Tupacs Influence

[andyfox]

Brought my 12-year old son to a birthday party at a roller rink in a black section of the city last weekend. All the party-goers were white, all the other customers were black. Don't know if it was Tupac's influence, but all the white kids try to emulate the black kids: hair styles, clothing,lingo, the way they walk and carry themselves. We don't allow our son (age 12) to listen to certain artists or to use certain words in our presence, and have told him why we object, but I'm sure, outside of our presence, he acts differently than when he's with his parents (as we did when we were his age). I think James Deans, Marlon Brando and Elvis appropriated some of their coolness from the black community in their time too.

Tough to top what has already been mentioned by B-man, M2d, Boris and Jimbo, but I'll try anyway:
1) thuglife - just cuz (see he's influenced me too) you tatoo something on your gut, does not give you a patent on an idea or lifestyle.
2) bandanans - doorags have been worn as far back as the 70's and while they looked just as stupid on a person back then, I don't remember anyone staking claim to inventing the fashion.
3) Tatoos on black people are as effective as hair spray on bald people, you can't tell that any thing is there.
3b) see the grandfather clocks worn around brothers necks in the 80's and John Travolta's neck in Saturday night Fever.
4) Charm with a record label - kind of goes back to my previous post about rap and hip-hop becoming less about the music and its roots and more about dueling record labels.
5)Z's - its called Ebonics
6)N word between blacks - nothing new - nevertheless very hypocritcal.
7) What he didn't invent Gin and Juice too?
8) Pour out liquor for the homeys, have you ever witnessed and Irish Wake?
9) Already been answered - Straight outta Compton

ryan 21 your passion for everything Tupac is well documented and borderline apologetic, nevertheless I appreciate you trying to connect with his spirit. However, if there is one thing abundantly clear from this string of posts, it is that your influential experiences (ie ages 10-19) occured when Tupac was attempting to make his mark and he clearly succeeded in capturing your imagination. However, you should try stepping back from the tree a little and focus on the forrest and all the influences that went into Tupac's creations - no offense, but the man was not that creative and as artists will do in the future, he borrowed, stoled and intimidated what he saw as he was in his formative years.

[Ryan_21]

Well, most of you guys are right in the fact that a lot of the things Pac glamorized had been glamorized before. I think the point I was trying to make was that Tupac Shakurs influence on my generation and teenagers in the 90's was just as innovative and original as the influences James Dean, Elvis Pressely and Marlon Brando's were to there generations. Even if he took things from here and there and made them his own, he still deserves credit for the influences those things put into THIS generation, and for that is in the league of Icons that was previously mentioned.

I mean in all seriousness, if you had to pick 5 Icons of all time and James Dean was one, Marlon Brando was one, and Elvis Pressely was one, that leaves to spots. It would be unfair to not have a woman, Marylon Monroe gets my vote for woman, and It would be unfair not to have a black artist, and with the influences Tupac had in the 90's it would be hard to overlook him for the most influential black Icon of all time.

Ryan_21

[Jimbo]

Ryan,

No offense here but Tupac would not be in the top ten of the most influential black men of all time. Honestly I imagine he would appear on any such list less than .01% of the time if you surveyed a cross section of our country. If you limit your survey to Rappers, ganstas and thugs he may be well be there but this falls far short of any reasonably acceptable all time list. Heck using that reasoning would make Dr. Timothy Leary qualify for my generation and just the thought of that idea makes me LOL. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Jimbo

[M2d]

if you want to stick to rap/hip hop, how about Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, or the Sugar Hill Gang (I know, not a single person) as the men who first brought rap to mainstream conciousness? Without them, there would be no Tupac. You can go later and pick Run DMC as the first to really bring the genre out into the open.
In the rest of the music industry, Louis Armstrong Did a lot to popularize Black music in white america, as did BB King, Chuck Berry, James Brown and many others.
Expanding to Entertainment, you have to include Bill Cosby, Berry Gordy, Jackie Robinson, Kareem Abdul Jabar (changed NCAA rules as well as the first mainstream team athelete to embrace an alternative religion), Muhammed Ali/Cassius Clay, and many more.
For social issues, I think Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and others influenced our world a lot more than Tupac did. Hell, even OJ (unwittingly) forced us to look inwards to problems within our own society on a much larger scale than did Pac.
These were only in the Current Century!! How many others did I not have room to mention here? How many others in history?

[Zeno]

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) and W.E.B Du Bois (1868-1963) come to mind immediately.

-Zeno

[IrishHand]

Since we're on the topic, and of course this means that everyone is englightened and openminded:

Who are the most influential white men of all time?

[John Cole]

Don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head

Note the general iambic thrust of the lines.

John

[Zeno]

Since it is implicit in the postings the infulential men I mentioned are Americans. Influential "Western White Men" of all time is a bit weighty. A simple list is probably not possible. But to those who started the Path of Western Ideas the list must begin with Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

-Zeno

[Ryan_21]

You can love him or hate him but, Pacs movie drops today. It aint no documentary that went straight to dvd. Its on the main stream big screen, produced by MTV.

This is gonna be the biggest movie of all time about rap, and about rap's biggest superstar. Pac is the biggest legend of hip hop of all time. What other rapper has his own big screen movie?

MTV stated that he is the top selling hip hop artist of all time w/ 35 million records sold, almost doubling the second top seller the Beastie Boys w/ 21 million albums sold. 3rd is Eminem w/ 20 million, 4th is Jay-z w/ 18 million, and 5th is Hammer w/ 16 million. And his official record sells dont even include his numerous bootlegs and mix tapes.

Since his 1996 murder Pac has had 7 official new ablums 3 of which where #1 albums on the billboards and six went multiplatnum. As MTV puts it, "7 years after his death he is still crushing the competition."

Ryan_21