Tupac and Loneliness

Tupac. No single name in hip hop is likely to provoke as many different reactions. A rabid fiend intent on stirring up conflict with his East Coast rival. A thoughtful mouthpiece for issues related to black alienation and categoritization. A brilliant rapper who inspired a movement of fellow “thugs.” A lost soul whose end came far more tragically and abruptly than anyone could have imagined.

I will not pretend to “set the record” straight on which one of these descriptions is the “right” one. There is a certain degree of truth to all of them. Rather, I will draw attention to one part of Tupac’s identity that is often overlooked: his loneliness. At the core of much of Tupac’s music is a gnawing, soul-sapping sense of being alone. No where is this more evident than in one of Tupac’s masterpieces, “Only God Can Judge Me,” from disc one of the double album All Eyes on Me.

In the first verse of “Only God,” Tupac describes alienation in all its variations. First, Pac is alienated from his friends: “I couldn't trust my own homies just a bunch a dirty rats.” Next, from his own senses: “And in my mind I'm a blind man doing time.” Later, from his past: “Look to my future 'cause my past, is all behind me.”

In the second verse, Tupac’s lonesomeness crosses into paranoia, as he poignantly describes the world of medicine turning against him. And in perhaps the songs most memorable line, Pac simply finds himself all alone: “I'm walking through the cemetery talking to the [pause] dirt.” So much sadness, so much loneliness, so much pain built up inside – it is enough to make Pac plead, “Oh my Lord, tell me what I'm living for.”

There are certainly other notable portions of “Only God.” Pac’s honesty with his audience is remarkable, and he displays the courage to challenge conventional wisdom: “And they say it's the white man I should fear / But, it's my own kind doing all the killing here.” He also demonstrates fundamental ambivalence over who he is and how he is perceived: “Guess you figure you know me ’cause I'm a Thug.”

But, above all, “Only God Can Judge Me” is a stunningly brilliant expression of a crushing human reality. In life, we are individual specks of dust, floating in the wind. In death, we end up as cemetery dirt – the same dirt Tupac describes. Perhaps in the end, Pac concludes, only God can judge us.