by: Ellen C. Caldwell
for JSTOR Daily
The GRAMMY Museum’s exhibit All Eyez on Me: The Writings of Tupac Shakur (on display in Los Angeles until April 22, 2015) highlights the rapper’s life and artistic legacy 19 years after his death.
In cooperation with the Estate of Tupac Shakur, the exhibit features an array of memorabilia, ranging from clothing, to original tape boxes, to interview and concert footage, to handwritten notebooks filled with lyrics, poems, and plans for the future.
Tupac was and continues to be a complex cultural icon and artist. In an article published in 1999, Kara Keeling introduces the contradictory lens through which journalists and cultural historians have most often analyzed his life. She considers the duality of these two extremes — that of a violent, misogynistic sell-out and that of an iconic “1990’s-style revolutionary” martyr…
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