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quadrantmusic · 4 years ago

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Tupac Essay

I wrote this essay in 2009 my Freshman year of college. It is on my old computer. I don't have a charger for my old computer. It is one of those old chargers. I will have to hopefully get one at some point. I wrote other stuff on that computer. That computer also has thousands of tape recorded rhymes on it. But I need the old kind of computer charger

I wrote this when I played basketball at UCSD so I was nervous and I could always rap well and write well when nervous I don’t know why but it always put me ina different state that was good. But they hurt me so I haven’t been able to play on a team and get nervous.

2PAC rapped what was the most meaningful, that came in the form of revelations from the heart, and thus his words and emotion function universally. PAC recycles a currency that builds upon itself and is also manipulated, constantly leveraging and expanding beyond itself. Pac, however, also is aware of the limitations of not only rap, but any art form in its mimetic necessity tied to human creation.

2PAC’s lyrics are crafted with the beat, with the timing, in a meaningful sequence in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the removal of any aspect would devastate the creation. The brush strokes are not hidden. His masterpiece “Can’t C Me” embraces that it is man made. The rap begins with a man taking a breath to introduce PAC, humanizing himself and reinforcing its quality as a human creation. His early raps are not commercialized, modified, and distant in assimilatory fashion to be conveniently fitted into popular culture. His raps are alive, never resigning, moving every direction except closed, and still reverberating with the same intensity in its completion.

At the same time rap is a form of constrained writing. It mostly adheres to a general approximate time structure cut into 16 bar segments confined by a general conformity to rhyme that can be manipulated to convince a simultaneous expression of freedom. 2Pacs raps are not limited to benign belligerence and booty bouncing. In 2PAC’s reference and obsession to extremes in human behavior, he also points beyond them. This is a function of the use of rational, interpersonal compulsion against transcendent, melodic, yet unsettling harmonies. Pac’s music awakens, or opens the eyes of the viewer to the harsh realities of the world, yet simultaneously, through its creativity and expression, refuses the listener to resign to these.

The title “Can’t C Me” leaves out “you”. PAC is not merely saying that he is a figment of nothing to the listener, but he actually is no thing. Consequently he cannot be seen and if he is no thing, he cannot see the listener as well. C is the shape of a circle opened. He has escaped pidgeon-holing circumscription. Also C represents average. Functioning as a verb, he is saying he cannot be made average. It is also the third letter of the alphabet. Three reflects the west side sign with two fingers connected in the middle. On the album cover he points these to his forehead. Possibly three symbolizes a transcendence beyond duality (referencing his two fingers intertwined), metaphorically third eye vision. He says can’t as opposed to cannot. This is a sign of condescension and his sense of power over those who cannot see him.

By not using “see” PAC is alluding to something beyond vision associated with appearances. He is describing that, while he can be seen in the flesh, his true self exists in a dimension beyond the reducing effects of vision. In other words, PAC understands that he exists beyond the confines of his physical body. He proclaims “If you feel me, tell the tricks that shot me that they missed they ain’t kill me”. In so doing he confronts the listener with a paradox that defies his understanding of the self. The people or person who shot him hit his physical flesh, but did not hit “Him”. Again, PAC plays with the notion that he exists in a different dimension in sound, and accordingly cannot be felt in the literal sense. But going along with the notion that “he” exists beyond the physical, he is amorphous and can be felt. He could be stipulating that our essences do not exist in our separate bodies but in our transcendent connections and awareness that we are integrated in patterns beyond rational resolution. He extends “feel” to reflect that he is everywhere and amorphous.

