Keep Ya Head Up-Tupac Shakur

Tupac’s famous “Keep Ya Head Up” was released in 1993 on the rapper’s second album. The song was written by Tupac and produced by DJ Daryl. Tupac dedicated the song “Keep Ya Head Up” to Salt’s (from Salt n Pepa) daughter Corin . The song is a call to change the way in which we value and degrade women, especially black women.

Tupac writes this song as a motivational message of hope. Tupac sees these women and their struggles and proclaims in his music, “2Pac cares if don’t nobody else care” making these women aware that their struggle matters to someone. Tupac uses his verses to question the ways in which violence against women has become unspeakable. One of the most powerful lines in the song that relays to this message is when Tupac raps, “And since we all came from a women/got our name from a woman/and our game from a woman (yeah, yeah)/I wonder why we take from our women/why we rape our women/do we hate our women?” In the verse Tupac argues that women literally give us life and we repay them by walking all over them and taking from them.

Tupac’s song isn’t just a message of hope, it’s a call to reform. Tupac touches on the experience of growing up in a marginalized neighborhood with a government that could care less. Tupac raps, “They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor.” During the creation of this album the Gulf War was taking place, and this was Tupac’s reflection on the poor allocation of funds from the government. Tupac is outraged that the government will spend more money killing other people than trying to save its own. Overall, this song is a masterpiece calling for hope in even the darkest of times.