by Lauren Victoria Burke,
NNPA Newswire contributor
Twenty-seven years after the death of one of the most noted rappers in history of the genre, a man has been arrested for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.
As the years have gone by some suspects have come into the news while others have passed away. But on September 29, a man named Duane Keith Davis was arrested in Las Vegas and charged in connection with the murder of Shakur.
The rapper and actor was killed on September 13, 1996 in Las Vegas, at the age of 25, after being shot four times. He died less than a week later at the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada. Since then, Shakur’s death has lingered on as a mystery that has never been brought to a conclusion.
Davis is a member of the California-based gang known as The South Side Compton Crips and was a childhood friend of N.W.A. member Eazy-E. During the early ’90s, Davis built a friendly relationship with Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. Rumors that someone would be charged in Shakur’s death have swirled for years with no arrests made.
Tupac’s life was short but marked by artistic achievement in music and acting. His family moved to Baltimore and he attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied acting, poetry, jazz, and ballet. In the late 1980s, Tupac moved to California, where he joined the hip-hop group Digital Underground as a backup dancer and rapper. He gained recognition for his skills and charisma on stage.
In addition to his storied music career, Shakur pursued acting and appeared in films such as Juice (1992), Poetic Justice (1993), Above the Rim (1994), and Gridlock’d (1997). He received praise for his acting talent.
Tupac Shakur was born in East Harlem to Afeni Shakur, a former Black Panther, and Billy Garland. He was given the name Lesane Parish Crooks at birth but later changed it to Tupac Amaru Shakur after he was inspired by the 18th-century Peruvian revolutionary Túpac Amaru II.
(Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the publisher of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears regularly on #RolandMartinUnfiltered. She can be contacted at <LBurke007@gmail.com> and on twitter at @LVBurke.)
