The son of Black Panthers and a troubled soul throughout all of his 25 years, Tupac Shakur grew to be one of the most well-known and influential rappers to ever live. Though the variety of that influence is what really intrigues me. Tupac was possibly the most prolific Hip Hop artist of his time, but only a small fraction of that material really holds his unique voice. Going through his extensive catalog is to sift through a long procession of influences, roles and back-room business to try to find who this rapper really was as an artist.

Tupac's early work shows his creative roots in the genesis of alternative Hip Hop. He was a roadie and backup dancer for The Digital Underground, later to be featured on the group's hit single "Same Song". Tupac's solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now really just sounds like a darker version of Digital Underground. In other words, it's Tupac making the same sounds but having a lot less fun doing it.

Of course, Tupac was never really concerned with having fun on his albums. He was never a party rapper, he was the quintessential issues rapper. Tupac grew up around political struggle thanks to his radical parentage. From birth he was exposed to cycles of marginalization, crooked law enforcement and cultural conflict.

No rapper went to such great lengths to cultivate the criminal image as Tupac. The motivation behind this is unclear. Though he certainly accrued enough injuries and arrests to suffice for the street cred of several rappers, let alone one, Tupac invited the thug life into his own through art. The truth is that he was first and foremost a performer. He was a graduate of a performing arts high school with a background in music, poetry and several roles in Shakespearean plays.

It was this tendency toward acting, to putting on affectations, that makes finding the real Tupac so difficult. Prior to Me Against The World Tupac seems smothered in production tricks and effects. Me Against The World may be the only album on which Tupac was laying himself bare. The double album All Eyez On Me was little more than bail payment to Suge Knight for getting Tupac out of jail early on a dubious sexual assault charge. The lyrics on Eyez shift to more generic space, leaving behind the blunt bleakness of previous efforts.

After the first attempt on his life, Tupac became the poster boy for the ludicrous East Coast/ West Coast rap rivalry. Of all the badly thought-out publicity stunts in the history of the music business, the embrace and inflammation of that rivalry was probably the worst. It took recording artists and posited them as representatives of drug dealers and notoriously violent gangs. Kids in their early 20's were all of a sudden called the elder statesmen of a manufactured underground that invited real criminals to the party.

Alongside the tragedies of the needless deaths of those artists is the tragedy of their lost art. Tupac Shakur was a multi-talented performer with a busy schedule, but between his need to maintain the Gangsta image and his desire to escape it, there really wasn't much room left for the real man underneath. Just before his death, Tupac released The Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory, an artsy attempt at a reinvention under the moniker Makaveli. There's something absurd about such a high-profile performer trying to go by a different name all of a sudden. Regardless, we never got to see what kind of change, if any, the Makaveli idea would have made. Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996, most likely by a hit squad of Crips.

During his time at Death Row Records, Tupac recorded scads of material. Much of it was released after his death. I can't say I see much value in this work beyond the cash-in for his estate. In his entire career, Tupac Shakur recorded one album that was just him trying to do something new. The rest were baby steps away from his safe beginnings as a backup, quickly scribbled contract obligations, or high-concept excursions. There's no telling what Tupac might have been had he been given the chance to take complete creative control over his music and continue on his path as a promising screen actor. All we really have of this artist are his attempts to fit into the plans of others.