The Birth of a Negro King (Happy Birthday Tupac

Today we hand over yodemo to author Fredericko Dukofelli to talk to us about Tupac as a Christ. Forgive us for going all out, but the more you read the more you will understand. PS: The following writings are summaries taken from the yet to be published book, The Modern Trinity. Celebrate the birth of a king...

The birth of a messiah

“I’m a rose that grew from concrete.”

TUPAC SHAKUR

“The stone that the builders rejected has now become a capstone.”

Jesus Christ, MATTHEW 21:42

“I was born to brew up storms and stir up shit”

MARSHALL MATTHERS

1) YOU SHALL CONCEIVE A CHILD AND YOU SHALL NAME HIM…

From the livestock kraal of Bethlehem, between 4BC and 6AD, which the Gregorian calendar celebrates as December 25^th, a young religious girl, preferably virgin, went into labour, and the revolutionary result of the pain was one hell of a Semite: born for eternal conviction. He was named Emmanuel.

From the maternity ward of New York University Hospital, on June the 16^th of 1971, a young soul sista, evidently both dopefiend and jailbird, preferably activist, went into labour, and the vengeful outcome of the pangs was one hell of a Nigga: borne for eternal commemoration. He was named Amaru.

From Kansas City, Missouri, on the 17^th of October 1972, a young house wife, unfortunately slut and junkie, preferably victim of abuse and addiction, went into labour, and the untameable aftermath (pun probably intended) of the burst was one hell of a Gringo: bound for eternal consternation. He was named Bruce.

And all the competition would burn in eternal capitulation. And many wanna-bees would rise; but by their own fruit (production) they stand to be seen.

In a mechanism of complexities, these are the three names defining – or rather redefining- the Greek word christos. This is a chain reaction of salvatory powers at work in three forever living legends. A modern representation of the “one” person to look up to, through the vivid and rare lance of revelation; a human embodiment of messianic qualities, whether in the form of music or the gospel, or both since the music is a gospel on its own, if not an overlooked virtue that has kept the world in balance or an evil that pushed it over the edge. These are the two uncovered synonyms but never politics. Jesus was crucified between two thugs under the belt of Roman politics, yet not as a politician. Tupac was shot down between industrial and political controversies, yet not as a politician. Eminem though, awaits his sudden death, whether by a riveting session on the cross at Golgotha, or by a horrendous fusillade of bullets at Flamingo road or any form of American public execution from lethal injection to whatever is hidden in that revelation. Hopefully not as a politician. But his one goal is to enter that narrow gate and become a dead living legend; mysteriously dead, posthumously living. And the gates of hell against his name fading from our minds forever shall never prevail. These three messiahs were all born to feel betrayed, especially by the parental conditioning inculcated to their reality by their paternal figures’ absence. Jesus, who claimed that the God of all creation was his father, cried to the same God saying why have you left me? In a melancholic voice that was yet struck by the domestic nostalgia that encompassed his years of youth, Tupac echoed in the song Dear Mama saying “and when my daddy died/ I never cried/ coz the coward wasn’t there.” Eminem was as well trapped within the gluey psychological framework of living without a sire and hence he too had a grotesque torrential outflow of hateful lyrics to spew, which prevented him from suffocating. “My faggot father must have had his penis up in the bunch/ coz he split/ I wonder if he even kissed me goodbye/ no I don’t, on second thought I just fucking wish he would die.” Without doubt, they were born to feel this bitterness and follow it to the cross but we will tackle more of this bitterness in the fourth chapter.

Whatever power it was which completely insured the explosive arrival and rule of these three would forever benumb the minds of the lucky women who could be the only channels to these instruments landing on earth. The very women who changed the nappies of these heroes, bathing them, promising them illusionary mocking birds when they cried. Even the first lie they heard came from these women who gave them the tooth fairy treatment when the bad tooth hurt like truth. They are namely Mary the Madonna, Afeni Shakur, and Debbie Matthers. Their sons have all succeeded in bringing about an embedded change of thought through the indefatigable power of the word, which from the beginning was, and today still is. Nobody really knew Tupac before the word he spewed went into their ears, and better yet nobody gave a shit about Eminem before he rattled a word into the mike, congruently the classical Jesus, after whom came the maxim “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing cometh by the word.” Until they spoke, they were not yet messiahs. But when they finally spoke somebody felt the need to believe in them. Howbeit, beyond the word was need for efficient action that gave life to the word or to whom the word gave life. Jesus the Nazarene said in his day, “if you don’t believe my words believe the works I do.” Until the End of Time hit the market and Tupac could be posthumously heard rending, “…the game full of playerhaters, they conversate/ but Death Row full of demonstrators.” And the one demonstrator from the dungeon of Death Row records was wrapped in the carnal form of young Tupac Amaru Shakur. In the latest Eminem Show, the messiah said, “see what these kids do/ they hear about us talking pistols/ they wanna get one, they think this shit’s cool/ not knowing we just protecting ourselves.” So in what was said one could spot what they did and vice versa, in what they did one could as well spot what they said.

