Tupac Shakur

Kris Kross' Totally Krossed Out Was My Very First Hip-Hop Tape

Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly, one half-of the '90s hip-hop duo Kriss Kross, died of a possible drug overdose in Atlanta yesterday. Kriss Kross, you may remember, was the duo responsible for 1992 crossover rap hit "Jump" (not to be confused with House of Pain's "Jump Around"), and for briefly popularizing ... More >>

Baby Alligator Found Possibly Guarding Marijuana Stash in Bay Area Home

There's nothing we enjoy more than a good drug bust, especially if it involves alligators and other marijuana-loving reptiles. For the second time this year, police in the Bay Area came across agitated reptiles that were apparently in charge of guarding drugs. We read the latest story on CBS Ne ... More >>

How Will You Commemorate the Death of Mr. Teeth, the Tupac-Loving Caiman?

As you pour out your 40s upon hearing the news of the death of Mr. Teeth, the Tupac-loving, marijuana-guarding Caiman, consider this: How will you cope with his passing? As we reported yesterday, 32-year-old Assif Mayar acquired Mr. Teeth initially to commemorate the death of Tupac (does the logic ... More >>

East Bay Man Relies on Tupac-Loving Alligator to Guard His Marijuana Stash

Alameda County Sheriff's deputies say they arrested a Castro Valley man earlier this week after they discovered two alarming things: 1. 34 pounds of marijuana, and 2. a five-foot long alligator guarding the stash. Curious sheriff deputies dropped by 32-year-old Assif Mayar on Mount Jasper Dr. aroun ... More >>

Pop Goes the Culture

Sizzle & Fizzle: Highs and Lows from the Last Week in S.F. Music

Live Review, 6/16/12: Digital Underground and Surprise Guests Celebrate Tupac at Yoshi's

Digital Underground June 16, 2012 Yoshi's Better than: Watching reruns of Juice on TV. Oakland's own Digital Underground is the group that gave a young Tupac Shakur his first significant start in the music business. But if not for the Black Panther Party, there probably wouldn't have been a Shakur ... More >>

Digital Underground: Show Preview

Celebrate Tupac's Birthday This Week With Digital Underground, Spice 1, Other Collaborators

Tupac Shakur would have turned 41 this June 16, and the occasion will be commemorated with two birthday celebrations in San Francisco featuring a number of his former colleagues and friends. Shakur was part of L.A.'s Death Row Records when he was killed, which helped cement his image of being a par ... More >>

Hood Internet: Show Preview

Before Hip-Hop Squares: Eight Links Between Rap Music and TV Game Shows

A game show that people have ever cared about -- even a little bit -- can go down, but it will never truly be out. Know the Dick Clark version of Pyramid that started in the 1970s and continued throughout the decade? No? Well, you've probably encountered the Bill Cullen version (also from the '70s), ... More >>

Sizzle & Fizzle: Highs and Lows from the Last Week in S.F. Music

The Tupac Hologram Is Terrifying and Distasteful. Let's Stop This Madness Now.

On Sunday, April 15, 2012, the world officially entered science fiction-land. Sure, iPods are pretty futuristic, GPS is spy magic from space, and we all have stupidly intelligent phones now, but nothing has felt quite as much like living in a Buck Rogers episode than when Tupac got resurrected in ho ... More >>

Comparing M.I.A.'s Super Bowl Middle Finger to Music's Greatest Bird-Flippers

Juvenile, numbskulled, pointless, banal, outrageous -- M.I.A. flipping the bird at this year's Super Bowl halftime show might have been all or none of those things, depending on whom you ask, but it was one thing above all: A surefire plot to join the ranks of the middle-finger-flashing musical elit ... More >>

Sizzle & Fizzle: Highs and lows from the last week in S.F. music

Mark Wahlberg Compares Justin Bieber to Tupac: World Cries

Yes. You did read the headline correctly: Mark Wahlberg just compared Justin Bieber to Tupac Shakur. Since you -- like us -- probably can't quite believe that just happened, here's the actual (ridiculous) quote:"The world needs Justin Bieber," Wahlberg opined. "Justin Bieber is like the white Tupa ... More >>

Saturday Night: Bone Thugs-n-Harmony Turn Yoshi's Into the Bone Thugs Club

Tamara PalmerBone Thugs-n-Harmony at Yoshi's.​Bone Thugs-n-Harmony March 12, 2011 @ Yoshi's S.F.Better than: Partying with tuneless gangsters. Yes, Thugs is part of this Ohio-born, multi-platinum selling group's name, but make no mistake: This is one of the most emotional acts in rap mu ... More >>

Remembering Biggie, Who Died 14 Years Ago Today

Happier times for the whole country​Christopher Wallace, better known to posterity as the Notorious B.I.G., died fourteen years ago today in Los Angeles. (Obligatory S.F. cameo: a few days before, he did a radio interview here on WiLD 107 where he said he'd hired a security detail because he feare ... More >>

The Tupac Shakur Biopic: Why You Should Be Skeptical

Not ready for the big screen yet?​After having a spat over legal rights with Afeni Shakur, Tupac Shakur's mom, Morgan Creek Productions has received her blessing to make a biopic about the slain N.Y./D.C./Bay Area rapper. And considering the exciting/troubled/contradictory life story of Tupac, the ... More >>

How To Understand Rap (the Book!)

Rapping paper -- by rappingpaper.co.uk​Just what does 50 Cent mean when he raps "I done come up and I ain't changed" in "In Da Club"? What is Eminem talking about when he says he's "on a search to crush up a milkbone?" And to what is 2Pac referring with the term "paper"? We can help.

