Back in the Day My Life and Times With Tupac Shakur

His Name Is What?! "You can't stop me! / Not even your bad breath / You can't stop me! / 'Cuz my rhyme's so def / You can't stop me! / Not even when I'm calm / You couldn't stop me with a motherfuckin' nuclear bomb / You can't stop me!" These lyrics still echo in my mind, evoking visions of Tupac rapping in the hallways of the Baltimore School for the Arts with startling conviction. This is where I first met Tupac back in 1986. My best friend at the school and fellow visual artist, Gerard, told me of this new kid who was entering as a sophomore who was supposed to be a rapper. When he told me the kid's name was Tupac, I was like, "His name is what!?" He simply laughed and shook his head, confirming that I had heard him correctly. Gerard was familiar with the new kid's reputation as a rapper from his friends at Roland Park Middle, where he had graduated one year before Tupac's arrival in 1984. And his bus to and from the School for the Arts passed Roland Park on its way, so he had seen the new student several times wearing a T-shirt with mc new york written on it, rapping among his friends. A lot of guys were rapping at the time, so I wasn't overly impressed. But there was obviously something about this kid that had caught Gerard's attention. The thought of a new rapper entering our ranks, particularly one whose reputation had preceded him, definitely sparked our curiosity, and probably our teenage insecurities. In our first two years at the school, Gerard and I, along with a number of other Black students (primarily guys), had dedicated a lot of time and effort to rapping. We were all driven young artists whose primary passions were for the talents that had won our admittance into the school. But as young Black inner-city boys in the mid-nineteen-eighties, we were drawn to rap, and the rapidly developing hip-hop culture in general. In the neighborhoods at the time, all of the boys and girls were listening to rap music. Although it was still underground in Baltimore, rap was almost the only music we were listening to. And many of us at the School for the Arts, already endowed with a definite artistic flair and creative disposition, were trying our hand at this popular new art form. We regularly tested each other's lyrical ability in informal contests held mostly outside the school building on the sidewalks of Cathedral Street and Madison Avenue, the two thoroughfares bordering the school located on the corner of their intersection in downtown Baltimore. Admittedly, these contests were born from regular joke-cracking sessions, and maintained a lot of that feeling, focusing more on humor and insult than delivery, melody, and composition: the real measures of rap. Students with personal vendettas used this forum to attack each other as personally as they could. Anything and everything was fair game. And whoever succeeded in embarrassing the other more was the victor. But steadily, all of the jokesters were brushed aside and the rappers took center stage. It was through the course of these impromptu sessions, known as "The Dozens," that we established an informal hierarchy among the rappers. And with this hierarchy we were beginning the new year precisely where we had left off the previous spring. I was anxiously awaiting the opportunity to assert myself anew and gain new ground. I had written some new rhymes over the summer and was ready. I suspected the same of a few peers but I knew I would catch others sleepin'. The most popular rapper was still Zorian, another name that always struck me as funny and odd. Zorian was a short, stocky, dark-complected stage production student with thick eyeglasses who always tried to hang with the brothers in the break-dancing crew. But he didn'Bastfield, Darrin Keith is the author of 'Back in the Day My Life and Times With Tupac Shakur', published 2002 under ISBN 9780345447753 and ISBN 0345447751.