“Dear Mama” and the rest of Me Against the World was written and recorded at a tipping point. His stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and on the run for much of the ’80s-FBI agents would approach Tupac at school and hound him for information. A month later, Afeni gave birth to her son who, growing up in East Harlem, was surrounded by radicals: the Panthers, the Black Liberation Army Assata Shakur was a family friend. The Panthers were ultimately acquitted on all 156 counts in what was, at the time, the most expensive trial in the history of New York state. They were accused of plotting to bomb two police precincts and the Queens Board of Education office, and of planning to shoot the officers who would flee from one of the precincts after the explosion. It also had Pac’s first Top 10 hit, the towering “ Dear Mama,” where he raps about “hugging on my mama from a jail cell.” Few mothers could relate more than Afeni Shakur, who was one of 21 members of the Black Panther Party indicted by a New York grand jury in 1971. There are fever dreams of the golden age in New York City he mulls suicide and perches by windows with AKs. It’s a remarkable record, at turns tender and fatalistic. In March of ’95, Interscope released Pac’s third album, Me Against the World. But outside of prison, he was becoming a superstar.
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