25 Years Later, Tupac’s ‘Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.’ Album Is Still Too Relevant

Interscope Records

When people liken themselves or another hip-hop artist to Tupac in 2018, it’s usually for short-sighted, self-serving reasons. Whether it’s artists coming back from a prison bid like Boosie or rappers engaged in art-imitates-reality controversy like Troy Ave, the nods rarely do justice to Tupac’s full legacy. And of all the recent beckoning of the hip-hop icon’s name, only Donald Glover acknowledged Pac’s Black Panther roots.

“I didn’t have a mom in the Black Panthers, but my parents were very pro-black,” Glover told Esquire. It seems ironic that in a dire political state in which even activist Louis Farrakhan acknowledges that rappers have a bigger voice than him to influence social change, hip-hop has disregarded the legacy of an iconic artist with direct Panther lineage. His mother was Afeni Shakur, his godmother was Assata Shakur, and his godfather was Geronimo Pratt — all prominent Panthers. His stepfather Mutulu Shakur is a co-founder of the New Afrikan People’s Organization. Those relationships helped mold Tupac from an early age, and he was at one point the Chairman for the New Afrikan Panthers, which was a young adult branch of Mutulu’s organization.

In the sensationalistic, ego-driven arena of mainstream hip-hop, it’s easy for artists to chase idolatry by channeling Pac’s reckless machismo and compelling fascination with death, but apparently less so to embody the militancy he expressed on his sophomore album Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z, which is 25 years old today. The 16-track album shows that before the drama that would be his undoing, Tupac was focused on following in Public Enemy’s footsteps of utilizing hip-hop to galvanize youth toward Black liberation. The album may have had the club classic “I Get Around,” but he isn’t a lothario anywhere else on the project.

When he does mention women on “Keep Ya Head Up,” he’s openly reflecting on whether we “hate” them based on the way they’re so often denigrated and objectified in the Black community. “I think it’s time to kill for our women / time to heal our women, be real to our women,” he rhymes. ”If we don’t we’ll have a race of babies / that will hate the ladies that make the babies.” 25 years later, one quick scroll through any social media channel will prove him right.

Elsewhere on the album, he weaved the Panthers’ advocacy of self-defense against police into sonic calls-to-arms that placed cops firmly at the root of his ire. He posited himself a gladiator, with the streets of Oakland as the frontlines. It’s songs like “Souljah’s Revenge” and “Last Wordz” that were misconstrued as mere pleas for violence. “I’m not violent, I’m petrified and nervous / I got no mercy for these n—-s tryna serve us,” he clarifies on the album’s title track. Tupac’s fury has to be contextualized with the understanding that he represented the second generation of a movement once mouth-pieced by Eldridge Cleaver, a fiery, controversial writer and activist who once advocated for forceful resistance against the current American establishment.

Cleaver once said, “I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare.” Just a year after the LA riots, that nightmare of predatory policing and urban decay was Tupac’s canvas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihaL-UhVKKg&list=PLMFqwnGOkmLtlIb3JPIBHOlily5ZtEG2Q&index=6

Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. was a followup to 2Pacalypse Now, a project which was just as flagrant in its disavowal of the establishment. Former Vice President Quayle vilified Tupac in part because the album was found at a Texas State Trooper’s murder scene. The judge didn’t buy 19-year-old’s Ronald Ray Howard’s excuse that a Tupac song compelled him to shoot Bill Davidson, but the stigma persisted against Tupac. Quayle was one of Tupac’s chief detractors and catches clapbacks throughout Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.. On “Tupac’s Theme,” a clip of Quayle saying Tupac’s music “has no place in society” is repeated.

Tupac framed the song as a conversation, much like Kendrick Lamar did to Pac on To Pimp A Butterfly’s “Mortal Man.” He “told” Quayle, “I was raised in this society so there’s no way you can expect me to be a perfect person… I’ma do what I’ma do.” He retorted further on “Last Wordz,” asking Quayle “don’t you know you need your ass kicked? Where was you when there was n—-s in the caskets?” He not only called out Quayle — and by extension the political system as a whole — he threatened a swift means of resistance:

“Muthaf*cker rednecks all the same
Fear a real n—- if he ain’t balled and chained
That’s why we burn sh*t and wreck
Cause the punk police ain’t learned sh*t yet
You mutha-f*ckas gonna pay the price
Can’t make a Black life, don’t take a Black life”

Today, a rhyme implying “punk police” will “pay the price” would incur a media firestorm which would overshadow the power of his final line, which was a rallying cry against the police system that to this day is marred by too many unjust murders of unarmed people of color. It’s telling that the album’s intro track is called “Holla If Ya Hear Me.” He’s imploring listeners to identify with him and analyze the picture he’s painting about “[growing] up broke on the rope of insanity,” as he rhymed on “Streets R Deathrow.”

