Tupac Against the World

Tupac’s 1995 album requires us to consider how we respond when we feel the whole world is against us.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A young poet rising in cultural power withstands murder attempts. He responds by crying out to God through song, expressing his fear that the world is against him, and hoping that justice will befall his enemies. If this description brought to mind the biblical David, you’re not wrong. Following the killing of Goliath, David rose to prominence and even received favor with the King of Israel. This favor was short-lived, of course, and King Saul tried to off his biggest political threat (at least in his own eyes). David had no choice to flee, and in his exile, he wrote songs of fear, justice, and hope.

However, I’m not here to write about David and his 3,000-year-old songs. I’m here to talk about another troubled poet named Tupac Shakur and his 1995 album about fear, justice, and hope—Me Against the World. In November 1994, the rising West Coast rapper was shot five times (twice in the head) in New York City and left bleeding in a studio lobby. Following a miraculous recovery, Tupac released Me Against the World just four months later. Despite much of the album being recorded prior to the New York City shooting, its themes of fear, mortality, and Tupac’s responses to that fear remain prophetic and require us to consider how we respond when we feel the whole world is against us.

I can’t help but find parallels between Tupac’s expressions of fear and David’s Psalms. Pac rhymes on “It Ain’t Easy,” I can't sleep, n****s plottin' on me, kill me while I'm dreamin' / Wake up sweaty and screamin' / 'Cause I can hear them suckers schemin' / Probably paranoid, problem is them punks be fantasizin'.” Meanwhile, David writes, “I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes.” These paralleled fears are understandable considering the parallels in Pac and David’s stories. But what I want to draw attention to most is the similarities and differences in how each one responds to these fears.

Across the album, Tupac exhibits a wide range of responses to the fear of the world’s violence and injustices he had experienced. On “Dear Mama,” he finds strength in maternal love that overwhelms fear, rapping, “And when it seems that I'm hopeless / You say the words that can get me back in focus.” On “Old School,” Pac pays homage to his spiritual ancestors, the hip-hop legends who “paved the way” for him to have a successful career and filled his life with joy. On “It Ain’t Easy,” he escapes into “a shot of Hennessy” and a “nickel bag full of cess weed laced with hash” in order to feel “strong enough to face the madness.”

Among all of Pac’s responses to fear on the record, the most predominant (and most in conversation with David) are cries to God for help and bravado. Both of these are important to discuss, and as we’ll see, the second is more related to the first than it seems.

First, Pac fills many of his songs with prayer, like David, and appeals for God to bring strength and hope when both seem intangible. Faced with the deaths of his peers and feeling the imminence of his own, Pac prays on “So Many Tears,” “Can't take no more, I'm fallin' to the floor / Beggin' for the Lord to let me into Heaven's door.” Again, on “Lord Knows,” Pac wonders if forgiveness will be granted him despite his violent and suicidal thoughts. Each of these prayerful responses has parallels in the Psalms, but the fundamental difference we find in Tupac and David is the placement of ultimate trust.

For David, despite sharing his doubts and fears openly throughout the Psalms, he nearly always concludes with trust in God to exact justice on his foes. Tupac lacks David’s wholehearted trust, and thus depends on himself for deliverance. However, this shouldn’t be seen as an entire lack of faith, but instead spiritual immaturity—something I’m certainly guilty of. Where David returns again and again to the Lord for strength, Tupac bolsters himself with bravado.

(Side note: Bravado is not simply a show of arrogance and self-importance as is often argued by hip-hop’s critics. Instead, bravado is a coping mechanism used to fight fear and hold personal insecurity and anxiety at bay. I’m reminded of the Kanye West lyric “Me found bravery in my bravado.”)

In his bravado, Tupac issues violent and vengeful threats to his opponents, promising them on “If I Die 2Nite,” “When I get to poppin', n****s is droppin' then they done /
Calling the coroner, come collect the fucking corpse.” It’s easy to cringe at the violence Pac predicts here and throughout the record. However, I wonder if we similarly cringe at David’s calls for vengeance, where the only difference is that David calls on God to “sharpen his sword,” “break the teeth of the wicked,” and “dash them to pieces like pottery” instead of doing it himself. Both are terribly graphic displays emerging from the hope of self-preservation in the face of fear.

Fear is a hell of a motivator, and our reactions to it often have life-altering effects on us. Pieces of art like Me Against the World or the Psalms that exemplify different reactions are incredibly important as we too consider how we deal with our own fears on a daily basis. They’re never perfect, but they are human, and as such carry value for our own lives. I admit that my responses to fear have run the gamut in parallel to Pac, whether in thought or in deed. Some responses are more helpful than others, and as I continue to meditate on how to improve my response to fear and let go of my own self-preservation, I’ll continue to echo Tupac’s encouragement in the meantime: “Keep ya head up.”

Bonus Notes

Thank you so much for reading Quarter Notes! If you aren’t already a full subscriber and want to read more thoughts about this record, I will be writing a follow-up essay on Me Against the World and its influence on Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. next week for subscribers only.

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