This all started with a heavenly annunciation; and annunciation demanded participation; participation manifested in conception; and conception created anticipation: and anticipation resulted in labour complications that brought us the births of these messiahs. The announcement came as a shocker to the Nazarene couple. God, the creator of the universe sent an immaterial agent with the redtape message about the birth of the Jewish messiah. Joseph, the fiancé was instructed not to fear since this caused him to try to flee. In his mind he thought of an illegitimate child! and figured he’d run for it. An immaterial agent stopped him. Tupac’s biological father ran away while Tupac grew practically without a father since his step dad was incarcerated most of his life. Eminem’s father left them when Em was six months old. He ran away, there was no immaterial agent to stop him. Nevertheless, the life of a messiah for the three had already started.

Okay My dear Bloggers, you know it's impossible to celebrate Tupac Shakur's birthday without revisiting his brutal death. The interesting question that his unsolved murder raises is that of faking it: Is Shakur really dead? Let's give Dukofelli a chance to explore the theories in his unfinished 2003 book.

Conspiracies against a messiah

“And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large sums of money unto the soldiers, saying, say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept…

So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.”

ST.MATTHEW 28: 12,13 & 15

“I heard a rumour I died/ murdered in cold blood traumatized/ pictures of me in my final state, you know mama cried/ but that was fiction/ some coward had the story twisted”

TUPAC AMARU SHAKUR

MARTHA DON’T YOU MOURN

On the culpable morning of September 13^th 1996, many live reports led out a floodgate of bad news, when the death of Tupac was both announced and confirmed before reporters. That was the end of a life of a thug and half a superstar, but ironically the beginning of the legacy of a young Bulldozer that paved way for his own future and triumphantly rode through its historical vestibules. Fans across the world tasted the effects of the saline-honey-to-the-tongue-choleric-melody-to-the-ear type of a song like When thugs cry. And everybody cried; even the Outlaws who boasted in every song how they were real niggaz that did not fancy showing much emotion since they’d seen much pain in the world. But the pain of imagining life without their indisputable mentor must have gone further than being unbearable and jiggled a few tears from outlaws who knew, from street life, how death tasted at close range. The masses collectively mourned while Tupac’s voice could only reverberate from the sentimental track, How Long Will They Mourn Me? The impeccable sounds of the song could make a soul assume that it was intended to be one day blended with the Lazarus-Jesus scenario. The best friend to the King of the Jews fell ill and died, his sisters resorted to the natural reaction to a death case; they mourned. Then Jesus came and asked why they were crying; he shed a tear at their disbelief and told them to roll away the stone that marked the border gate to Lazarus’s new world. He looked her in the eye and said, Mary don’t you weep, tell Martha not to mourn. A miracle took place and Lazarus was brought back to life, and mourning turned into joy.

Today many no longer mourn Tupac but they are celebrating his existence in song and poem. They understand the words Mary don’t you weep, tell Martha not to mourn, as if they were spoken to them. After the emotional event, it was as if Tupac was reborn, and like Casper the friendly ghost began a new campaign of real fame since masses knew and loved him later on a posthumous tip. Yet he has never been friendly as he has become much like a poltergeist, moving and quaking everything and everyone whenever his songs are played or just when the mental picture of him invades a meditator’s privacy, as it should; and he is now the more revered and his lyrics scarying the fuck out of all his enemies, inadvertently converting them to worshippers. It rakes in the memory of the death, not of Lazarus, but of Jesus; the death that became an irony on its own awkward plateau.

When the King of the Jews and Lord of the Gentiles died, two things happened:

The first was the fulfilment of the prophecy that was put down by Isaiah that “I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.” When those crooked, malicious and scornful nails, cooked from some cheap Roman refinery, relentlessly drilled through the mazes of his body’s veins, his own disciples, the homies that claimed they had his back and were willing to chop a few ears for him, ran for their lives. Worse, one of them openly denied him, cursing and humiliating his (Jesus) claim to be the Messiah.

