VIEW HOLLYWOOD

Rapper and actor Tupac Amaru Shakur had many run-ins with the law during his brief career. The son of Black Panther Party members, he is considered the best selling hip-hop artist ever, with over 75 million albums sold worldwide.  Police in New York City arrested Shakur on November 18, 1993 and took this mugshot, charging him with sexual abuse, sodomy and weapons charges. A Brooklyn woman with whom he had earlier sexual relations (both at a nightclub and later in his room) alleged that Shakur and members of his entourage gang-raped her at a New York luxury hotel.

While the sodomy and weapons charges were ultimately dropped, Shakur faced trial on the sexual assault charges in late 1994. On November 30, 1994, muggers robbed and shot Shakur five times in the lobby of a recording studio; one day later he was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to one and a half to four and a half years in prison. On February 14, 2005, Tupac Shakur began serving his sentence at the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in New York state. He ultimately spent eight months in prison. During that time, his album Me Against the World went to the top of the pop and R&B charts, making Shakur the first artist to have a number one record while incarcerated.
Shakur was murdered in 1996 in Las Vegas in a drive-by shooting. The murderer(s) have never been caught, and theories abound as to whether or not the killing was related to a reputed feud between Shakur and rappers Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs.

Leave a Reply