BACK IN THE DAY

Reminiscences of the author’s high-school days with slain hip-hop star Tupac Shakur.

Shakur, gunned down early in his career, spent his teenage years at the Baltimore School for the Performing Arts, where he worked on his acting skills, pined for his home in New York City, and met Bastfield, now a music manager. The two became fast friends through their shared love of rap, still a new musical form when the two met in the mid-’80s. Bastfield documents their shared circumstances: both were older siblings from poor, single-parent households, with “fathers no more than a question mark, with barely a face to associate.” Both were also fiercely ambitious and dedicated to their music, first competing against each other in informal schoolyard challenges, and eventually joining forces. Bastfield gives a detailed chronology of the two years he and Shakur shared (the author graduated before Shakur), and the concerns and social activities that filled their days. A portrait of Baltimore also emerges—a gritty, harsh place where citizens struggle to hold their community together; indeed, the city is more vivid than Shakur himself. The rap star remains a cipher, his voice muted. Bastfield mentions the countless hours the two spent together, but even in high school, the author says, “my attempts to figure out my new subject were compromised by a veil that hovered about him.” Fifteen years later, no fresh revelations are available. The work is, instead, Bastfield’s story of high school, as it related to his charismatic and inscrutable friend. The work assumes a working knowledge of Shakur’s entertainment career; his professional accomplishments are mentioned only in passing. Bastfield’s prose oozes sincerity, but his exuberant phrasing plays fast and loose with standard phrasing.

Exclusively for fans.