The second contrasting instance was when Jesus’ Day finally set, with the Night having its first orgasm that came wedded with the pleasure of sending a life of a God to the ghastly entrails of Gehenna. At that fine hour, where demons shuddered and frowned, fearing this death, Death the Leveller, that could achieve killing eternal life itself, they must have thought to their villainous selves, “what more about us, we tremble at the thought of Christ?” If the Lord Christ, the One Begotten Son of God perished at the discourteous hand of the Destroyer, what were they before this regal Death? It was sublime, it was the darkest power they could have ever feared, but not to the pagan Centurion that looked on when they crucified him (Jesus.) While the predictably unreliable disciples ran faster than hell’s arcs and panted through the next kilo, the Centurion waited and wondered. Suddenly it was pitch dark - Africa dark - and the symbolical old veil at the Temple tore apart into two splits. That’s when the unbelieving Centurion felt the impact of the U-turn taken by his mind and saw all his years of religious hardening and social conditioning evaporating before his African darkness-clad eyes. For the god of this world has blinded the mind of unbelievers, but the Centurion, viewing the death of this Christ, imagining the coming resurrection, defied the god of this world altogether and spit on its face. He doubted hesitation and couldn’t risk fatally choking before confessing his newly found faith in Jesus. He let wide his mouth, plucked out his tremulous tongue in a slow motion and whispered, a whisper that transcended the realm on which he was found and cascaded through the wire that Jesus had been wearing at the time of his death. At that same moment the Centurion’s faith reached the federal agents in heaven and the information was immediately delivered on the desk of the President, God. And Jesus’ first convert, the very first soul to be recorded as born again after the death of Jesus was confirmed as that of the Centurion. He died, a Centurion celebrated his newly found born-again status, but his disciples and all the three Mary’s and Martha wept and mourned. And again, reiteration is called for, oh Mary don’t you weep, tell Martha not to mourn.

And this does not differ with Tupac’s simultaneous predicament and christening of followers. Instead, this stamped the brilliant redo of the song “You’re nobody til somebody loves you” by The Notorious B.I.G when he bitterly spewed a barbed-wire of the paranoid words “You’re nobody til somebody kills you.” The death of Tupac was the birth of his being a real somebody, because after his death even niggaz like Dre swallowed the bling-bling pride ubiquitously carried by wealthy Mussos and confessed that Tupac was a deep nigga. This webbed the uncontested mindset that Amaru was finally someone, who though he’d been known before, had just registered himself into the bulky pages of history and could be studied and appreciated on a larger scale. Even the Lord Jesus was quite familiar with this cerebral scenario; it was what researchers have today tagged psychological noises *.

Now when Jesus mentioned that “a prophet is not accepted in his own city,” he was indirectly referring to psychological noises that were within the parameters of where one was born, against the word one had for such a place and the inhabitants who deemed one as a mere simpleton. This is the problem in our communities, things done by those whom we know, are just not good enough. Get a stranger and the same thing, done the same way, is perfect. Even for Tupac, there were a whole lot of those nefarious noises going on in his time. Those who were somehow acquainted with him at the time and those who encountered him when he was still alive, were never too sure that he was really good to a point where they could shout on every Mic that “Pac was the man” like they do today. It’s like when he died he became some sort of a stranger because he now resided in his ghetto heaven, where they’ve never been before. This new naturalised citizenship of his has suddenly gotten the strangers who are still on this world to appreciate him. Like I usually say to my friends, death is a culture, where people we once knew suddenly become certified strangers to us and our climatically xenophobic environment. When a person dies, they are transmuted from a common human to a cadaverous stranger, we are no longer familiar with them and their overwhelming state and we hide them from us, we send them away, we bury them.

They cremated him, and when they were sure he was no longer a physical part of them, they appreciated him, as a foreigner who was “now” talented. I guess he was just nobody - until somebody killed him. Now like it is said of Jesus, “every knee shall bow, and every tongue will confess, that” Tupac, is- a real nigga.

MY LIFE IN EXCHANGE FOR YOURS.

DEATH THREATS AND THE SANHEDRIN CONSPIRATORS

One of the disciples to Tupac, possessed with anger and fear, which culminated to the pleasure of being a made nigga, versed down an American conspiracy against the Outlaws. First Tupac began with the line “My life in exchange for yours, born hated as a thug, house full of babies cryin’ from the lack of gettin’ love, ain’t nobody tell me shit.” But later on in the song Napoleon made a hefty incitement of the shit told them that Tupac could not so uncommonly take. The young nigga, bearing the nick of the tyrannical first consul of the Republic of France, took over the song and in the middle of it accused America of a conspiracy to eradicate the memory of Tupac and his aficionados the Outlaws. He said, “the president told us to leave coz the government don’t want us.” This is of course a jest pinned down by a hardcore rapper, or isn’t it? It illustrates the length to which the American case against Tupac and his followers went.

Just where the meeting or conversation between the leader of state and the young niggaz took place, it is not known. Perhaps it could have been in the paranoid mind of the young Napoleon, or maybe not. Maybe it did take place, or this could be a way to show the state that they knew how much they were hated as niggaz who had made it. On the other hand it could be true considering the fact that the then vice president of the United States of America Robert Dole wanted Tupac banned. Thinking of strong women like Dolores Tucker would really encourage faith in Napoleon’s lyrics. This was a revelation to a conspiracy to have Tupac removed, which Napoleon recognised before time. Jesus as well knew about such conspiracies to have him killed. He feared for his life as a result. When John later recorded the events in his famous book he said: “Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sandherin. ‘What are we accomplishing?’ they asked. ‘Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” This was a situation founded on pure political misgiving. A carpenter’s actions forced the whole Jewish council to think that they were walking on thin ice, and slowly but rapidly surely, it was caving in, to their demise. The government was in danger of losing its nation because of Jesus; therefore he had to be removed.

