By Hillary Crosley Coker
In 1996, after news of Tupac’s murder broke, my mother and 15-year-old me got into an argument on the way home from school. I was heartbroken and furious. As an adult who’d heard mostly negative things about this guy, she responded, to paraphrase, “It’s not that serious.” I vividly remember losing it, shouting about why he was important, how wrong she was, and her putting me out of the car, forcing me to walk the last few (safe, suburban) blocks home.
I’m 42 now, and even though 27 years have passed, losing Tupac still burns. But recently, my mother apologized for not taking my teenage grief seriously, and she doesn’t apologize often — God bless the Boomers. Chalk it up to the Hulu/FX documentary series Dear Mama, which does a fantastic job of telling the life stories of Tupac and his mother, Afeni Shakur. I cried watching it. My mother didn’t know who Tupac was and what he meant to my generation, but now, after watching Dear Mama, she does.
Directed by Allen Hughes, Dear Mama captures Tupac’s upbringing and influences by focusing on his extraordinary mother, Afeni, a member of the Black Panther Party who battled charges of conspiracy while pregnant with him.
After she freed herself and her Black Panther co-defendants by acting as their defense attorney – despite not being a lawyer – she still faced FBI harassment and poverty. The overwhelming stress ultimately led to a crack cocaine addiction.
This contextual gravity around why Afeni fell into drugs; why she struggled financially (struggles that were created and exacerbated by the FBI); and how she was betrayed and abandoned by the Panthers is illuminating. Tupac’s work and rage was informed by all of these experiences.
As a mother of two young Black children, I relate to Afeni’s struggle to “raise two (bad) kids on her own.” I arm myself with gentle parenting strategies and the lifelong knowledge that Black people are operating in an unfair society, peppered with racism, socio-economic inequality, homophobia, and sexism. It is amazing that Afeni successfully raised her son to be one of the most influential artists in the world, despite those headwinds and more.
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“The case of Tupac is unfortunate because he’s no longer here. His earthly story is over, so we’re left to wonder about what could have been,” says Dr. Fredara Hadley, an ethnomusicology professor in the Music History Department at the Juilliard School.
Hip-hop’s patron saint isn’t the only one whose life and legacy we’re reexamining as a culture. Just look at the slew of documentaries released over the last few years tackling 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s subjects like Wham!, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Sinéad O’Connor, The Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Kurt Cobain.
These documentaries make it clear that the media machines of years past were not always kind to our biggest stars. I see this even more now, as I look back through a mature lens; I’m more tender and ready to give people more grace. But why now? Is it me, or is it all of us? Has enough time passed that we finally have the kind of distance required for reflection?
If you ask Hadley, this seems par for the course of where we are as a society. “At our best, we’re far more compassionate than we were then,” she says. “It’s bittersweet because as an adult, I realize how [stars like] Tupac and Britney Spears deserved better from the world.”
Hadley also notes the power of music to build and maintain social bonds, particularly when we’re angsty teenagers.
“That’s when we’re searching for community and ‘our people.’ Partying and hanging out is often facilitated by music,” she explains. “We find ourselves with groups of friends with shared music tastes. Years later, when we reflect on our youth, music remains a strong reminder of those halcyon days.”
Documentaries are powerful. Through Dear Mama, my mother finally saw the handsome guy with a sparkling smile, iconic talent, and so much potential who lived his life for Black liberation. It was his talent and passion that grabbed me as a teen. Little did I know that his murder would mark the middle of a series of devastating celebrity deaths. Cobain overdosed in 1994, Tupac was killed in 1996, then Notorious B.I.G. was shot six months later. Nearly every year of my high school stint, someone died tragically. Now, hip-hop fans experience similar grief all too frequently.
Parasocial grief is real grief. I know I must give my kids the space to cry, rage, and scream when they see fit. But I also know that these documentaries serve as a cautionary tale about the perils of fame, a point also frequently brought up in Dear Mama.
“There’s something cannibalistic about the way we devour famous people we claim to love, so I’m not sure that will ever change,” Dr. Hadley says. “But it seems celebrities are getting better at navigating that by creating boundaries and engaging when and how they choose. I always thought Beyoncé watched and understood what happened to Michael Jackson and Britney Spears and prioritized her own space and privacy.”