Row Records from 1992 to 1996.

The surprising revelation comes at an inauspicious time considering the federal charges rapper T.I. faces, in part, as a result of his bodyguard’s cooperation with federal ATF investigators.

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So much has been said about Tupac in the 11 years since his death (Sept. 13, 1996), so I decided to let the man speak for himself. He tends to be a lot more compelling than the cultural critics, anyway.

As you know (or have repeatedly heard from us cultural critics), he was much more than a “rapper.” Here’s footage of a 1992 speech he gave in Atlanta at the invitation of the local arm of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. He talks to the assembled crowd about the different challenges faced by black youth of his era versus those from the Civil Rights/Black Panther era. (His mother Afeni Shakur was a longtime Panther and heads up the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation for the Arts located in Stone Mountain, Ga.)

The highlight of Pac’s speech comes toward the end of the clip when an older person from the audience apparently tells him to watch his language, and Tupac apologizes before saying, “You can’t be no more offended by my cursing than [by] what’s really going on.”

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