Tupac himself was blamed for a lot of crimes because of his shady thug character that he roared much about. They accused him of influencing the youth negatively. Wherever he went in the late hours of his renowned thuggish life, he was besought with throngs of hungry stooges of the paparazzi. He was said to be creating thugs and anarchists, the same as Jesus, whose fame snaked all through Judea, Galilee and the neighbouring regions.

So one man called Caiaphas permeated the Jesus case, and he said, “You know nothing at all! You do not realise that it is better for you that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation perish” And the 53^rd verse of John 11 concluded that “from that day on they plotted to take his life.”

Eminem is not a stranger to death threats. Having been banned from many states and sued by many parents his life is truly in danger. It is not a joke. He says: “…talk about death threats/ I get a lot.” And these threats are the result of his demi-justified defiance of society and his disproportionate aspiration for messiahship. At first, when he started he even went to a level of fucking with niggaz, claiming that he was “cancerous/ so when I diss you wouldn’t wanna answer this.” A jailed Suge Knight answered and warned him to watch what he says about niggaz. Hearkening the warning and considering who had shot it off, he diverted his lyrically vexed mouth’s satirical direction to softies like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, his mother, Moby and Will Smith. At first he ejaculated offensive statements like “drivin’ down yo block in the car that Pac got shot in.” His song Role model was particularly the trash music that put him on the map of assassination and death threats. There he fucked with Sonny Bono, Clinton and wife, Lauren Hill, Vanilla Ice, Old Dirty Bustard, Garth Brookes, Norman Bates and finished off by the worse confession of the Simpson murders. “Me and Marcus Allen went over to see Nicole/ when we heard a knock at the door/ must have been Ron Gold’/ jumped behind the door/ put the orgy on hold/ killed ‘em both and smeared blood in a white Bronco (we did it!).” The young star had the decency to say such gibberish and get away with it. Maybe because they first took him for a joke, but today he is someone to be reckoned with. Nowadays he is taken more seriously since he also takes himself more seriously, especially considering what usually happens to mouthies like him. Dre once said about Tupac that he has a lot of mouth and that it would get him in trouble. Looking at what happened between him and Biggie, in a non-conspiratorial eye, he was right. He must have whispered a few warnings to his own protégé Eminem, especially when it comes to the involvement of moguls like Death Row’s founder and chief executive officer. All this blurting out shit of Eminem’s cannot be known if its done intentionally, so it could excuse the faking of another death in light that he too would escaping his enemies. It is possible that the young man is paving way for his own “grave,” he must be making his bed, which he ultimately wants to lie on. That’s the name of the game.

Indeed many conspiracies have surrounded the death of Tupac Amaru Shakur in a strong way as well. Many fans have developed split opinions on the death of their hero Tupac; some claim that he is still alive and has undergone a change of identity to help him hide from his enemies and that he is doing so at the aid of the USA government; while some maintain that he was assassinated by the state of America through the slugs let loose by the FBI’s rugged stooge that was later killed. Some think that he is alive but had a double who took the four bullets at Flamingo Road that sent in his resignation letter to heaven and was signed by God on the 13^th of that horrifying month. They claim Tupac’s double is the one whose body suffered cremation and sent out the bad vibes of violent death in the music industry. Such a contestable accusation is supported by the fact that Tupac had different sides to the ring he put on his nose although he only had one hole on one side of the nose. One photo, it is said, would have a nose ring on the right side and another a ring on the left side.

Muslims carry the same conspiracy against the belief in a risen Jesus. The Qur’an’s fourth chapter, verse 157, says “That they said, ‘We have killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah;” but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no knowledge, but conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not.”

The big question to the Quran is if it wasn’t Jesus who was crucified who else was it? A double? Where was the double found? And whose plot was it to have a Jesus look-alike take his place on the Roman cross? Could it have been Mary, fearing to lose her first born son to the terrible jaws of death? Or could it have been the zealous Peter, who once encouraged Jesus to evade the cross and would that be the reason he denied the man in Pilate’s court that later hung on the cross? Was the man who died truly a fake and not Jesus, the saviour of the Christians?

And this claim of a double type of Jesus has more than that, on a more non-dogmatic stance, been also asserted by the apocryphal gospel text that was allegedly written by Jesus’ follower Barnabas. This was the Barnabas that rebuked a demon out of a medium when walking with Paul, preaching the gospel of Jesus in the streets of 5555. “Accordingly they led Judas to Herod, who for a long time had desired that Jesus should go to his house,” it says, illustrating how Judas was the one who was crucified instead of Jesus. The gospel claims that Judas and Jesus looked the same that it would be hard to tear them apart. “Now when Judas had been led thither, Herod asked him of many things, to which Judas gave answers not to the purpose, denying that he was Jesus.” This is supposed to be the part where Jesus in the Bible was asked if he was Jesus and answered by saying “you said so.” That makes Barnabas close to credible, yet it leaves many questions.

