Quote (ALCATRAZ)

If we aren't going to discuss 2Pac in this thread then I simply won't respond. You wanna talk race relations? You know where to make the thread. Like I said before, I would be more than likely to son you in that thread as well.

if you try injecting subtle racism into each of your comments then i won't respond to you either. i'm waiting for abanks to respond now so i can actually have a decent intellectually charged conversation on this subject, not a racially charged argument where the goal is to win.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

If you did not participate than I would not call you a thug neither, but if you participated in thuggish acts, than by definition you are a thug. we can both agree that we do not know the true amount of thuggish acts that equates to a thug, that might be a matter of opinion, so bestowing the title of thug on someone may be a matter of opinion as well, no?

I think another reason why the views are so different is because you may see (please correct me if im wrong) "thug" as a negative word, where others, like myself do not see it as such. the word has the same definition but has a few additions. I dont automatically condemn a thug, because i think about the reasons why they do what they do. a lot of times they dont do it for the love of being "bad", but do it out of necessity and love for there family and its the only thing they can do at that point in time. also being a thug at one point in your life does not make you a thug for life to me, just because i would consider you a thug at one point in your life, doesn't mean id consider you one now.

Not a source of info but found this on urban dictionary for "thug":

i disagree. i think you need to make a regular basis of committing such acts. someone who goes to a store and steals something, or even robs the store, just one time in their life because they were pressured to do so is not a thug in my eyes. they were a thug in that instant because they were performing a thuggish act, just like i am a customer in the time that i am shopping, but since i haven't made a career of shopping, i am not a customer by definition until i am actively shopping and only for the length of the time i shop. someone can also cease to be a thug, like Rick Ross seems to have done, if they stop performing the acts of a ruffian as well.

yes, we can agree on this.

somewhat, but i think it's a bit of a more stringently defined term than "thuggish acts" is. i think that someone has to be involved in at least a fair amount of "thuggish acts" to be considered a thug.

thug is, by it's dictionary definition, a negative word. 2pac, along with many hip hop artists, completely flipped the word to mean something else, which is admirable, but it still didn't change the dictionary definition.

this is true, but i don't see such people as thugs as much, because they have more of noble reason for doing such things. the most hardcore thugs are the ones that just don't give a fuck.

yes, i agree. i stated this earlier in this comment as well, mainly because i had already seen that you had said it.

that was 2pac's definition.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

there's no need to be a dick

how so?

yes. that is exactly what i said.

again, i said this.

how? how in any way does that fit my definition?

what he did with Death Row was all a facade. his time with Death Row was tragic. he was turned from a revolutionary emcee that made himself into the most powerful force in hip hop by himself into a gigantic marketing ploy dressed up as a thug. he was influenced to do things that many would consider "thug-like" by Suge Knight in order to help sell records and when Pac finally came to and decided he was going to subtly leave Death Row, Suge Knight had him murdered.

first of all, i'm not fronting like i know Leila (who actually had Pac living at her house for much of his adolescence and was far more to him than just his manager) and the family. i don't know Mopreme on a personal level and never pretended to, but while with Leila at Mic Sessions in Baldwin Hills, we all spent Pac's b-day watching a pre-screening of Mutulu's "American Gangster" episode. if you believe i'm making this up then you must have a high opinion of my ability to create stories and so i thank you for that. also, i'm working with Assemblies In Motion (or AIM, the company that Leila works for and does her workshop through) in order to become a person who is certified to run Mic Sessions under Leila's name at youth centers, juvenile halls, etc., like she does and she has taken me to perform my poem "White Man" at high schools at which i performed alongside Pat's Justice and other somewhat well-known performers she has put out there. i'm not telling this to blow myself up, but to explain that i know people whose understanding of the man 2pac was is from personal experience, unlike the knowledge you have gained over the internet and through listening to his albums. on top of that, i was far more of a stan than you when i was in my teens, so much so that i owned every album he released, including several bootlegs and i did all the studying you obviously have done as well. i personally could care less at this point. Pac, while i admire him and enjoy his music, isn't even one of my favorite artists anymore. however, when people make claims about people that they don't even have knowledge about through people who knew that person and they try arguing against accounts given by those people, their arguments are unfounded.

secondly, once again, you ignored the fact that i said Pac flipped the meaning of the term. Pac was absolutely a thug, but only by the definition he gave to the word, which wasn't the actual definition. he only adopted the term because people were labeling him with it (Dan Quayle, for example).

so did a lot of revolutionaries. once again, there's a big difference between revolutionaries and thugs. 2pac was raised by a Black Panther and the founder of the Black Liberation Army. seriously, limiting what he did to actual thuggery in the sense that the word was originally used is what the white bigots that condemn hip hop and in the same breath, run the corporations that make all the money off of it do. he was a (albeit, often misguided) revolutionary.

once again, so did members of the Black Panthers. the difference is Pac wasn't just shooting to police out of malice. he did it to protect himself and other people.

