"He laid down a real message that you can feel from the heart�you know what I'm saying?" he said. "I did a lot of work with him, but we never kicked it major on the personal side, but we kicked it enough to where we had major love for each other. When he did `Definition of a Thug,' that was one of the times when I was going through some stuff, and he was going through some stuff, so we chatted at each other and really got an understanding about each other." When I asked him to tell me something about Tupac that the world didn't know, he spoke of his work ethic.

"In the studio he was amazing," Warren G said. "He handled his business. Once you shook hands and you talked for a minute, then he would go and he would grab that pad. Damn. Doing his stuff. And that's when it all came together."

I thanked Warren G as he stepped out of the bus and slowly made his way to the warehouse. He was replaced in the doorway by Nate Dogg, the smooth-voiced crooner, gangsta rap's Frank Sinatra, who has made guest appearances on countless rap recordings. When I asked Nate about Tupac, he was more withdrawn and tight, insular in a self-protective fashion. It was obvious that I had struck a nerve, and he gently brushed me off by telling me he'd speak to me upstairs. "Let me speak to my people first, then I'll talk to you." But I knew the chances were slim to none.

By the time Snoop emerged from the bus, black sunglasses on, hair plaited in two big braids that drooped to either side of his face, I knew it would be next to impossible to reach him. So I thought I would call it a day, when I spotted Big Tray Dee, the Eastsidaz rapper who had also appeared with Tupac on the soundtrack for Gridlock'd, a film directed by Vondie Curtis Hall. I decided to head upstairs and to mill around in the kitchen where food had been prepared for the artists and their guests. I sat at the table where Big Tray Dee had found a place. His beautiful little daughter sat next to him, her braided and barretted hair a stylish complement to the Gerri-curls that peeked out from Big Tray Dee's cap, a true West Coast player with a 1980s vibe. It was immediately apparent that Big Tray Dee had a warm spirit and that the hard reputation of the gangsta rapper found dramatic relief in the care he showed for his precious child. I asked Big Tray Dee about Tupac, and between licking from his fingers the tasty barbecue sauce that splashed the ribs he consumed, he opened his heart.

"I knew he was a workaholic," he said, echoing Warren G's observation. "He would write three or four songs a day. If he was really into it, and his boys was ready, he might do six or seven songs in one day. He was phenomenal to watch." After he discussed Tupac's style, his method of working up a song, the themes of his work, and the response it evoked in Big Tray Dee, the rapper touched on Tupac's legacy.

"Everybody knows he was taken from us too soon," Big Tray Dee said. "He didn't have a chance to reach his full potential, like Donald Trump or Howard Hughes or Michael Jackson, somebody who is going to live out their years to see all the fame. He's not going to enjoy seeing how the music he made is going to be remembered and the statues of him that will be made. Do you know what I'm saying? People feel for him; he was a great person. We feel his loss."

I was moved as this freckle-faced soldier, whose ghetto war scars were invisible but palpable, recalled in touching terms the moments of creativity and brotherhood that he shared with Tupac. But what happened next was even more remarkable; it was both heartwarming and heartbreaking. As Big Tray Dee finished his comments and I thanked him for his time, he began to cry. Silently, without sobs, but steadily, for twenty minutes. The stream of tears that creased his cheeks reddened his eyes. His daughter held onto her father's right arm tightly, glowering at me as if I had harmed her daddy. I offered him several napkins, and he poured his wordless anguish into them without fear of hurting his reputation or losing his manhood. When I saw that he had finished, I thanked him and made my way out. But I will never forget his crying image as a powerful metaphor for the agony many have over the loss of Tupac's unspeakable gift�a gift that nevertheless continues to speak to millions around the globe.

Although I didn't come away that day with what I had gone for�an interview with Snoop Dogg�I got so much more. I gained a richer appreciation for the complexity of Tupac's life, for the contending identities that defined him, for the competing passions that claimed his attention, and for the contradictory forces that shaped his art and career. Tupac is perhaps the representative figure of his generation. In his haunting voice can be heard the buoyant hopefulness and the desperate hopelessness that mark the outer perimeters of the hip-hop culture he eagerly embraced, as well as the lives of the millions of youth who admired and adored him. But as his legend grows, Tupac recedes further from historical view and is trapped in the ruthless play of images that outline his myth in the culture. All the themes that surfaced in the conversations I had when I went to the warehouse are important: his strong black masculinity, his willingness to speak up, his thirst for attention, his powerful poetry, his thug image, his entrepreneurial exploits, his prophetic stances, his role as a pop icon, his search for the authentic black experience, his heartfelt messages to the urban poor, his incredible work ethic, his unfulfilled potential, his ascension to Elvis-like status, and the grief that was provoked by his premature death. These themes, and many others, are the ones I explore in this book.