“Then Herod mocked him, with all his court, and caused him back to Pilate…Thereupon, in mockery they clad him in an old purple garment, saying: ‘It is fitting to our new king to cloth him and crown him.’ So they gathered thorns and made a crown, like those of gold and precious stones which kings wear on their heads. And this crown of thorns they placed upon Judas’ head, putting in his hand a reed for sceptre, and they made him sit in a high place. And the soldiers came before him and bowed in mockery, saluting him as Rex Iudeaorumm [King of the Jews]…Verily I say the voice, the face, and the person of Judas were so like to Jesus, that his disciples and believers entirely believed it was Jesus.”

This gospel has caused controversy amongst atheists and pagans, the same way the double story about Tupac has done. However nobody has written anything about who the Tupac double might be. Yet, as I’m writing this, yesterday was a bad day for a lot of people, not because it was the 13^th of September and that it reminded them about the horrible death of Tupac Amaru Shakur. Simply because it was the 7^th anniversary of his death, and many conspiracies, like the seven day theory, died as well. Many thought that Tupac was coming back and would testify to the fact that it had been a double that took his place on his Golgotha. They looked with glazed eyes, sadly no resurrected Tupac showed.

Better still, Tupac and Jesus are lovely victims of the tidal waves of controversy. In his Better Days album, Tupac stunned many with the message that he passed to his mother. “Dear mama don’t cry yo baby boy’s doin’ good/ tell all my homies I’m in heaven and they ain’t got hoods,” he said. While Barnabas’s gospel says, “Jesus replied, embracing his mother: ‘Believe me, mother, for verily I say to thee that I have not been dead at all; for God hath reserved me till near the end of the world’…And he reproved many who believed him to have died and risen again, saying: ‘Do ye then hold me and God for liars? For God hath granted to me to live almost unto the end of the world, even as I said unto you. Verily I say unto you, I died not, but Judas the traitor. Beware, for Satan will make every effort to deceive you.’” Then the whole heresy was coupled by an ascension.

Was this the notion that made Paul the apostle and Barnabas to spilt ways in the midpoint of the book of Acts since the former believed Jesus had died and resurrected? If I were not to be subjective and be fair to the text, I would back it up by a few rhetorical questions, of which are not to mean that I believe Jesus faked his death, but just to paint a picture of a livid conspiracy at work and the glimpse of the influence it has had on me as a believer of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Question one: When Mary Magdalene, the ex-whore who was delivered by Christ from whoredom, went to see him at the grave fearing the rumour that his body was stolen, she met a Jesus who looked different that she only recognised him when he called out her name, probably the way he usually did. Why didn’t she recognise him? He was her messiah for Christ’s sake! This was the only man she saw as a real man than all the men she’d encountered in her whole life. Instead of meeting her for the usual business, she was befuddled by his interest in her well being as a person than he was with a human need incurred by a libidinous man. She knew him, but seemingly after the resurrection, not.

Two: When Mary of Magdala tried to touch him, Jesus refused, saying, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” This is clearly amazing, considering the fact that when Jesus died on the cross he told the repentant thug that he would meet him in heaven the next minute. And when he gave up his ghost he said, “Father unto thy hands I commend my spirit.” Now here Jesus says he has not yet gone to his Father. Then he ascends and leaves Mary, giving her the rendezvous at which he would meet her and the other disciples after he comes back. What does that register to a soul that believed differently all its life? This is only up to the power of conviction and indoctrination; they definitely have to prove themselves.

Three: The twofold biblical death of Judas the man of Kerioth. Since the death of Judas, who was known to have betrayed Jesus, was not put down in many details in the Bible, could that mean he actually died on the cross? Worse his recorded death differs from one author to another. According to Matthew 27:1-5 Judas hanged himself on a tree and according to Luke in Acts 1:16-18, the man of Kerioth fell in a garden and died.

Now the next connotations are going to call for pastors who have experience in dividing the Holy Book - Jesus came to earth to redeem Adam, whose death took place in a garden. Now as the second Adam himself, but in the person of Judas, his death would have to take place in a garden the same day he partook of the fruit of evil. Since Adam died because of a tree, wouldn’t he now die on a tree again when trying to redeem himself? Paul says in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘cursed is anyone who is hanged on a tree.” Jesus’ unnecessary beef with trees justifies this; especially that he cursed one for lacking fruit even though it wasn’t its bearing season. He killed the tree from its root, knowing that the tree kills from the root as well, that’s why all who came from Adam were already dead and needed redemption. That’s why Paul says “if the root is holy so is the whole tree.”

