Tupac Shakur is one of the biggest names in rap and hip-hop, even years after his death. He was someone whose loss affected millions of fans, and to this day he's considered to be one of the most influential R&B musicians ever. His art sought to expose racial and social inequality in American society, exploring themes of crime, poverty and injustice. Despite these introspective topics, however, he still managed to attain amazing commercial and critical success, selling around 75 million albums worldwide.
However, the rapper's life was not without its disputes. He was involved in famous feuds, exacerbated by the famous East/West Coast rap rivalry. He had already cheated death after being robbed and shot five times in the lobby of a recording studio in New York City, but his luck was soon to run out.
On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, and died six days later of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest at the University Medical Centre. Yet after his death, much like Elvis, many conspiracy theories soon appeared which claimed that Tupac actually faked his own death, and is alive and living in hiding somewhere secret even now.
The latest conspiracy theory comes courtesy of the YouTube channel Wired Up TV, which claims that a picture of a man taken after Tupac's death, is actually him in disguise. The video's narrator states: "Look closely at Tupac’s arms, you can see the outline of tattoos on his left arm. The reason you can’t see the tattoos clearly is because he’s covering them up when he goes outside, He’s not trying to be recognised, he’s not trying to be known. One thing people recognise about Tupac is his tattoos – his bandanna and his tattoos."
This isn't the first time we've examined Tupac conspiracy theories. Back in 2018, a man named Michael Nice who claimed to be a former bodyguard of the star, stated that he'd actually helped Tupac secretly fake his death, before smuggling him into Cuba.
Nice told TMZ: "Why you think nobody been arrested if they said they the one that killed Tupac? Because Tupac is not dead. If he was dead, they’d be arresting those dudes for murder. You know he’s somewhere smoking a Cuban cigar on an island. It was me, my brother, the pilot, Tupac as the co-pilot and two Panther guys on the jet."
He added: "We took off and immediately knew we were safe, we felt good and it was like escaping from prison. There were hugs and handshakes when we finally managed to get him to Barbados. Then my brother helped him get to Cuba from there. Kadafi was doing some kind of hand signals - he looked kind of funky. I saw them alive way after their said deaths."
Personally, I'm not convinced, but that's not going to stop the truthers from speculating I guess.
