Chaz Kangas' Youtube Youterin Younicorn - Young Tupac and old 2Pac Conversate About Women

One of Walt Whitman's most famous quotes was "I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." It's become a quote so famous that it's widely wrongly attributed to Oscar Wilde. Such misappropriation is a great way to look at the legacy of Tupac Shakur. Yesterday marks 15 years since I saw that crawl at the bottom of the screen one friday night during an episode of MTV's "Singled Out" announcing his death, and it's become something of Hip-Hop's "Where were you?" moment. Tupac's place in pop culture in the years since has seen him called everything from a philosopher and a messiah to a martyr and a Jewel-caliber poet. He's a figure who means a lot of things to a lot of people and, sadly, the loudest of these voice seem to just be interested in yelling until their college thesis gets published to prove them right. That's exactly why I love today's clip as it's Tupac posthumously proving he's a person.

Don't get me wrong, I consider myself a Tupac fan. While I'm of the sect who prefers 2Pacalypse Now and Strictly 4 My era Tupac, I think people tend to overlook his actual work in favor of what his face on a t-shirt meant to society as a whole. Not unlike Guru of Gangstarr (or Ronald Reagan) before him, Tupac could take an incredibly complicated situation or emotion and convey it over a beat to generate genuine empathy out of a listener. It wasn't just the pain of Brenda Got a Baby, it was the joy of I Get Around as his charisma was more than enough to set the mood and really connect with one of the most diverse audiences on the planet. He was an artist who made music, not to be a catalyst for social enlightenment, but because it sounded good. As today's clip proves, chasing Tupac as a paragon of virtue or worshiping him as a moral compass is something of a dead end street. Actually listening to his body of work is a much more satisfying, and ultimately more rewarding, way to appreciate one of the greats.