PROOF???? (and no stan-made websites like this )

no, i could care less if he lived his raps. MF Grimm and Cage both lived their raps and i have no problem enjoying them. i am discrediting Pac's own words because, as i've stated NUMEROUS times, which you keep ignoring, he completely redefined the word "thug" so that he was one.

yes, it absolutely does matter why he did it. if i went around shooting people just to shoot them or because that's what my gang told me to do, without any reasoning whatsoever other than "just to get a rep" (which isn't the same as pretending to be a thug just to sell music), i would most definitely be a thug, but if i went and shot a cop because he just shot my friend who did nothing but make a political statement, or because i felt my life was in danger because of the cop, than that doesn't AT ALL make me a thug.

read above. so i was unaware of the police shooting situation... and? it doesn't change the fact that he did so not because he was being a hoodlum, but because he was fighting back.

so all thugs have to be high profile? i would actually think quite the contrary.

yes, i'm well aware of California Penal Codes and gun laws. my dad is an NRA member and i have friends with parents who are locked up for unlawful possession by a felon. it's not exactly something i can avoid knowing about. so what if he had a lot to lose? does it make him more of a thug for that reason? i have a football scholarship and a bachelor's degree at risk if i take the rap for something. i'd consider that a lot to lose. would i be a thug if i took the rap for one of my friends?

THUGS may follow the code of the streets, but so do a lot of people who came up in the streets and don't identify as thugs. if you live in the streets, you need to know the code to survive, whether you are trying to get the fuck out or simply stay in.

...and keeps switching the gangs he claims (of which there are none in Louisiana), got punked out of LA by Spider Loc, didn't know how to use a gun and shot himself in the chest, grew up rich and privileged, etc.

ok bro.

in 1992, when i was 5, Rodney King was beaten about 2 or 3 miles from my house.

all throughout the 90's, Los Angeles was the gang and crime capital of the United States. are we actually getting anywhere with this argument or are we just going to continue throwing around red herrings?

NO has been a war zone since long before the nineties and all of these people made it out of that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki....uisiana

i'd hardly call William Falkner and Stephen Ambrose "thugs".

what the fuck do you know about where i'm from???? i was fortunate enough to be raised in a specific part of an otherwise terrible neighborhood that was at least somewhat decent. many of the people i knew and was good friends with in elementary school, middle school and high school WERE thugs. i'm just outside of one of the cities in Los Angeles that has the fastest growing crime rate in the county. i didn't become an emcee and have an understanding of hip hop living in Richville USA, but i also acknowledge that i didn't live in the squalor that many of my friends did. this comparing of crime rates and such, however, is irrelevant. so i can't make a judgment on the actual meaning of the word thug because i'm not someone who has been given the label and is willing to accept it? alright, in that case, i'll say that to be a Satan worshiper means to have good moral grounding and to think logically and on those terms, accept being called one, even though i'm really an atheist.

again, while i am not a direct product of that environment, i was profoundly affected by it because it was all around me and i had to witness it every day as my friends slipped more and more into it. it's hardly out of my grasp.

wtf is with your blatant racism? i know plenty of white people that are thugs and proud to be called thugs as well. maybe you should do a little history and realize that "thug" didn't become a term of endearment until hip hop, especially 2pac, made it into one. it wasn't until west coast rap that the term was used as a term of endearment. before that it was purely an insult.

when did you provide evidence for either of these???? please provide evidence and, again, no stan-made videos/websites.

drug charges are hardly thuggish. drugs shouldn't even be illegal. that's for another topic though.

no, you've shown yourself to be too much of a tool to discuss this with you on a respectable level.

why would i be butt hurt? i just don't appreciate fake ass motherfuckers coming on to real hip hop sites claiming bullshit that i know to be false through sources that knew the man personally, on more of a personal level than anyone else in the world and then trying to glorify shit like being a thug by the dictionary definition, then claiming to actually know about hip hop. it's pathetic.

obviously you have an impediment when it comes to your comprehension skills as well. i have homosexual friends. i try to avoid gay jokes when i can (though admittedly, i slip quite a bit). that was in no way a gay joke, it was a stannery joke. i was calling you a stan.

no, it shows that i have no will to logically entertain your moronic posts any further, so i resort to witty insults instead.

that video just proved my point. thank you very much. now get de park out of my store! hab-a-nice-day! tank you! come again!

