Tupac Is In The Building

The late rapper's mother keeps his memory alive

When hundreds of fans take to the Internet and radio hot lines daily to swear they glimpsed you dancing in a nightclub or slipping out of a recording studio--five years after you were laid to rest--it's a sure sign something special is going on. So it goes with the firebrand rapper Tupac Shakur, whose celebrity has swelled into a mystique of near Elvis-like intensity since his death in a Las Vegas drive-by in 1996 at age 25. Shakur was an electrifying rapper whose flashes of gangsta bravado (like the petulant song Hit 'Em Up) were counterbalanced by a gentle sweetness (the...

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