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Review Of 2Pac Tribute Album
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Mutulu Shakur
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By Paul Russell
2/15/2003 5:18:12 AM
Home > News
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Review Of 2Pac Tribute Album
Another in depth review of the new '2Pac' tribute album "Dare To Struggle" which is being put together by his step-father 'Mutulu Shakur'.
More than four years in the making, "Dare To Struggle", A Tribute To Tupac Amaru Shakur pulses with hip hop, poetry, spoken word and the political and personal voice of soldiers. It’s two CD disks take the listener to the streets and prison blocks that America strains to obscure from global eyes and ears. The battlefield is the war zone, USA.
From behind the walls of maximum techno prisons designed to break the will of established and prison schooled revolutionaries comes a CD destined to legendary grassroots acclaim. US Political Prisoners are heard, like former acupuncturist for the politically repressed of New York City, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Tupac’s father. Outlawz, Legacy, Counsel Black Sindikat, DVD, Divine Verbal Dialect, Uno The Prophet, Mopreme and various hip hop names contribute, alongside the sobering but boombastic Solitary Confinement Unit (SCU).
A thread throughout is Dr. Shakur’s love for his son, undiminished seven years after Tupac’s passing. And some voices, mostly prisoners born since the 1960's and ‘70s, have vowed to raise up from America’s dehumanization with a Thug Code, redeeming themselves through disciplined study and political action for African peoples freedom from US control. To the “shorties slangin rock” and to the world, they warn of the US state’s plan to reduce Africans to accepting a bloodsoaked “game” that too many believe they can steer to material riches.
Against An Uncaring World
Tupac was famous for a sensitive/thug rough style of expressing himself. Me Against The World. This dual CD addresses these dimensions that many youth in the housing projects and all the way to the suburbs could relate to, worldwide.
After the nectar sweet harmonies of Nzingha Shakur meld with the solid steel yet care guided Mutulu Shakur vocal, on Pac’s Song, there are nearly two hours of uncut resistance art. Stevie Wonder’s 'All I Do Is Think About You' riff, a butterfly in flight in Nzingha’s a capella singing, resounds. Dedicated to the young man and defining his contradictions, praise for Tupac’s authentic personality brushes away the hype.
Tupac Shakur (1971-1996), born in the midst of one of America’s greatest frauds, the Panther 21 Trial, became a symbol African peoples’ defense of humanity, and refusal to bow to racism.
FBI COINTELPRO (counterintelligence) and New York City BOSS (Bureau of Special Services) utilized African informants to attempt to destroy a major organization attacking fascism and international imperialism, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, formed in 1966. The identical catchword used in 2003, in “the world’s greatest democracy”, terrorism, was used in the early ‘70s. Despite high level FBI informants, including Gene Roberts, who infiltrated Malcolm X and colleagues in 1965, a long jail term ended the case in the court, and suddenly.  2Paczone.com
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