How Tupac Shakur’s fierce ex-Black Panther mom inspired his greatest hit
nypost.comHulu — two of Tupac Shakur’s cousins recount, in chilling detail, how they first heard the titular classic.They were hanging in an Atlanta hotel room with the late rap icon on Halloween 1993, just after Shakur shot two white off-duty cops.
Law enforcement was standing by in the hallway.“But Tupac — he’s calm,” Billy Lesane said, recalling his weed-smoking cousin before his arrest. “He was, like, in a peaceful trance, but I can hear the cops outside the door.
Suddenly he says, ‘Yo, wait a minute, I want everybody to hear my new song!’”The charges against Shakur were dropped — the cousins maintain that one of the officers pulled a gun on Shakur first, after he confronted them about harassing a black man — and “Dear Mama,” a touching tribute to the hip-hop legend’s mother, Afeni Shakur, went on to become his first Top 10 hit in 1995.
And in 2010 — 14 years after his 1996 murder, at age 25 — the Spinners-sampling ode was inducted as only the third rap song in the Library of Congress Recording Registry.It’s a true testament to the impact that Shakur’s mother had on her son, with whom she was pregnant while in prison as a senior member of the Black Panther Party.Arrested as one of the Panther 21, put on trial after being accused of planning coordinated attacks in New York City in 1969, Afeni, with no legal training, represented herself in court, and did so fiercely.
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