What's With All The Misspelled Names in Hip-Hop?: An Examination

Chali 2na​So Chali 2na's coming to Yoshi's tonight. Dude may be the most likeable member of Jurassic 5, with his booming voice and salaam-to-that-ass demeanor, but he's also the one whose name mounts the most nihilistic assault on orthographic sensibility (distant second: Mark 7even). Not that th ... More >>

Summer Reading: 10 Key Bay Area Music Books

​A summer reading list should be about more than Steven King and Jackie Collins. The Bay Area's growing canon of local music history books takes many twists and turns beyond straight-up non-fiction narratives, including even poetry and cookbooks. Not only is this collection of titles a wide-rangin ... More >>

Shock G 'Fesses Up About Humpty Hump

Digital Underground in 1989​Rap ruses get no better than Humpty Hump. The alter-ego of Digital Underground's leader Shock G, Humpty's mythology has him wearing a fabulously-personalized Groucho Marx-style nose to cover up horrific facial scars incurred during a (fictional) accident with a deep-fat ... More >>

Richie Rich's Top 5 Collabs: Rick James, Snoop Dogg, 2Pac, E-40, Too $hort

​Richie Rich's credentials as a Bay Area rap pioneer are surpassed by perhaps only Too $hort. When Rich hit the scene back in the late-'80s as a member of the Oakland-based quintet 415, they scored big with the regional classic "41Fivin." Since then, he's journeyed a career arc that's taken in a s ... More >>

Will Lil Wayne's Stardom Survive Lockup? Look To 10 Other Jailed Rappers

RJ Shaughnessy​Lil Wayne, perhaps the most commercially successful and critically-lauded rapper of the past few years, was recently granted a reprieve from his date with destiny. Due to be sentenced on February 9th after pleading guilty to gun possession, the proceedings have been delayed until Ma ... More >>

Listomania: Top Hip-Hop Picks For 2009

While year-end, catch-all wrap-ups are common to every musical genre, in no other style of music do they turn into the hand-wringing, "state of the game" examinations that hip-hop seems to provoke. (I've certainly written a few.) We worry because we care, of course. But at some point, like a thirty- ... More >>

Do the Humpty Dance, Score a Free Beer

Impersonate the original big-nosed rapper, get sloshed.​Eater SF reports on a pretty funky freebie in its "Dealfeed": Head on over to Showdogs (1020 Market at 6th) today, perform the "Humpty Dance" (as imagined by legendary Oakland rap group Digital Underground), and you will score a beer on the h ... More >>

Be His Valentine

Tupac's Birthday Today

Everyone's favorite thug angel, Tupac Amaru Shakur, would have been 38 today. Born in 1971 to a Black Panther mother, 'Pac came to symbolize the voice of his generation like no one except maybe Jim Morrison, another societal rebel who became a pop culture phenomenon. (Interestingly, neither 'Pac no ... More >>

Ten Known (and Little-Known) Facts About Tupac

Thug Immortal: Tupac Shakur 10. Pac was born June 16, 1971 in East Harlem, NYC. He also lived in Baltimore, Marin City, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. 9. The name Tupac Amaru is a reference to the last indigenous Inca ruler of Peru, who died in 1572. Amaru's name was later adopted by Tupac A ... More >>

'90s Night Tonight at Madrone Lounge

'90s Style Icons: the TeletubbiesAre the '90s back already? If so, is it too soon? After all, we can think of several dubious trends from that decade - grunge 'uniforms' (flannel shirts and scruffy faces), sugar-coated teenie pop (think Britney Spears, 98 Degrees, 'N Sync, Backstreet Boys), s ... More >>

Tupac's Mama Sues Hollywood Production Company

Boy in da Corner: TupacYesterday, the Hollywood Reporter announced the latest development in the ongoing fight over the rights to a major motion picture biography of the late Tupac Shakur: Amaru Entertainment and Shakur's mom Afeni Shakur are suing Morgan Hill entertainment for what basically amount ... More >>

Biggie, Small

Notorious B.I.G., made B.L.A.N.D.

Tupac’s 1995 Jaguar Up for Auction on eBay

Digital Underground Announces Final Show, Hangs Up Groucho Nose and Glasses For Good

Tupac's Fam to Broke Death Row: Get Off My Nuts!

Ladies Love Cool Clifford -- Hip-Hop Pinup for the Naughties!

Moky's Life 101

Moky Huynh, self-help jackhammer, is inspiring, abrasive, and one of a kind

Some of My Best Friends Are Records

SF Weekly writers pick their favorite Bay Area records of all time

A New Dawn, a New Bay

A fresh, vital hip hop scene is shaping up in the Bay Area, and MC Balance is leading the charge

BeatBox

Diplo teaches dancefloors new Hollertron-icks; the EndUp turns 31; rapper Nas makes a rare live appearance

No Joke

Shock-G, the MC who told us to "do the Humpty Hump," is back, and this time he's brought his sensitive side

2003: Year of the Wonka Record

For the year's 10 best records, go somewhere else. For the year's 10 best "Wonka Records," you've come to the right place.

Holy Shit

Rapper, actor, deity: the life and times of Tupac Shakur

House of Tudor

A rap-war documentary, the old new wave, and Gypsy-fied French noir

Slap Shots

Samples

Recordings

Signed, Sealed and Misdelivered

The Rise and Fall of Bay Area Bands

Samples