The irony of living in a culture that degrades and disparages you is that it brings you to release consideration of your self, which is liberating. 2PAC’s raps are composed of a currency that he circulates. This currency is transparent, yet simultaneously mysterious. 2PAC’s currency, while mired to rational dichotomies of the world, attempted to transcend it in overall formal dynamic interplay. In so doing he let’s go of preoccupation of ego and content, for as a currency it is not directly connected with him but a rotation of expressions built from a sentiment. He does not try to inflate his ego, and ironically degrades himself. Paradoxically this empowers him and infuses his music with transcendence. He has nothing to lose, and as a result, gains everything. He emphasizes violence (possibly to compensate for the fact that it is often ignored), yet at the same time instills a sentiment that there is a zone that transcends the irreconcilable opposites of our consciousness transposed into the world. Thus his music moves on the intersection of scandalous violation and eternal grace.

Slang permeates 2PAC’s raps, and is due to the realization that language, like art, is limited in that it is tied to human creation and thus cannot express the Truth behind the sentiment to speak or produce artwork. Slang can be adopted due to the underlying spiritual aspiration to express without preoccupation with impressing. Nigger is appropriated by PAC, as are other derogatory terms imposed on oppressed “groups”, to take away the pain and seriousness of the word imposed on them and to build themselves up to take verbal abuse. PAC transforms “nigger” into an amorphous boomerang. Slaves developed their own subtle forms of communication so as to communicate without being found out. Slang can undermine the English language that ‘blacks’ adopted from the ‘white man’. 2PAC’s slang was original and was used before it was repackaged and assimilated into culture. Only those on his plane, with his vocabulary and dialogue could understand the content of what he is saying. People get so caught up in his controversial lyrics and cursing that they do not see the subversive undertone and message. But the magnificence of his music is that it is not confined to content. The C also looks like an eclipse before it is realized. Eclipses are symbolic of darkness, or the dissolution of appearances. Those with receptivity to the complexities yet transcendent simplicity of 2PAC’s consciousness could understand that 2PAC is trying to bring about “2PAColypse”, or the death of dichotomy, when blackness takes over the light.

The title “Can’t see me” and the name of the album “All Eyez on Me” plays on the notion that music plays in a dimension that can simultaneously be anywhere and nowhere, shrinking space and time, yet the artist remains out of sight. The title of the song reflects the nature of good rap. Good rap is a formless art composed of transparent, ephemeral forms. 2PAC doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, or show you what you want to see. The significance of rap as a form of art is that it, if good is never a closed system. The listener cannot get stuck on one thing for too long as it is constantly flowing and hitting him with new lines and patterns and tones. Yet paradoxically his raps are presented with and pervaded by an order, pattern, and structure that allow memorization. He who cannot appreciate the underlying significance of the formal elements of 2PAC’s raps would immediately tune out. This memorization does not just consist in spoken word but rhythm and tone. Thus his raps can inculcate a message and sentiment beyond the immediately apparent.

PAC understands that the ghetto is the product of exploitation and manipulation by the status quo. PAC says “witness what hell made”. PAC associates “whites” with devils. He is throwing in the face what the silent majority finds convenient to overlook. Ironically, now the world has no choice, and the chaos and anarchy is coming back around. PAC describes “Visions of cops and sirens”. Visions occur when one wakes up from a daze, and often come in spurts that are fought off. The tide is turning as the upper tier of the status quo is amerced in its self-made disorder that it can no longer contain. By alluding to guns and sirens PAC is suggesting that witnessing is more than just seeing. Guns and sirens can be heard too and with a more frightening effect. PAC subtly calls “whites” “nigger”. He exclaims, “Ask me why I’m a boss player getting high, and niggers wonder why they can’t see me”. He poses this as a rhetorical question. Ironcially, he is saying, the group in power created “him”, the “boss player getting high” and can’t except it. The term boss subverts dominant notions. PAC extends the words high and by, which could also be hi and bye, playing on words in rhythmic juxtaposition. The listener could picture him (not see; there is a difference) in a fancy car. If that person is rich and white it could trigger envy; envy could also be emoted from a poor black person. Either way, PAC is claiming his space and letting his presence known. I propose that he encourages the listener to give into that envy, possibly so he could eventually find that pursuit of riches due to competition is ultimately empty and thus become open to the possibility of losing consideration of his “self” as well. PAC extends and accentuates dieeee as well, suggesting he will never die. He is the one with the power.

