[Lifestyle] 'It proved the US's biggest gangsta rapper could be vulnerable': How Tupac wrote the ultimate anthem for single mothers

[TheWild ™]

 

The iconic 90s hip-hop artist was known for his pained intensity. But Dear Mama, a tribute to his mother Afeni, showed off his softer side – and still brings listeners to tears.

"Not everyone is so lucky and gets to experience the love of a mother for a long time," explains DJ Master Tee, whose words are staggered due to deep emotion, before he starts to cry down the phone. 

"A lot of people's mothers died way too early… and I think Tupac Shakur understood that well," the producer continues. "He didn't just want to make a song that celebrated the mothers who are here, but also the ones that passed away."

DJ Master Tee made the original silky-smooth beat (which was later adapted by co-producer Tony Pizarro) for Dear Mama, the late rap legend Tupac's candid tribute to the many sacrifices of his single mother Afeni Shakur. She was an activist in the radical political group The Black Panthers, who subsequently struggled with drug addiction and to make ends meet while raising her two children.

This song is the pained yet ultimately joyful epicentre of Tupac's otherwise death-obsessed third studio album, Me Against the World, which was released 30 years ago this month. In the context of an album where Tupac shifts from suicidal (So Many Tears) to grief-stricken (Lord Knows), repeatedly using the word "hopeless", Dear Mama feels like uncovering a diamond at the bottom of a pitch-black mine.

"Even as a crack phene, momma / You always were a black queen, momma," he famously rapped.

This lyric alone represented a radical shift in rap storytelling in the way it represented victims of the so-called Crack Era, when use of the drug soared across the US during the 1980s and 90s.

Previously, rap artists had stripped away the humanity of crack addicts via slurs such as "basehead" and "zombie". But, Tee says, Tupac saw addicts "as victims of the state, who needed our support". And although Tupac expresses sadness over a childhood with little money – where he and his sister Sekyiwa observed the matriarch of their family descend into the hell of addiction – he leads with empathy for Afeni Shakur's struggle.

He chants out all his words with a bear-hug warmth, confirming that he never stopped seeing Afeni as a superhero. In celebrating her, Tupac serves to pay respect to the struggle of single mothers everywhere, as well as mothers full stop – a sentiment the whole world can appreciate. This is reflected in the numbers, with the song racking up over 345 million streams on Spotify alone. Indeed, Dear Mama remains one of the rapper's most celebrated tracks: in 2009, it became the first song by a solo rapper to be inducted into the US Library of Congress's National Recording Registry, awarded for its profound cultural significance.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250318-how-tupac-wrote-the-ultimate-anthem-for-single-mothers