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\n Our flagship newsletter breaks down the biggest headlines of the day.\n <\/p>\nHardy gravitated toward Shakur when she was 19 living in Cincinnati, Ohio, and her cousin showed her Shakur\u2019s first solo album, \u201c2Pacalypse Now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Shakur\u2019s \u201cBrenda\u2019s Got a Baby\u201d resonated with Hardy because of the high rate of teen pregnancy at the time, she said. His song \u201cSoulja\u2019s Story\u201d inspired her to write hip-hop songs because it told a story of things she also saw growing up in Black communities, such as police and gun violence.<\/p>\n
When she saw on the news that he was shot, she called everyone she knew. Hardy then went to her friend\u2019s house and prayed, hoping Shakur would survive like he did when he was shot in a robbery in November 1994.<\/p>\n
She felt like a family member passed when she learned he died days later a hospital. He was 25.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe looked up to him as an icon and a revolutionary, and now we\u2019re looking up to him as a legend,\u201d Hardy said. <\/p>\n
Shakur inspired others in songwriting<\/p>\n
Din \u201cLil Therapy\u201d Malone took a bus from Denver, Colorado, to watch the trial in Las Vegas. <\/p>\n
Malone was introduced to Shakur when he was 13 years old watching Shakur in his breakout starring role as a troubled teen in the 1992 movie \u201cJuice.\u201d Then, he started listening to his music. <\/p>\n
\u201cTupac taught me how to translate my tears into words,\u201d said Malone, a songwriter and artist. Outside of an overflow room in the courthouse, Malone wore a Shakur shirt and played Shakur\u2019s music on his phone\u2019s speaker. <\/p>\n
Shakur wrote about his own hardships, and inspired Malone to do the same, putting into words experiences of being bullied as a kid or mourning family deaths, Malone said. He grew up in a Crips-run neighborhood in Denver and \u2014 like Shakur \u2014 learned how to \u201clive through the hood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shakur\u2019s song \u201cIt Ain\u2019t Easy\u201d spoke to Malone about the importance of persevering when life isn\u2019t easy. Even though he never met the rapper, he said he felt like he lost an older brother.<\/p>\n
Shakur\u2019s legacy continues<\/p>\n
Williams, a North Carolina resident, runs a Facebook fan page for Shakur called All Eyez on Pac that has over 25,000 followers. <\/p>\n
The 38-year-old has loved Shakur ever since she watched \u201cPoetic Justice,\u201d the 1993 movie starring Shakur as a postal worker and Janet Jackson as a grieving hairdresser. One of the first Shakur songs she heard was \u201cDear Mama,\u201d and she said she was touched by Shakur\u2019s deep love for his mother, Afeni Shakur.<\/p>\n
Over the years, Williams watched every video about Shakur and every interview of people who knew him, she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what made me create the page because I really truly have a love for Tupac,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
She saw Shakur as a sweet, kind-hearted person who was misunderstood. Shakur wasn\u2019t perfect. He was convicted of sexual assault and acquitted on more serious charges in a sex abuse case in 1994. He was sentenced to 18 months to over 4 years in prison, but served nearly eight months before he was released. But Shakur was human, Williams said. <\/p>\n
Some fans who sat in the courtroom during the trial still don\u2019t believe Shakur died, believing he faked his own death and is living in Cuba. <\/p>\n
Williams said she was in denial when she first saw Shakur\u2019s autopsy photos but sadly came around to realize he was gone<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would want to have justice,\u201d she said. \u201cHe would want to keep his name and legacy alive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 Shardae Williams woke up recently to someone blasting Tupac Shakur\u2019s \u201cShed So Many Tears,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1030558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[29],"tags":[2122,276,171,57,4222,22017,4221,38288,2184,975,617,11290,2068,3677,8007,31838,61,67,132,68,8572],"class_list":["post-1030557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-gun-violence","tag-hip-hop-and-rap","tag-homicide","tag-janet-jackson","tag-las-vegas","tag-music","tag-nevada","tag-nv-state-wire","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-shootings","tag-trials","tag-tupac-shakur","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-violence"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117177806175635850","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1030558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}