THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 21, 1996 TAG: 9609210248
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DENISE WATSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 103 lines
Aquestrian Pruitt is 25 and it's been years since he ran with his crew, getting into fights, stealing ``petty'' stuff and getting suspended from high school.
Pruitt is married and into his family now, a Navy man who likes to chill in his Norfolk home with his Tupac Shakur compact-disc collection.
He was home last weekend when he saw the news flash that Shakur had died from gunshot injuries sustained from a drive-by shooting.
``I was shocked,'' Pruitt said. ``I like his music because I can relate to a lot of things he talked about. . . but he died the way he rapped about.''
And Pruitt, like many other South Hampton Roads fans and nonfans, hasn't stopped thinking about Shakur's death.
The 25-year-old Tupac Amaru Shakur lived on the edge, rapped about life there, and depicted it in movies. He impressed critics with his performance in 1992's ``Juice'' and then was shot five times in a 1994 robbery. He's faced several run-ins with the law, a sexual assault conviction and assault and battery charges, but completed two movies this year.
His latest release, ``All Eyez on Me,'' has sold more than 6 million copies since its spring release, 40,000 this past week alone.
His violent demise has sparked record sales - many local record stores sold out of Shakur stock within a day of his death - but it has also created a chilling discussion of ambivalence: many detest his lyrics of gangs, drugs and gunfire but know too well they're real and can't be denied.
The Nation of Islam has called a rap summit Sunday in New York to convene some of the music industry's biggest rap stars to discuss how to promote peace in the wake of the shooting.
Locally, many hope gangster wannabes will find a lesson in Shakur's death.
``I have a 16-year-old brother who runs the streets,'' said Crystina Harris of Norfolk.
``I hope it's a wake-up call, it's ridiculous for (Shakur) to have died so young. I hope young men realize there isn't anything in the streets. Tupac lived by the bullet and died by the bullet.''
Harris spoke as she checked an empty bin at DJ's Records and Tapes on Tidewater Drive in Norfolk, a bin which was filled with Shakur's music a week before.
``I did like his music,'' Harris said. ``I just didn't like his lifestyle.''
Shakur's repertoire mixed tracks of women being labeled ``whores'' with songs like, ``Dear Mama,'' where he sang to his mother:
``I reminisce on the stress I caused, it was Hell,
huggin' on my mama from my jail cell.''
He was brash and sexy, a square-jawed face that was easier on the eyes of some than the pony-tailed rappers on videos now.
``A lot of the music we sold Saturday was to women,'' said Graylan Walston, who works at The Wall music store at Military Circle Mall.
``A lot of females looked at him as a sex symbol, I think.''
His work was enticing and prophetic; MTV aired Shakur's video, ``I Ain't Mad,'' Wednesday night and it featured Shakur being shot and killed as he leaves a nightclub with a friend.
The video was completed about a month before his death.
Shakur rapped about ``thug'' life, gangs, revenge and graphic sex. But the son of a Black Panther could be revolutionary and rap about poverty, teen pregnancy, and his popular, ``Keep Your Head Up,'' became a mantra to urge the down-trodden to keep on keepin' on.
He was bold. Shakur was cremated the day after he died because he had told his family that he didn't want them to apologize for his life after he was gone, or entertain mourners at a funeral.
His appeal crossed racial and socio-economic realms.
``I had a lot of young white males and females who were the first to be on the line that night,'' said 103-JAMZ disc jockey, Al B. Sylk, who worked last weekend and announced of Shakur's death to his listeners. He then took requests and played an hour-long tribute of Shakur's music.
``I think Tupac was the Elvis of rap, to where whether you liked him or not, you had to respect him for his art form. It's the American way to love controversy. If there's no controversy, it's boring.
``He mastered that.''
Shawn Babb was another, like Pruitt, who could ``relate'' to Shakur but didn't live the thug life and doesn't condone it. In fact, both Nelson and Pruitt believe many juvenile delinquents need to see the light in Shakur's death.
Pruitt would like to see any future receipts from Shakur's music be donated to recreation centers, schools and programming for young kids.
But they can't escape his words.
``It's not really a surprise that he died the way that he did, he preached that method,'' said Babb, a 30-year-old paralegal.
``But the brother had mad talent. A lot of people could see what he was saying and with how he came across with it, urban kids could identify.
``In `Dear Mama,' his mama threw him out of the house because she couldn't do anything with him anymore, yet he continued to put money in her mailbox. A lot of things he told his mama are a lot of things a lot of kids would tell their mama.''
Moses Newsome, dean of the school of Social Work at Norfolk State University, said as much as they related to Shakur's life, he believes young people will draw something from his death.
``I think people who see Tupac as a role model might see that there is something to living and dying by the same thing,'' Newsome said.
``If we, families, educational institutions, churches, boys clubs, continue to show enough options, they'll see they don't have to go that way.
``Someone has to fill the void he had been filling.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
Tony Williams, manager of D.J.'s Records and Tapes in Norfolk,
displays the sign he made to mark the death of rapper Tupac Shakur.
Sales of the artist's music have increased in the week since his
death. by CNB