Judas was a traitor, but so was Adam, who sold out humanity to death by eating of the fruit of the tree of which he was told he would die the same day if he ever ate. Was Judas really a traitor in a form of selling out Jesus or was it for something from his past? Because John 17:12 says “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.”

BUT THE SON OF PERDITION? How did he become lost while others were kept? Four chapters before, at the slow motion of the Eucharist, the disciples asked their leader about which would be this betrayer. Verse 26 says, “Jesus answered, ‘It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.’ Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. ‘What you are about to do, do quickly,’ Jesus told him, but no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him…As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.”

It is amazing that the same Jesus who rebuked Satan when he entered his disciple Peter could not rebuke the same Satan when he entered Judas who was also his disciple, but laconically spurred him on to do what he had to do.

What was it that the disciple Judas Iscariot was supposed to do that the writer of the gospel of John could not tell us? Could it have been selling him to the chief priests who had always known Jesus when they engaged in debates with him in synagogues? The Sandherin guys knew Jesus, they called him the carpenter boy. So why would they want him identified all of a sudden when they could have an identikit of him drawn in a second themselves? Or could Judas’ job have been to go and give his life on the cross in the place for Jesus? This is a question I, as a born again man myself, cannot understand or attempt to answer. Was Jesus actually cutting a deal with Judas on the table for a piece of bread and soap? But that would be too cheap, wouldn’t it? Yet when we think about the price Esau received for exchanging his birthright, which meant much back then, we can only frown. And the Jacob-Esau situation is a perfect example for trading places. My life in exchange for yours… Remember what Jesus said about Judas, “such, it would have been better had they not been born.” And the Bible says God loved Jacob and hated Esau even before they were both born or done anything right or wrong.

So if Barnabas is right about the gospel he wrote, for Judas this must have been predestination, he couldn’t escape it. Am I challenging the validity of scripture? No. But I know that scripture was written under very overwhelming conditions by writers who had been converted to a system before they wrote and has endured the tentacles of anachronism. And we all know that the Bible is not complete without the excluded gospels by Thomas, Barnabas and other followers of Jesus. Saint Jerome saw it fit to compile the books that he amassed to make them one holy book for Christians. So the Judas scenario might just be true, yet it might be false. This we can’t prove anymore, history has failed us with regards to accuracy of information. I can only say, let him who believes, continue believing, and let him who doubts, continue doubting. I believe.

Yet if Judas died and Jesus appeared alive, then it is nothing for us, it does not matter. After all, Judas could afford the price; he was a believer and follower of Jesus. He could have been simply following the teaching that had been taught to him earlier, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, If any man will follow after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever will save his life shall lose it: and whoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it…Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom (Matt 16:24,25,28).”

And I have kept them all, but one…

Judas looked at all that and he had to imagine the futuristic possibility of suicide bombers who would be strong enough to die for a mere Arab hungry for political power. And this he thought was a favour for the Son of God! Anyways, the stage was already set for him, Jesus had performed enough defiant acts that put his life in danger: he had fucked up a group of people in a temple and dared them to tear down his body, which he told them he would raise in three days. When Thomas saw him, he could not believe it was Jesus. When Peter saw him die he denied that the man who was dying was the Jesus he knew, because that was not supposed to be what he understood would take place. When the disciples saw another disciple dying, they fled for their lives, fearing it might be them next.

These are the many thoughts the conspiracies have managed to dig out of me since many have coloured the walls of these messiahs’ lives, and deaths. At the end, the hidden truth will come out; meanwhile we shall work on that which we have been told on a general basis. We are human; we believe what we read – if not, how sure are we that there ever was a Hitler, a Stalin, a First World War? We can’t, unless we believe what history has recorded for us to believe.

LIVING THE LIFE versus DYING THE DEATH

It is clear that Tupac’s lyrics were more to him of a reality than the common rapper’s delight, as words of Jesus were more to him of a revelation than were of a fleeting sermon that pleased crowds.

Makavelli says in Life Goes On, “bury me smilin’/ with gees in my pocket, have a party at my funeral/ let every rapper rock it/ let all the hoe’s that I used to know/ from way before/ kiss me from my head to my toe.”

Apparently this has bred a compromising contrast between the rapper’s death and his real life lyrics. It was reported that as soon as Amaru died his dear mama had him cremated within thirty-two hours. Better still everybody knows that since their short-lived re-union Tupac and dear mama had attempted bonding to a palatable result. So the question comes, that if Tupac’s lyrics were realer than reality television, a fact emphasized by Afeni on Until The End Of Time’s CD cover, how was he not kissed from head to toe at his own funeral like he’d asked and prophesied? May I again ask, to display just how serious this is: if Tupac’s lyrics were as real as his fans knew them to be, how was he not kissed from head to toe at his own funeral like he’d asked and prophesied? Could he have been clowning around with a rhyme all of a weird sudden? Clowning is not what Shock G had in mind when he put Pac on the map route of hip-hop. The brother was really enchanted by the late rapper’s emotional depiction of ghetto life, especially his own life. This is not what Suge Knight had in mind either when he signed the rapper to the most clandestine label like Death Row. They put their money where Tupac’s mouth was, that’s at the depth of the sea of his life of fear and brevity exhibitionism (a survival instinct.) Tupac was always for real, at least that’s how we were made to believe, maybe we are too naïve. But if Pac was that real, Afeni should know better than to be irresponsible for his sons’ credibility’s sake. Tupac, as all of history would testify, had only one aim in his ambitions, that of being a legit legend.