The deafening, ringing sound in the middle evokes a sense of slowly devolving and descending, as if Pac has finally caught you and is taking you into a pit deeper and deeper into the darkness. At the same time playfulness undergirds the song, compensating PAC’s serious tone and manipulating the listener to follow. It seems at any moment PAC is going to jump out of the speaker and say “boo”. PAC commands “Visualize what you can’t see”. What cannot be seen is the unknown, and entering the unknown always entails fear. A sense of power permeates the song. The listener is in 2PAC’s realm; he is in control.

One could say that within PAC’s music is a Marxist undertone and sense of power. Nevertheless, PAC adheres, and in fact, seems deeply mired to the dualistic consciousness used to enslave black people in the first place. But 2PAC also realizes that black people cannot be trusted. In fact, he proclaims “it’s me against the world”. He makes references to the white man, and the devil in other songs, but never adheres to a groupish white v. black mentality. He understands that there are complexities underlying black/white dichotomies. He even goes so far as to say “I can’t trust myself”.

Race is a social construction, not based on biology, manufactured by the group in power in order to entrench power into itself. A key component to the perpetuation of race-consciousness is to satisfy the ego’s desire to feel superior. This desire to be superior underlies all other categories as well. PAC is noted for his beef with East Coast rapper Biggie. The East West Coast feud was a domination struggle and part and parcel with domination struggles is oppressive structures under new produced encapsulations. When not introduced to a broader awareness, discontent due to oppressive structures can be driven within the categorized oppressed groups into encapsulated forms of internal strife such as racism, sexism, and geographical bias. 2PAC in his music becomes an actor in the existence of these categories, and he emphasizes their existence so overtly that he almost satirizes them. The passion with which he adheres to binaries is so intense that it points beyond them and himself to a yearning to transcend them. This I argue is the effect 2PAC wishes to produce. Everything in the universe puts itself first so it can become strong enough to break out of its protective enclosure. While people interpreted the West Side as being a beef reflecting geography, it in fact represented PAC’s desire to be a part of something larger than his “self”. Biggie was PAC’s effigy, representing an aspect of himself that he hated and was delivered from in death. By the end of PAC’s life his music reflects a transcendent awareness that a dimension exists beyond categorization and hierarchy. I believe that PAC’s life and death, whether staged or not, represents an art form of deliverance from dualistic thinking as represented in Biggie and PAC’s deaths.

In his glorified “Thug Life” Pac inculcates a principle to live by, a force to rally under, and an instrument for revolution, instilling fear in the upper tier and trust in a force of alliance and a super ordinate goal in the lower. In short he breathes a spirit of resistance essential for the healthy emergence of a new social order.

The rap induces in the listener a multidimensional sensory overload. Encouraged to see, feel, listen, and manipulated through a variety of emotions ranging from amusement to fear, he is almost brought to a state of numbness. The rap finishes with the distorted words of women saying “you can’t see me” and abruptly ends. The silence at the end is accentuated by the intensity preceding it. 2PAC trusts that there is a space beyond the dissonance and a silence that transcends silence. 2PAC in a sense attempts to dance the listener to a standstill.

It is human nature to dilute what is not readily understood into manageable chunks. The background voice in the rap warns the listener to, “stay off his dick”. There is a temptation to reduce transcendent qualities in PAC’s music, consequently diluting the experience. The form of his rap speaks to the subconscious, permeating the steal cage of content preoccupation sustained by constructed frameworks of thinking and understanding. Rap puts words into continuum and words that do not necessarily need to have a schematic connection. Yet it is often still within a structure of sense, pattern, and meter, keeping it within touch of the listener, while its constant flow simultaneously eludes him. It can be used to echo a rhythm and lyricism of a certain time and place or capture a consciousness. Nonetheless recorded speech entails concern with an ego, which is a primary limitation of rap. PAC avoided this by working with a currency that was developed from the spirit of his age with an awareness of the timeless.

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