T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E.: Tupac Shakur as a Symbol of Black Rebellion for the "Pac Babies" of Black Lives Matter! 1

• Published in: The Howard journal of communications 2024-10, Vol.35 (5), p.553-570
• Main Author: Clay, Charity
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Birth order; Black Lives Matter movement; BlackLivesMatter; Body modification; Civil rights movements; Death & dying; Hip hop culture; HipHop; Infants; Police brutality; Police community relations; Shakur, Tupac; Social media; social movement; Social networks; tupac; Worldview; Youth
• ISSN: 1064-6175; 1096-4649
• DOI: 10.1080/10646175.2024.2360967

The late Bay Area Hip Hop legend Shock G stated that Tupac Shakur "rhymed from this pit of his stomach," asserting that Tupac's greatness was in the potency and relevance of his message more than the technical skill of his lyricism. Tattooed across the stomach that Tupac rhymed from was the acronym "T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E." Tupac proclaimed that it stood for "The Hate You Gave Little Infants, Fucks Everyone," a statement that reflected his worldview and echoed sentiments of those like Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin and Huey P. Newton who viewed youth as the centerpiece of the struggle for Black Liberation. Though Tupac was murdered in 1996, his lyrics and interviews resurfaced in the aftermath of the police killing of Oscar Grant in 2009 and introduced a generation born after his death to his thug persona and T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. ideology as relavent, and accessible symbols of Black Rebellion. This article explores how Pac Babies, Black youth born after Tupac's death, have adopted his Persona and Ideology to inform their entry into the Post Racial, social media era of the Black Freedom Struggle. I offer that, by providing T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. as an alternative to the politics of respectability of the Civil Rights Movement and being resurrected as mythical super hero battling police violence, Tupac influenced both the street protests and social media engagement during the protest phase of "Black Lives Matter!".