TUPAC SHAKUR

The long-awaited authorized biography of the iconic rapper.

Robinson, a screenwriter and an executive producer on the FX series Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, met Tupac Shakur (1971-1996) while they were both in high school in Mill Valley, California, and they remained in contact until Shakur’s murder—just days before Robinson was set to go to work with him. Years later, Shakur’s mother, the activist Afeni Shakur, asked Robinson to write about her son, offering access to his family and personal papers. The numerous pictures of his handwritten lyrics, album track lists, and liner notes alone make this book a must-see for fans, and with the memories of so many from Shakur’s inner circle, the author offers loads of colorful details about his life. He used to listen to Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love” when he felt sad. He wrote love poems to Jada Pinkett when they were in high school together. He started dating Madonna after they were introduced by Rosie Perez. However, Robinson provides few revelations about who killed Shakur in Las Vegas or why. She offers a bit more about him getting shot in New York and why that event ended his friendship with the Notorious B.I.G. and launched the East Coast–West Coast beef in hip-hop, though nothing definitive on who pulled the trigger. The author is at her best in her descriptions of Shakur’s ambitions, intense work ethic, and dislike of authority, especially police, as well as his family life. The role of preparing food in his home was incredibly meaningful to Tupac,” she writes. “Before [his cousin] Jamala’s arrival at the Calabasas house, he had asked his mother to have home-cooked meals prepared for him at his Wilshire House condo so when he walked in the door, exhausted, the smell of his mother’s cooking would greet him.”

This authorized biography of Shakur is intimate and personal, but it could use more gravitas.