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

well looks like the Hughes Bros are saying this didn't happen this way

check this out, ironic title too

http://theurbandaily.com/news....them-up

The Hughes Brothers are denying the long standing rumor that Tupac beat them up. They are saying that they were jumped by a group of crips. Here’s what they said to Vibe magazine.

“The biggest misnomer is that me and Tupac got into any fight. It was me and 12 Crips that he got to jump me. He didn’t do shit,” Allen claims. “Tupac didn’t lay a hand on me. I had my hands on him. But there was not a physical fight between me and Tupac. It was a physical fight between me and 12 gangbangers. I believe they are called the Rolling 40s and they rolled me up pretty good.”

Allen adds: “Tupac was an artist. Tupac was not a gangbanger. Tupac could not fight to save his motherfucking life. I know that for a fact. He was an immensely gifted person and he was far, far, from a thug.” He lets out a deep sigh. “I think that’s just years of frustration that just came out.“

That's cool and all, but did you ever stop to think that maybe, possibly, the Hughes brothers are lying to cover up the fact that they got their ass beat? You gotta realize man, this article that you posted came out in the year 2009. If they REALLY felt that way about Pac, why wait so long to call him out, you know, with him being dead and all?

(fast forward to 3:23 for Tupac's account of the incident)

But to be fair, neither of us know. No one knows except for the people that were there. Both the Hughes brothers and 2Pac have their own account of the story. 2Pac called them bitchmade while they were both living. The Hughes brothers claimed Pac wasn't a thug AFTER he passed away. So really it all boils down to who you personally believe. I believe 2Pac. If you want to believe the Hughes brothers, then that's also fine. That's fair.

If that’s the case why is it so hard to respect his wishes and refer to him as such?

Also note you said he was influenced to do things that were thug like. I’m sure there is no rite of passage for a thug. They don’t just wake up one day and decide to murder or slang rock. All “thugs” are influenced by someone, something, or some force. Suge knight may have been the final person to push pac to that level of “thugdom” that we know him for today. Peace

I GOT BLISTERS ON THESE FINGERS!!!!!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who picked up on this.

Great point. Looks like my work here is done.

If 2pac is a thug cuz he came from the hood then I guess eazy e is a thug right? But was eazy-e makin tracks like tupac that was portraying a positive message? I admit, i haven't heard much from eazy-e besides his classic singles but he wasn't makin shit like the song "Changes" or "Ghetto Gospel"

I think that's what eboyd is trying to say. But again, who cares. 2pac was always callin himself a thug, it was just an image he portrayed. It's all about how the person takes it. With the height of popularity of gangsta rap at the time it's pretty likely that he was just callin himself a thug to sell records.

Back to the customer analogy. You are a customer when you are shopping, but most of the time you are not, right? So how is that different for someone who is acting as a thug in a certain situation? An act of thuggery, or even a few acts, don't define you as a thug. Simple as that. A fight doesn't define a person as violent.

I never said it wasn't possible. What I said was it was likely a facade to sell records.

You continue to misconstrue what we said. We never said to forget the word's meaning (I didn't anyways). What I said was that the natural process of linguistic amelioration (or semantic change) is slowly taking place, making the word "nigger" less powerful. Not once did I imply that the actual meaning of the word had suddenly changed because of hip hop. What I was saying that society should do is recognize the process that is taking place and recognize that it is a good thing, not bad (as long as people are educated to the history behind the term). The word is effectively losing power. The same can happen with the word thug, or any other word for that matter, but it isn't happening currently, or at least not to the point that the N word is. Besides, in order for this thread to be reminiscent of the other thread but reversed I'd have to be against the linguistic amelioration process of the word thug, which I'm not. I'd be fine with it changing definitions.

I'll definitely have to do my own research on this.

You're really misunderstanding me. I acknowledge him as a thug in the definition he gave to himself, but by the real definition, I do not feel he fits.

Read the next comment I made. I discussed how I was wrong for assuming that and I apologized.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0