Then as a matter of syllogism, Tupac’s not yet dead; at least according to himself he can’t be. He says in his 2003 album Better Days, “Expect me nigga, like you expect Jesus to come back, expect me nigga, I’m coming.” But then we know him to be dead, he is gone, so says Afeni; he is only with us in spirit, like Biggie is with us, like Big Pun is with us, like Eazy E is with us. Tupac is dead. He ain’t coming back. That’s the story we hear, seemingly their word against his. Now who could be lying? Was Tupac just an overrated Mc who was overwhelmed by the sight of a Mic and a Death Row paycheck? Was he validating his inept wish, which he echoed in the song Life I lead, when he said “I want money in large amounts/ and a garage full of cars that bounce”? Could Tupac’s love for money be that big that he could compromise his lyrical stance by rapping pure fantasy? It’s only the nigga Dre that I heard say “If money is the root, I want the whole damn tree.” Was Tupac also infatuated with the whole damn tree? This tree seems to be a very dangerous tree since it must have been the same tree that killed Adam and his progeny. Or is it perhaps the other tree of life that the patriarch neglected until cherubim walled it with flaming swords? The merit of this tree counts much, since it puts at stake the reputation of one hell of a nigga. He went to greater and more perilous lengths of showing his counter-rapstars and foes that he was the realest Nigga ever. Between touching the hem of Jesus and pronouncing himself a Christos, Amaru would have never dreamt of being esteemed “just another MC.” That’s a price he wouldn’t have paid, or afforded. New York is filled with dope Mc’s, California’s hackneyed with rhymes, and South Africa’s even caught up on the rapper’s delight that was commenced by Sugar Hill Gang in 1979. Who is not a Mc? That’s a petty game of the most paid nursery rhyme graduate who can now score more chicks than he could before class was out. Tupac was never just a stupid Mc, he was a literati that could have done a psychology course and beat Doctor Phil at his game when it comes to the mentality brackets that have incarcerated the ghetto and made it a cliché that still killed young men’s dreams.

Although his notorious-enemy-peer counterpart Christopher Wallace once said that Niggaz bleed just like us, and echoed “picture me being scared of a nigga that breathe the same air as me,” Tupac still esteemed himself the realest nigga alive, even beyond the rumours of death. He was the nigga that deserved to be revered; a nigga that needed other niggaz to pay homage to him, courtesy of his invincibility as both a thug rapper and a thug nigga. In a wealthy barrage of hateful lyrics directed at Biggie Smalls and his ephemeral belief of not being scared of a nigga that had a nose as prodigal with oxygen as his own, Makavelli said to him: “we was High School peers/ I was archin’ to kill while you was READY TO DIE.” This mocked the whole massive and controversial debut album that put Biggie on the scene, titled: Ready to die. If Biggie thought the title beat Picasso at his game and delineated him as the flawless, slick and brave drug-dealing King of New York over a mere obese and paranoid nigga and made sure nobody would want him dead by granting him his wish since niggaz were never generally generous, he had one big thing coming. If Biggie were perhaps still breathing, he might have thought that this demi-god, Tupac, was breathing a more divine air than his.

The line between disrespect and one’s exhibition of toughness over others was fundamentally grey, letting loose the beehive of violence that caused unprecedented fracas in no other industry since the Mafiosi’s Night of the Cecilian vespers and Hitler’s Night of the long knives. Niggaz have been playahating each other for years since the rap game was born in the 70’s; they have been cooking poisonous rhyme after rhyme, ready to feed the hungry lyricheads queuing on podiums like the recently resuscitated Battle Field where Mc strapped himself against Mc with a verse and hoped his opponent would develop some lyrical yellow streak. Tupac said, making sure his lyrics were regarded the most realest and prophetic, not some musical gimmick that bought a nigga cheap popularity: “this ain’t no freestyle battle all you niggaz gettin’ killed with ya mouths open.” Yet within all this volleying of lyrical explosives nobody could/can dare (even if they tried) trash down a whole album in one sentence, unless that Mc was himself larger than life and his net of lyrics as real as the very venous erection of his dick. That Mc could only be Tupac, who was once called Mc New York. All his industry life as an industrious nigga himself, he went from pillar to post pulling fronts of appearing to be without fear against a mad world that had produced an alike mad industry. He could not afford being just another Mc or nigga, since the two are so intertwined in the hip-hop game that for many strangers to the game it is hard to tear them apart. He had to be real; his rhymes had to match his life, or demise. As English would suggest, sweet words butter no parsnips, and I bet neither do bitter words.

