ART/CULTURE BLOG 

          On August 8th, 2022 I visited the Wake Me Up When I’m Free exhibit. It was an experience that included sound, his handwritten works throughout his life, the plans he had for a cafe, studio, merch, logos and so much more. It literally took you through the mental development of who Tupac was as an artist but most importantly what kind of man he was as well. 

 

          The exhibit begins with a white room that has Makeveli on the wall, a rose, a bullet, and an Untitled Poem by Tupac that starts “Please Wake Me Up When I’m Free” and a couple of logos that he had created and branded. Once you walk into the intro room, you are given a headset where you get to listen to the intro sounds of the video. It is Tupac talking about his music and the reason he did everything that he did. Explaining the root of his pain and passion for his people. The bloodline he comes from and the reason he fights and puts his soul and pain into the words he writes and speaks. He talks about how the “ghetto” has been a muse for arts, theatre, music, movies, and entertainment for those who have never lived or experienced life. It was his reasoning and his why. We then walk into a room that shows Afeni Shukar’s notebooks that she wrote in while in jail. Where her mind was and how she always had the liberation of her people on her mind even while facing NYPD trying to take her and the black panther party down. She was also pregnant with Tupac at this time, it gave us insight into what her emotional state was like while pregnant with him. 

You get to see how much of his childhood, the writer his mother was, and the material he read and studied as a child impacted the activist, rapper, and writer he was until his death. He learned how to get rid of fingerprints with peanut butter whenever the Black Panther Party had a meeting at his home. We got to see the drawings, and pictures he drew as a kid to show you just how intelligent he was. The television and music videos shaped his life. You see all the poems that he wrote as a child. It was amazing to see the developing mind and just how progressive he truly was. 

 

          I think my favorite part was seeing the notes his mother would leave him to get him to clean his room. She talked about the importance of having a clean space for himself and not for her. In the next room, we were able to see all the plans and ideas Tupac wrote down for everything from his albums, all the way to restaurants and movie ideas that he had. He wrote down the concept of all the albums that he released. He was defiantly an analog man. Cause he wrote it all down and would keep rewriting ideas until they were perfected. Just notebooks and pages full of ideas, poems, lyrics, album concepts, and more. He had so many ideas and wrote them down, filling up so many pages, for a writer like me that gave me so much motivation. 

 

          After that room that’s when we get to see the formation of Tupac’s career. His famous outfits. When was the chairman of The New African Panther Party. In 1989 he stated in an interview that “the goal of the party was to educate black youth between the ages of 13-25 on their history as a means of defense against the oppressor”. His movie career. They documented his time and fashion while with Digital Underground. You can just feel the revolutionary. 

 

          You can start to feel the shift in energy, as well as see the shift in Tupac’s life when he went to jail. On one end you see that jail changed him, but you can see him still writing, creating, and trying to keep a routine to keep his mind together while in jail. The case is famous for the speech he gave to the judge, stating “That he knew the judge couldn’t wait to lock him up and that it didn’t matter if he was guilty or not the judge was going to lock him up anyway”. 

 

            Then we see how we get Death-row Tupac. The lyrics were iconic but angry and in a different direction than when Tupac started in the game. You can tell survival, making money, and being the worst became the number one topics in his most popular songs. I also got to see his huge blowup and short-lived success. In his short 25 years of living Tupac produced so much music while alive that he was able to have 4 studio albums, 9 compilation albums, 590 music videos, 44 singles, 1 soundtrack album, 7 posthumous albums, 2 remix albums as well as verses that his estate allows certain artist have. After going through the studio, seeing some of the last memorable outfits that he wore in videos and award shows. The exhibit ends with rose petals seeming to fall from the sky and the last picture Tupac ever took. 

 

           To me, that was the most somber part of the whole exhibit someone with so much to give, gets around the wrong people/ energy and just like a rose that grew from a concert the wrong person will pull it out of the ground just to watch it die. If you missed out on this beautiful experience I really feel sad for you. I feel all musicians, all artists, all creatives should visit the exhibit so that you never forget your why. “Live for something or die for anything”.