“My message to the censorship committee
Who’s the biggest gang of niggas in the city?
The critics or the cops?
The courts or the crooks, don’t look so confused
Take a closer look”

When he asks for that closer look on “Souljah’s Revenge,” he’s begging for the spotlight to be taken off of kids who are dismissed as gang-bangers and turned onto police departments. In recent years, segments of the NYPD and Chicago PD have been exposed as prejudicial, corrupt entities who are just as guilty of crime as some of the people they apprehend.

It wasn’t just police fanning racial tensions, however. Just two weeks after the police viciously beat Rodney King, Latasha Harlins was murdered by convenience store owner Soon Ja Du in 1991. She was putting a bottle of juice in her backpack, but was physically accosted by Du before she was able to hand him the money she was holding. After a tussle with Du, Harlins turned to walk out of the store but was shot in the back of the head. For his crime, Du was sentenced to probation and served community service. Tupac mentioned Harlins on “Something 2 Die 4,” noting that, “a bottle of juice is not something to die for.” Neither is loud music, which spurred Jordan Davis’ murder. Or George Zimmerman’s racist assumption that Trayvon Martin was up to no good instead of simply walking home.

America has displayed a fundamental, infuriating lack of regard for Black life. The anger engendered by this circumstance fuels the fire that Pac rhymed with throughout the album. His art spoke for a generation of youth who had been led astray in the wake of the Black Panthers’ COINTELPRO infiltration and veritable dissolution. These youth had been left for dead by an establishment who seemingly only knew how to condemn them and/or incarcerate them. His anger is understandable, and he perfectly explained the frustration with a brilliant analogy of the oppressed as people frustrated from being left out of a house full of food.

When he says “what n—– need to do is start loc’in up” on “Last Wordz,” he isn’t promoting violence, he’s calling for the gangs, which initially sprouted up as community protection organizations, to return to their roots and focus on their real enemy.

Huey P. Newton once told an interviewer that the Panthers “had more contact with the police than we did the city council.” While the Panthers had macro-level goals they demanded in their 10-Point Plan, its leaders realized that the people they were fighting for had more pressing issues which required on the ground, in-community protection. Tupac would know. In 1992, he was brutally attacked and choked unconscious by the police for jaywalking. He also infamously shot two off-duty cops who were harassing a citizen.

He crafted Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. with cinematic, hyperbolic flourish, but the oppression he spoke on — and means he was willing to take to uproot it — were based on personal brushes with law enforcement. He had a prescient understanding of how dire things were in the Black community. He referenced a “big plan to keep a brotha’ in the state pen” on “Streets R Deathrow.” 25 years later, the prison industrial complex has become one of the biggest industries in America.

Mass incarceration is a major factor in the fracture of Black communities — and the loss of political power via people convicted of felonies who can’t vote. The latest data shows that Black and Brown people make up 56% of all incarcerated people, despite being 32% of the population. Corrupt police have served as the frontline sustenance of that treachery, which is why hearing Pac chant, “til the n—-s get a piece, f*ck police” on “Souljah’s Revenge” feels so apropos.

In 2018, militant groups like the Panthers are less prevalent, which means less opportunity to influence young artists who could sonically succeed Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.S’ unabashed militance. Even the artists who try have a difficult path to reaching the masses because mainstream hip-hop is a billion dollar vessel of the American establishment. It’s questionable how many corporations — which thrive upon the status quo — would invest heavily in music that advocates radical messaging.

YG and Nipsey Hussle received hassle for their “FDT (F*ck Donald Trump)” song, which laid the President out with lines like, “don’t let Donald Trump win, that n—- cancer / he too rich, he ain’t got the answers / he can’t make decisions for this country, he gon’ crash us.” The Secret Service called Universal Records, who made YG censor a line about El Chapo sniping Trump, and the controversy eventually subsided. YG admitted on Genius that the “Secret Service called in to Universal. I don’t want no letters from the FBI. That life is over for me. I’m a f*ckin’ square.” What would have happened if YG had persisted and released a whole album of tracks like “FDT?”

Full projects with the fearlessness of Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. are much-needed in today’s hip-hop scene. While inspirational, insightful Pro-Black content exists with artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Joey Bada$$, music that capture the revolutionary fire that Tupac carried is greatly missed. While advocating for shooting at cops is a no-go, art that channels Black people’s aggravation with the police system and calls for unity are needed.

If albums like Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid M.A.A.D City helped intellectualize gangsta rap, Strictly 4 My Nigga… helped politicized it. Today, the subgenre feels stagnant predominantly because the psychology and conditions that bred its creators should simply no longer exist. Instead of rap that promotes an adversarial atmosphere, we need more music where artists rightfully condemn the figments of the system which pit them against each other. And do it strictly for us.

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