This Thug’s Life: An Unapologetically Black Story

Shakur, stepbrother of rapper Tupac Shakur, paints vivid portraits of his family and hip-hop culture in his raucous debut. The author recaps a boyhood spent between North Carolina, Harlem, and Queens, where he fell in love with rap in the 1970s, and his later exploits rapping and producing with Tupac’s Thug Life group. Opening sections celebrate Shakur’s father, Mutulu, a charismatic founder of the Republic of New Afrika organization, before the narrative zooms in on Shakur’s time with Thug Life in the 1990s. What follows is an entertaining picaresque featuring starstruck fans, celebrity cameos from Snoop Dogg to Madonna, and violent feuds (“There were several 9-millimeters onstage, including mine,” Shakur recalls of an Atlanta show). Later chapters depict a darker Tupac after he was shot in New York and convicted of sexual abuse; the stepbrothers drifted apart after Tupac “disciplined” Shakur by forcing him to fight members of his entourage. It adds up to a rich, clear-eyed study of a rapper’s life interspersed with uncompromising assertions of the author’s values (“In what world do the cops not care about a dying child?” he wonders when NYPD patrolmen ignore his report of a Black kid getting hit by a bus). Readers will be rapt. Agent: Jon Michael Darga, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)