In the first part of the book, "Childhood Chains, Adolescent Aspirations," I explore Tupac's childhood experiences and adolescent influences. His mother, Afeni, looms large in Tupacian lore; she was elevated in his beautiful "Dear Mama" but subject to public criticism by her son for her drug addiction and domestic instability before its release. Like her son, Afeni Shakur is a remarkable human being. As a black revolutionary, she fought for black liberation. As a mother, she raised two children without help from their fathers. And as a woman who descended into addiction, she risked her home to feed her habit. I explore the dual legacy Afeni gave to Tupac, as black revolutionary and as an addicted mother. I first tackle the effect Afeni's addiction had on Tupac, how it deprived him of a stable home in his adolescence, how it shaped his view of himself as a maturing teen, and how his art reflected the existential agonies he encountered as a result of her troubles.

I also probe Tupac's postrevolutionary childhood, seeking to discover how a child who has been reared to combat white supremacy fares in a world where such lessons must be adapted because the times have changed. I look at the themes that Tupac learned as a second-generation Black Panther, and how he both absorbed and resisted the messages he received. Since so much of his appeal rested on the divide in his mind and soul between his revolutionary pedigree and his thug persona, this is a crucial dimension of Tupac's background. I am also interested in the intellectual influences that shaped the growing boy and budding rapper. Tupac was a remarkably bright and gifted child. His acting gifts were encouraged by his participation in an acting ensemble in Harlem and, later, at Baltimore's School for Performing Arts. He was as well a voracious reader who had an insatiable intellectual appetite for an impressive range of books. Although he dropped out of high school, he continued to read a huge amount of literature until the day he died. I examine Tupac's views of school and his conceptions of learning, while also tracking down the kinds of books he cherished.

In the second part, "Portraits of an Artist," I take up Tupac's artistic vocation, since his first and lasting fame derives from his rap career. He was by no measure the greatest rapper of all time, but he is perhaps the genre's most influential star. I explore Tupac's role in rap, especially his lightning-rod status as rap's most renowned and controversial artist. Although his exploits away from the studio garnered huge headlines, Tupac's powerful, prophetic�and too often, self-destructive�work is the final basis of how we can judge his artistic achievements. But his preoccupation with being a "real nigga" looms over nearly everything he did. The question of black authenticity haunts the culture; within hip-hop it is especially vicious, with artists often adopting a stance as a thug or gangsta to prove their bona fides and their ability to represent the street. Perhaps more than any other rapper, Tupac tried to live the life he rapped about, which had spectacular results in the studio but disastrous results in the world. Tupac was in constant trouble with the law and in relentless conflict with peers, pretenders, and rivals, conflicts that sometimes spilled over into the recording studio. The infamous East Coast-West Coast beef owes its origins to Tupac's ingenious fury and outsized agonistic rantings.

In the third part of the book, "Bodies and Beliefs," I look at how Tupac dealt with huge themes in his art�such as gender, death, religion, suffering, compassion�and the status of the black body in his craft and career. I tackle hip-hop's especially harsh and misogynistic beliefs, as well as Tupac's own complex gender views�particularly in light of the sexual abuse for which he was convicted, though few believe he was guilty�through the prism of what I term femiphobia, the cruel attack on women that grows in the ghetto and beyond. I explore how Tupac's relationship to his mother affected his views and how his early experiences with girls left an imprint on his gender philosophy. I look at the influence of cultural cues and social history on how females are viewed not only in the ghetto but also in the larger culture. I try to grasp hold of Tupac's religious views and spiritual beliefs as they developed over his youth and his young adulthood. Tupac had strong views on God, suffering, and compassion, which I probe. He seemed to recklessly embrace his own death, even as he meditated on the nature of death extensively in his work, a subject I briefly consider. Finally, I explore the ways that Tupac viewed his body as a text, as the ink of the tattoo artist bled all over his torso. I examine as well how Tupac viewed his own body, not only as a work of art but as an object of scorn and as a vehicle for addictive pleasures and, in the end, as a temple of contagiously gloomy self-destruction.