2Pac

If 2Pac’s legend has become a tall tale, his music remains an indelible testament to the multitudes he contained. He was born Lesane Parish Crooks in 1971, but his mother (a Black Panther leader) swiftly changed his name to Tupac Amaru Shakur in honor of the last Incan emperor to perish while resisting Spanish rule. For much of his career, 2Pac embodied this revolutionary, fight-the-power ethos, befitting the Afrocentric, conscious-minded milieu of the early ’90s. But there was also the funkadelic player (“I Get Around”), the insular loner (“Me Against the World”), the savage warlord (“Hit ’Em Up”), and the sensitive poet (“Brenda’s Got a Baby”). And as Death Row Records’ strain of gangsta rap defined the middle years of the decade, he became the label’s avatar. Crucially, he also became one of the most popular faces of hip-hip throughout the ’90s—peaking with his 1996 opus All Eyez on Me before his death later that year. Despite being born in Harlem, 2Pac came to strongly represent West Coast rap—and its violent rivalry with the East Coast rap scene—after relocating to the Bay Area as a teenager. But ultimately, he incorporated influences from both coasts, not to mention the South, to create a universal message that explains why murals of him can be found all the way to Sub-Saharan Africa.