Rebel for the Hell of It : The Life of Tupac Shakur

Author : Armond White, S. H. Fernando

Pages : 230pp

Format : Paperback

Publisher : Da Capo Press

Pub. Date : December 2002

Edition Number : 2

Sales Rank : 154,548

Reviews :

From the Publisher

This first full length biography of Tupac Shakur details each step in Shakur's development, from his early exposure to racism and political activism to his studies of drama to his move from New York to the West Coast and his innovative work with early hip hop culture and music. Armond White's understanding of Tupac's art will uncork the bottled up rage and confusion that attends the way hip hop culture is produced and received. The ever controversial Shakur offers a great occasion for a close, passionate reading of rap and ghetto culture. His art can be helpful in cross-referencing the ideas of self-expression and the efforts toward survival and resistance that seem so haphazard and conflicted in much of hip hop music. Through

connections drawn between Shakur and Public Enemy, Notorious B.I.G., Dr. Dre, Ice-T, Ice Cube, and Sister Souljah, White examines Shakur's life as a prism for the hip hop world.

Library Journal

A chronological scrapbook, Tupac captures the rapper as an infant, a struggling adolescent, an aspiring adult, and as the fiscal-and-musical giant he became. While the candid shots add humanity to the armored persona, the most moving depict the first drafts of his groundbreaking hits. Rebel is a coherent, cohesive, and easily accessible biography, punctuated by quotes from Shakur and his close business and musical associates. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Well-known journalist and author White describes the life of murdered rapper/actor Tupac Shakur (1971-96), attempting to connect Shakur's life with the African American experience during the last three decades. He begins with the rapper's birth to an absentee father and a mother who played a major role in the New York Black Panther movement. The author continues with the young Shakur's impoverished childhood, his constant moves from city to city, and his early interest in drama. Chronicling Shakur's short-lived but influential career, White outlines his stint as a dancer with the Digital Underground, his breakthrough second album, his three subsequent multiplatinum efforts, and his various roles in such movies as Juice and Poetic Justice. He also details the rapper's trouble with the law, his incarceration at Riker's Island prison, and his untimely death. Though clearly showing the change from the political activism and hope of Shakur's mother to Tupac's materialistic cynicism, White has interviewed few subjects and done only modest secondary research in his attempt to place the rap star in a larger social and cultural context. This will appeal mostly to fans of standard rock biography.David P. Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle

Annotation *

Tupac Shakur has been deified as a Renaissance man in gansta rap. Paralleling his fame were a series of court and jail appearances and physical attacks which ended when he was gunned down on a Las Vegas street. In this first, full-length biography of the rapper, critic Armond White attempts to make sense of Shakur's life and death, examining the larger issues of rap and ghetto culture, exploitation in the music industry, and the black struggle for self-expression. Movie rights sold to HBO. 16 photos. 200 pp. Author tour. 300,000 print.