While listening to an old Tupac song today, I realized how it related to this blog. Today I will post the music video of Keep Ya Head Up by Tupac. Below the video you will find some lyrics. In the song he addresses the mistreatment of women, especially in the ghettos of the United States.
The first verse relates most to the purpose of this blog. Some of the lyrics follow:
I give a holler to my sisters on welfare
Tupac cares, and don’t nobody else care
And uhh, I know they like to beat ya down a lot
When you come around the block brothas clown a lot
But please don’t cry, dry your eyes, never let up
Forgive but don’t forget, girl keep your head up
And when he tells you you ain’t nuttin don’t believe him
And if he can’t learn to love you you should leave him
Cause sista you don’t need him
And I ain’t tryin to gas ya up, I just call em how I see em
You know it makes me unhappy (what’s that)
When brothas make babies, and leave a young mother to be a pappy
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it’s time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can’t make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you’re fed up ladies, but keep your head up
Tupac also has a verse in a song referred to as Keep Ya Head Up II. In this song he tries to put himself in the shows of a female rape victim. The lyrics:
Now here’s a story bout a woman with dreams
So picture perfect at thirteen, an ebony queen
Beneath the surface it was more than just a crooked smile
Nobody knew about her secret so it took a while
I could see a tear fall slow down her black cheek
Sheddin quiet tears in the back seat; so when she asked me,
“What would you do if it was you?”Couldn’t answer such a horrible pain to live through
I tried to trade places in the tragedy
I couldn’t picture three crazed ni**az grabbin me
For just a moment I was trapped in the pain, Lord come and take me
Four ni**az violated, they chased and they raped me
Even though it wasn’t me, I could feel the grief
Thinkin with your brains blown that would make the pain go
No! You got to find a way to survive
cause they win when your soul dies
What do you think?
Considered by many as the greatest rapper ever, Tupac Shakur was an American artist renowned for his music, movie roles, poetry, and social activism. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes him as the best selling hip=hop artist, with over seventy-five million albums sold. He was murdered in 1996 at the age of 25.
