Makaveli The Don

Tupac Amaru Shakur

 2PAC
Done by Elie Musangu, Joel Kisukulu, Malloh Efambe and Pearl
Leyka
Tupac Amaru Shakur born Lesane Parish Crooks was an American rapper and
actor. He is considered one of the greatest rappers of all time. Much of Shakur’s
work has been noted addressing contemporary social issues that concerned
inner cities, and he is considered a symbol of resistance and activism against
inequality.
Shakur ws born in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City but relocated to
the San Francisco Bay Area in 1988. He later moved to Los Angeles in 1993 to
further pursue his music career. By the time he released his début album
2Pacalypse Now in 1991, he had become a central figure in West Coast hip hop,
introducing social issues in the genre at a time when gangsta rap was dominant
in the mainstream. Shakur achieved further critical and commercial success
with his follow-up albums Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z… and the critically
acclaimed Me Against the World, which is considered to be his magnum opus.
Early Life
 Lesane was born a month after his mother was acquitted of more than 150 charges of
‘Conspiracy against the United States government and New York landmarks’ in the New York
Panther 21 trial. His parents, Afeni Shakur and Billy Garland, were active members of the
Panther Party in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s At one year old, his mother
renamed him after Túpac Amaru II the 18th-century Peruvian revolutionary who was executed
after leading an indigenousuprising against Spanish rule. “Tupac “ derives from Quechua
"Thupaq", meaning "Royal".
 I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people in the world. I wanted him
to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighborhood ...
 — Afeni Shakur
Early Life (continued)
Many people in Shakur's life were involved with the Black Liberation Army; some were convicted
of serious criminal offenses and imprisoned, including his mother. His godfather, 
Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a high-ranking Black Panther, had been convicted of murdering a school
teacher during a 1968 robbery, although his sentence was later overturned. His stepfather, 
Mutulu Shakur, spent four years at large on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, beginning in
1982. Mutulu was wanted for having helped his friend (no relation) Assata Shakur(also known as
Joanne Chesimard), Tupac's godmother, to escape from a penitentiary in New Jersey in 1979.
Mutulu was caught in 1986 and eventually convicted and sentenced to prison for the 1981 
robbery of a Brinks armored truck, during which two police officers and a guard were killed
 The idea behind the group was for each  
 On forming the Outlawz, Shakur gave each of them a name of a dictator/military leader and/or an enemy of America.
 Yaki Kadafi, after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
 Hussein Fatal, after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
 Mussolini (formerly Big Syke), after Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini
 Komani (Shakur's step brother Mopreme Shakur), after Iranian Islamic Revolution leader 
Ruhollah "Ayatollah" Khomeini
 Kastro, after Cuban communist revolutionary and leader Fidel Castro
 E.D.I. Mean, after Ugandan president and dictator Idi Amin
 Napoleon, after French military strategist and leader Napoleon Bonaparte
 For himself, Shakur created the alias "Makaveli" from Renaissance Italian philosopher and political theorist 
Niccolò Machiavelli, whose writings inspired Shakur in prison, but who also preached that a leader could eliminate his enemies by all means necessary.