*With a home nestled in the Atlanta
suburb of Stone Mountain in Georgia, Afeni
Shakur has been keeping busy renovating
the nearby Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation’s
Peace Memorial Garden and Visitors Center,
a lasting celebration of her son that will go
along with annual activities planned around
his June 16 birthday.
“When Tupac died, the first year and
afterward, we thought the way to celebrate
him was to have concerts and events every
June in Georgia. And after we spent so much
money and only affected the people right there,
we decided we’d build a foundation and work
with young people on an ongoing basis,” said
Shakur, who plans to place a life-size sculpture
of Tupac at the garden’s entrance.
Each summer, the foundation hosts
a performing-arts camp for kids who hail from
troubled homes. The camp will be formally
reopened on June 10. Afeni, a former Black
Panther and a recovered drug addict, cites
her own rocky past when describing the
foundation’s main goal.
“When Tupac was 13 and I was homeless,”
she told MTV, “Tupac was in the 127th Street
Ensemble [theater group] in New York. Those
people, I believe, saved his life. So what we
try to do is be that for the next generation
of young people.”
Meanwhile, Afeni has announced that
the next album of unreleased material from
her slain son Tupac Shakur – to be released
in 2006 – will be the rapper’s last, according
to MTV. She also says there will be no more
singles released from his current posthumous
LP “Loyal to the Game.”
“We’ll do a spoken-word album this
year, and next year we’ll do the final unreleased
song album for Tupac,” she said.
Afeni is also working on a film detailing
Tupac’s childhood, as well as a traveling Broadway
play. Author Quentin Skinner has also written
a biography of the rapper, which will be
published later this year.
Afeni’s earlier struggles are reflected
in the video for Tupac’s current single “Ghetto
Gospel,” directed by Nzingha Stewart. The clip
follows a young man who dies, as his mother
mourns the loss and realizes that the destructive
pattern continues.
“This year, Tupac would’ve been 34 years
old,” she told the network. He died when he’d
just made 25. I perceive a crisis in young people
and I want to share my concern. The most
important thing for young people
is to stay alive.”
credit: rockrap.com
