I saw something the other day, and I’m curious to see if others have the same reaction to it that I did.
The liquor store across the street from my house has some new merchandise: a couple of t-shirts, nice & huge for that baggy gangsta’ look. The first shirt has sparkly gold print - very ghetto-fabulous - in a font that’s obviously intended to look very hardcore. Across the top of the shirt it says “Thug Life”, and has a large image of Tupac Shakur, giving his best hardcore menacing glare.
The other shirt is very similar - same humongous baggy size, same gangsta’ font - but instead of sparkly gold print, it has sparkly blue print. Instead of “Thug Life”, it says “Yes We Can!”, and instead of Tupac, it has Barack Obama, giving the thumbs-up.
Does anybody else think it’s a bit off to be equating these 2 people/messages? I mean, granted, these shirts don’t represent anything more than some knockoff shirt manufacturer’s attempt to make a buck, but still…one of these things is not like the other.
FWIW Tupac was kind of the intellectual of gangster rap. For example, he was a decent poet. The “Thug Life” on his chest meant “The hate u give little infants fucks everything.” He spoke to a generation of kids by reflecting the reality of the lives they lived- a reality that didn’t wasn’t at all acknowledged in other forums. We have to remember the ghetto was 10X worse back then and people were growing up in a virtual state of war, which pop culture just never mentioned at all. And of course, his death immortalized him and the irony of it is still poignent.
So while you and I might view him as nothing more than a violent degenerate, he kind of the Kurt Cobein (but more poltical) of his generation. Someone who really spoke to people, and yet was ultimately done in by his own temptations in the world he sang of.
Oh, I agree with you even sven - and my Zune has a good share of the Tupac library on it. I don’t view him as a violent degenerate by any means. But still, the two men and the two messages are so different, I found the equivalence quite odd. In particular, Tupac’s glass was very much half empty - his music focused so much on slapping the listener across the face with the negative realities of life, and that negativity eventually caught up with him and brought him down as a heartbreaking example of the reality of the stories he told. Obama, on the other hand, can barely get out a sentence without the word “hope”, and pushes a vision of a better world. The two messages spread by both of these men are so opposite of each other, it strikes me as a bit strange to see that someone had put the two side-by-side as equivalents.
There was some 80’s gangsta rap. Ice-T released “Six in the Morning” in 1986, N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton was released in 1988. KRS-One’s 1987 Criminal Minded was one of the first in the genre, Kool Moe Dee’s Wild Wild West was a little gangsta-ish.
Now if I get that long-desired tat of my own personal credo: “Top Hat, Umbrella, Galoshes: Livery Implausible For Elephants,” people will assume I’m editorializing on the importance of good parenting.
Update: The Obama shirts (apparently there were 3 of them) are SOLD OUT! My condolences to those planning a trip to my local liquor store to get these latest fashion items. I’m sure the Obama campaign is pleased with their support in the alcoholic community, and their stunning victory over Tupac.
