ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, September 16, 1996             TAG: 9609160050
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-3  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: NEWS OBIT 
SOURCE: JON PARELES THE NEW YORK TIMES

RAPPER WHO SANG, LIVED VIOLENCE DEAD AT 25

TUPAC SHAKUR, having a history and play list rife with violence and introspection, died Friday of gunshot wounds he received last Saturday.

Tupac Shakur, a rapper and actor who built a career on controversy, died of wounds Friday night from a drive-by shooting last Saturday. He was 25.

He had been in critical condition at University Medical Center in Las Vegas since Saturday. That night, as he was leaving the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon prizefight, a Cadillac pulled up alongside the BMW in which he was riding and he was shot four times. His right lung was removed Sunday.

Shakur was a complex and sometimes contradictory figure, with a career featuring million-selling albums, gunshot wounds and run-ins with police. He was an intelligent, vivid writer who had studied acting at the High School of Performing Arts in Baltimore; he was an accomplished rapper with a husky baritone and crisp enunciation.

In some raps, Shakur glamorized the life of the ``player,'' a high-living, macho gangster flaunting ill-gotten gains. But in many others, sometimes on the same albums, he portrayed the gangster life as a desperate, self-destructive existence of fear and sudden death.

He described gangsterism as a vicious cycle, a grimly inevitable response to racism, ghetto poverty and police brutality; ``All we know is violence,'' he declared in ``Trapped.''

In an interview with Vibe magazine this year, he said children should be told that ``because I'm talking about it doesn't mean that it's OK.'' But he also reveled in his notoriety, particularly after he was released from jail.

With many raps about killing policemen (usually in self-defense), Shakur offered prime examples for groups that wanted to clean up rap lyrics; he also considered himself a target of police harassment.

Shakur was born in New York City, the son of Afeni Shakur, a member of the Black Panthers who was in jail on bombing charges while she was pregnant with him; she was acquitted. He grew up in the Bronx, then moved with his mother to Baltimore, where he studied acting at the High School of the Performing Arts.

There, after a friend was shot while playing with guns, he wrote his first rap, about gun control, and began performing it. He dropped out of high school (although he later earned a general equivalency diploma) and moved to northern California.

He returned to performing, and auditioned for Shock G of the group Digital Underground. He was hired for the road crew and eventually performed and recorded with Digital Underground. In 1991, he started a solo recording career with the album ``2Pacalypse Now'' (Interscope), which sold half a million copies. It included two modest hits, ``Trapped'' and ``Brenda's Got a Baby,'' a song about an unwed teen-age mother's plight.

In 1993, Shakur played the male lead in John Singleton's film ``Poetic Justice,'' opposite Janet Jackson, and released ``Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.,'' which sold a million copies, mixing tales of violence with positive messages about women and the responsibility of fatherhood.

In November 1993, Shakur was indicted on charges that he and some associates sodomized a 20-year-old woman in a Manhattan hotel suite. During the trial, he was shot twice as he entered a Manhattan recording studio and robbed of $40,000 worth of jewelry. He was sentenced to 11/2 to 41/2 years in prison for sexual assault.

His 1995 album, ``Me Against the World'' (Out Da Gutta/Interscope), apparently recorded before his prison term, was a more somber reflection on ghetto violence; it entered the Billboard album chart at No. 1, and sold 2 million copies.

Upon his release, Shakur immediately began recording songs for ``All Eyez on Me'' (Death Row/Interscope), which has sold 21/2 million copies since its release this year. It was the first double album in hip-hop, and it also reached No. 1. The cautionary tone was gone; on the album, Shakur flaunted his success, reveling in fame and wealth.

Shakur is survived by his mother.

LENGTH: Medium:   78 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. Tupac Shakur's latest album, "All Eyez on Me," 
          marked a return to the "gangsta" motif, which followed the more 
          somber "Me Against the World."