Every year on this day especially, I find myself explaining to people how Tupac Shakur influenced my life. It seems odd to most people that a person, obviously worlds apart from my path in this world, could mean so much to me. So I’ve decided rather than write a poem, only to have people think I took it from another person, I would write it in this way.
My goal in this life is simple. I want to leave this world a better place than it was when I was brought into it. At this point in my life, I don’t know as to the degree of influence I will have, but I do know that each and everyday that is my goal. Tupac was a man who had this same goal in mind. I am not a gangster, a rapper, a musician, an actor, a politician, a music mogul, a revolutionary, or a Panther, like the people he connected with in his day-to-day life, yet somehow I connected with him through his words without ever meeting him.
I don’t know exactly when I heard Tupac’s music for the first time. I have always listened to an extremely wide variety of music all of my life…