Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur

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Before his murder at 25, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the preeminent storyteller of the 90s, building, in the process, one of the most iconic public personas of the last half century. He recorded 10 platinum albums, starred in major films and became an activist and political hero known the world over.

In this cultural history, journalist Van Nguyen reckons with Tupac's coming of age, fame and cultural capital and how the political machinations that shaped him as a boy have since buoyed his legacy as a revolutionary following the George Floyd uprising. Words for My Comrades engages - crucially - with the influence of Tupac's mother, Afeni, whose role in the Black Panther Party and dedication to dismantling American imperialism and police brutality informed Tupac's art. Tupac's childhood as a son of the Panthers, coupled with the influence of his step-father's Marxist beliefs, became his own riveting code of ethics that helped listeners reckon with America's inherent injustices.

Using oral histories from conversations with the people who shaped Tupac's life and career, many of whom were interviewed for the first time here, Van Nguyen demonstrates how Tupac became one of the most enduring musical legends in hip-hop history and how intimately his name is threaded with the legacy of Black Panther politics.

Words for My Comrades is the story of how the energy of the Black political movement was subsumed by culture and how America produced, in Tupac and Afeni, two of its most iconic, enduring revolutionaries.

Author Bio

Dean Van Nguyen is an Irish-Vietnamese writer, journalist, and critic covering music, culture, identity, race relations, and left wing politics. He has written for Irish Times, the Guardian, the Independent, Pitchfork, the Atlantic, Uproxx, Wax Poetics, Jacobin and more. He writes a monthly music column for the Dublin Inquirer and a column on new reissues for Bandcamp Daily. In 2019, he published Iron Age: The Art of Ghostface Killah, a collection of essays on New York rapper that blends music criticism, cultural examination, and personal appreciation.