Tupac Was Overrated. Sorry.

Controversy: A magazine has published a list of "Overrated" things! Is their analysis correct? They certainly hope you will argue about it a lot! Blender's list of the most overrated things in music ends with a typically "provocative" #1: Deceased rapper Tupac. Former Gawker columnist Tionna Smalls has already started an online protest campaign! Problem, though: Tupac is the most overrated thing to hit music since the synthesizer craze. It's the mythology that did you in, Pac:

• He was a mediocre rapper. His reputation far exceeds his actual skills. He was way worse than Biggie Smalls. He was even worse than MC Eiht, you West Coast partisans.
• He was a fantastic hypocrite. Dear Mama, respect women, blah blah blah. Then, on the other hand, fuck the world! Some people have enough artistic skill to pull this off as the mere wrestling of the angels and demons that live within us all. Tupac didn't, so he just sounded like he was lying.
• He was a thug by choice. Thug Life, yea, rah rah. Tupac went to art school. He was a born actor. He started out as a happy-go-lucky backup dancer for Digital "Humpty Dance" Underground. He certainly ended up as a thug, but it's not like it was his destiny.
• The whole Tupac fetish thing. This is really the problem with Tupac. He got murdered as a young man with a lot of selling power left in him. That caused people with an interest in his career to pimp out his legacy to an insane extent in search of sales. Tupac, like many of us, was a fucked up guy. But he was no great artist, and he was no great role model.

  You know what his legacy has been, ultimately? White kids shouting "Thug Life!" out of their SUV windows. Which is what has led to the slow decline of hip hop music in general. Which was the most important new form of music America has seen in the last 30 years. Tupac was okay. The mythology of Tupac is ridiculous. And the aftermath of Tupac has done more to hurt the music he loved than MC Hammer ever did. Many other people in music have sucked more than Tupac; but nobody else in recent memory has had such a detrimental legacy.

Bring back Rammellzee!

[Blender]

Send an email to Hamilton Nolan, the author of this post, at Hamilton@gawker.com.

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