Until The End Of Time is the fourth of Tupac’s albums that reached #1 in the Billboard charts. 1995’s Me Against the World and 1996’s All Evez On Me hit the top of the charts while he was still alive. Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory reached #1 a couple of months after his death. His two other posthumous R U Still Down? (Remember Me), released in 1997 and Still I Rise, in 1999, peaked at #2 and #7 respectively.
Combined, the three albums released after he was shot dead in Las Vegas sold nearly 7 million copies. Compare this with the 9 million copies his four albums sold while he was alive.
The Rose That Grew From Concrete, a spoken-word collection of Tupac’s poetry was the only album released after his death that didn’t meet the commercial expectations as the others. Released last year, it included readings from Mos Def, Dead Prez, and others.
The 20 songs in Until The End Of Time deal with the time period from 1995, when he was released from prison, to September 1996, when he was shot and killed. In the same week, a play entitled, “Up Against The Wind” continues to show at the New York Theatre Workshop. The Tupac-inspired play has been called, “a rhapsody imagined from the life of Tupac Shakur,” and much like his latest album, centers on events ranging from his arrest on sexual abuse charges to his murder.
The media portrayed Tupac as a malicious thug, heavy on the pot-smoking, middle fingers, and the swears. Michael Winn, who wrote this play for his Juilliard School drama class, included this gangta persona in “Up Against The Wind” but not without taking into account the obstacles that made Tupac who he was. Such obstacles included his mother’s crack addiction and the brutal life on the streets.
“I wanted to write a play not to excuse or glorify what he did,” said Winn, “but to explain what his life was like and society’s part in creating this person.”
The play closes April 20.
Go To Page: 1
