Was Tupac Shakur gay?
A legendary rapper left a puzzling trail
A video of a 17-year-old being interviewed in 1988 has been viral on social media the last few days. As it gets millions of views, many seem shocked.
They say things like, “My childhood has just been upended.”
It was not widely known, apparently, that the 1990s-era rap singer Tupac Shakur, known for a “thuggish” image, can read as very “gay.”
As people watch the video, I sift through the comments.
Many seem to realize for the first time that Tupac Shakur might not have been entirely the image he’d projected during his celebrated career.
“Tupac was just a theater kid,” one guy says.
Tupac was born in 1971 and grew up with a single mother.
The 2003 book Tupac: Resurrection, 1971–1996 includes some interviews that find him trying to explain why he had a vibe that read as ‘non-masculine’. It was because he was raised without a father, he said.
“My mother couldn’t show me where my manhood was. You need a man to teach you how to be a man.”
In a 1994 interview in Vibe magazine he reflected on his childhood:
‘‘All my cousins was like, ‘You too pretty.’ I didn’t have hard features. I don’t know, I just didn’t feel hard.’’’
I could cook, I could do clothes, I could sew, clean up the house. I could do all the things my mother could give me but she couldn’t give me nothing else.”
He added: “It made me bitter seeing all these other niggas with fathers gettin’ answers to questions that I have. Even now I still don’t get ’em.”
His life seems like a gay life.
Tupac’s ever-changing image can seem like a mirror of gay stylings of the time. From theater kid to thug, it was all rather typical.
In every phase, he carried a certain suggestion. The word that is often used of him is ‘fruity’.
One fan wrote on social media:
“Tupac was fruity as fuck. He was at least bi, but obviously you can’t go public with that at that time and with his stature lmao. He was a gentle soul who loved poetry, theater and ballet. Thug life was just a persona.”
As a teenage theater student he met Jada Pinkett.
They’d have a longtime platonic romance. Over the years she’s given a range of curious interviews about Tupac. In an official biography published last year, Jada recalls their meeting:
“We hit it off from that moment on. It was like a connection that we had and then the more we got to know each other of course, we realized what the connection was all about. We were lifelong friends.”
He wrote a song, “Jada,” about her. Or about a deep relationship with a woman that was not romantic.
“U r my heart in Human Form
A Friend I could never replace”
Tupac seemed to wander through a range of creative phases.
Some don’t look like ‘Tupac’ or ‘Pac’ at all.
Around 1992 he became the image of a tough, muscular male, i.e. a ‘thug’.
It would be his most indelible image to the public, and seems to have been based on a John Singleton movie, Juice, in which he starred. The character was written, and he just began to play it more intensely.
His songs became a kind of spiritual lament and voice for Black people, heavy with history and tragedy. His character, as he wrote it, seemed nearly Christ-like, moving toward his doom.
All along, he was a closet full of ‘queer’ signs.
From his unusual display of his body, ever flipping up his shirt to display his abs, to his signature bandana tied around his head, it all seemed whimsically provocative for a straight man—but typical for a gay man.
To study, now, his signature look of a bandana tied around his head, one asks: Was it evoking a Southern Black woman? Or Rosie the Riveter?—the World War II-era female character.
The blogger Taryn Snyder makes that case, and reads his image:
“Pac displays emotional tenderness and advocacy for femininity. He obviously isn’t a woman, however, he displays many aspects and emotions for himself that are often associated with femininity.”
His music could get gay.
He sampled the signature gay song of the era, Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” in his track “Words of Wisdom” from his debut album. He sampled Elton John on a later track, “Ghetto Gospel.”
His photo shoots got gay too, like that one in 1996 by David LaChapelle, which could be portraits of a gay hustler.
There’s been efforts to read Tupac as gay.
It’s not anything any ‘official’ biography would do. As a recent treatment of the theme goes:
“Instances like a cheek kiss with his friend and manager, Cade Hudson, in 2014, or dancing together in swimwear…fueled such conjectures. Additionally, his camaraderie with openly gay fashion designer Gianni Versace, as well as his penchant for vibrant and flamboyant attire, further sparked debate.”
Tupac supposedly dated Madonna awhile. I look at the photos, wondering.
His life became a haze of publicity.
Somehow in the mix he was accused of a sexual assault on a woman. I can’t for the life of me figure out the scene that sent him to prison.
I try out a 2015 reading that I notice on a fan messageboard that suspects Tupac of being gay, and analyzes his ‘rape’ scene:
“2pac also acted overly straight as if he was afraid of his true self being revealed. He was overly aggressive and overly tough on his exterior. Pac also had a rape and sexual assault charge, due to him not knowing how to act as an actual straight man. I see a man who was desperately trying to trigger his masculinity and taking it overboard.”
It leaves fans to wonder what was “real.”
Was he straight? Was he closeted?
I’m haunted by another possibility: he never was. 🔶
