Tupac Shakur
Background on Tupac
Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper. Shakur has sold over 75 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. In the United States alone he has sold 37.5 million records. Rolling Stone Magazine named him the 86th Greatest Artist of All Time. In addition to his career as a top-selling rap artist, he was a promising actor and a social activist. Most of Shakur's songs are about growing up amid violence and hardship in ghettos, racism, other social problems, and conflicts with other rappers during the East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry. Shakur began his career as a roadie and backup dancer for the alternative hip hop group Digital Underground. In September 1996, Shakur was shot four times in the Las Vegas metropolitan area of Nevada. He was taken to the University Medical Center, where he died of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest.
Tupac - Hit Em Up
This text is from the mid-1990's.
In this music video, you can see that the lyrics are very aggressive and uses medium and long shots to show the whole of his gang. This come together with the repetition of the word 'west-side'. This is similiar to the N-Dubz - Love For My Slum video, in which Dappy was represented as a thug involved in criminality, whereas, in this video, Tupac, is just rapping and swearing aggressively using words such as 'fuck', 'bitches', 'motherfucker' etc. which all, coming together with the lyrics connote violence. In this music video Tupac is just shown jumping around expressing his hatred towards his haters, whereas in the music video N-Dubz - Love For My Slum, Dappy is shown to be expressing his hatred towards the police, by causing trouble for them. So, this connotes that over the years, censorship and regulation has become a big issue and for that reason, it is becoming extremely difficult for artists such as N-Dubz to express their feelings through music, if it causes harm to society e.g. could influence youths to behave in a certain way, which may not be acceptable in today's society. Also, as you can see that in the Tupac video there is a massive amount of swearing however in the N-Dubz music video there is none and if there is any it is censored with a beep. this again raises the issue of censorship, as artists are not able to express themselves as they like to, however, the lyrics in the Tupac video are more explicit, whereas, videos like N-Dubz seem to cause a moral panic in todays society as people believe it has a negative affect on the youths in todays society as if they see it, they will be encouraged to act in that way.
In this music video, you can see that the lyrics are very aggressive and uses medium and long shots to show the whole of his gang. This come together with the repetition of the word 'west-side'. This is similiar to the N-Dubz - Love For My Slum video, in which Dappy was represented as a thug involved in criminality, whereas, in this video, Tupac, is just rapping and swearing aggressively using words such as 'fuck', 'bitches', 'motherfucker' etc. which all, coming together with the lyrics connote violence. In this music video Tupac is just shown jumping around expressing his hatred towards his haters, whereas in the music video N-Dubz - Love For My Slum, Dappy is shown to be expressing his hatred towards the police, by causing trouble for them. So, this connotes that over the years, censorship and regulation has become a big issue and for that reason, it is becoming extremely difficult for artists such as N-Dubz to express their feelings through music, if it causes harm to society e.g. could influence youths to behave in a certain way, which may not be acceptable in today's society. Also, as you can see that in the Tupac video there is a massive amount of swearing however in the N-Dubz music video there is none and if there is any it is censored with a beep. this again raises the issue of censorship, as artists are not able to express themselves as they like to, however, the lyrics in the Tupac video are more explicit, whereas, videos like N-Dubz seem to cause a moral panic in todays society as people believe it has a negative affect on the youths in todays society as if they see it, they will be encouraged to act in that way.
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