So in light of this paradox, could Makavelli’s battle to be real had been born only to be thwarted by a burial that went against what was considered his immutable musical prophecies? Somebody owes Tupac a whole lot of explanations if he is indeed dead, because then his end was never justified. Not when in the means he’d pictured himself in a casket, which was unceremoniously replaced by an infernal crematorium ride that ended with his symbolically tattooed anatomy reduced to ashes that the ghetto dick (death) jerked off into the cervix of a vase. Such a fan-anguishing front clearly tarnishes Tupac’s dream of being a hustler that always got what he wanted and makes it just another nigga-pipedream.

This leaves us with only two situations: it’s either Tupac Amaru Shakur is not dead and can still envisage his real demise with hoe’s at the funeral as predicted in the song, or, Tupac has been robbed of his wish, by a dear mama who claimed to understand the struggle of her own son more than any of us. Thus Tupac has half triumphed in his secret (yet lyrically revealed) plot of dying and coming back like Jesus or it’s better to admit he was just an impressionable kid who was blown to susceptible smithereens by effects of a Mic, mixers, modules and sound woofers. The latter would be a profoundly sad tale to tell the kids in the year 2089 of a legend that never was. Hitler would still be the guru of history by then, at least featuring Osama bin Laden as a latest achiever of his dreams.

Pictures of me in my final state, you know mama cried- or could the artist have meant that “you know mama lied?”

So conclusively (exonerating Tupac’s mother by so doing), could we indict Tupac and his mother as conspirators in the same crime or heresy of breeding him into more than a Machiavellian character and into a Christos himself? A prosecutor, trying to get a conviction, WITHOUT THE CORPUS DE LECTI, would stand before the judge and tell him that it was probable that the same doctor who smacked Tupac at birth, whom the rapper wailed he smacked back, could be the same doctor who, remembering how the stingy smack of the baby Tupac felt, confirmed him a cadaver. He could have seen how much Tupac had exploded as a rapper and especially on those who made themselves his enemies – all you’ll niggaz getting’ killed with ya mouths open. The doctor would have then reconsidered that it was better not to fuck with the by then crazed star, Makavelli, and thus granted him his wish, if not a god’s ultimate Will. For there is no way that anyone in the world would claim that Tupac was alive and not implicate those who, as medical practitioners, certified him dead. It must, indeed, have been the same doctor who saw him delivered on the 16^th June 1971. This could be a fact since those who where present at Tupac’s upbringing were also present at his death; for example his childhood pastor, Daughtry. So, as the prosecutor would dare suggest, the doc helped brew a plan of a potential Jesus, or indeed truly death-certificated a fledgling fantasy of a rapper who enjoyed being on the Mic while it lasted.

Is Tupac dead - is Tupac alive? That’s a two-way conspiracy against the messiah of the West Side. I heard a rumour I died…but that was fiction. Was it?

*(A psychological noise is a situation where a person may speak sense and still not make any sense to you. It’s like when you are a staunch Christian who has been chewing on chunks of sermons all of your life, then this unmarried friend comes and tells you that they’ve just had the greatest and most orgasmic sex ever. They may go on relating how it equated heaven in pleasure and the assurance that they felt when their partner made love to them. This sounds quite a beautiful story worth cheering on, but then if your faith has taught you that sex before marriage is taboo, the whole story becomes taboo itself no matter how much good it sounds. There is something that clogs your ears; something that just makes sure you won’t hear the beauty of it. That is the psychological noise I’m talking about.)

RESURRECTION OR IMPOSTURE?

Jesus said to the market-mongers at the temple the other day, “destroy this body and I will raise it in three days.” As soon as he had been resurrected by the mighty strength of his Father’s Spirit, the Holy Ghost, the Roman soldiers came up with a story that would make Jesus to be written off as a dead impostor who got what was coming to all cons. It did not work, his being alive today and to do so forever more has but thwarted the Passover Plot. In the minds of many Jews today, this Ieusus Nazarenus did not represent heaven and was therefore no messiah simply because they believe that he died and never rose. But his disciples are convinced that their Lord is risen from the prison of Sheol and death. They boast their faith on the fact that above other religious leaders like Gautama Buddha, Abul-Qasim Muhammad, Kong “Confucius” Qui, Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi, Haile Selassie and many others, who bear bones in their graves while that one of Jesus is empty, he is the one who prophesied his death and resurrection, which were both fulfilled. Yet these conspiracies will not let him go easily. To some, Jesus never existed at all. Although archaeologists this year have discovered the bones of Yakov, the brother of Yeshua, son of Yasef, which date beck close to two millennia ago. This and the inscriptions on the grave are proof, they said, that this historical Jesus did exist. Therefore, this is an empirical enforcement to the person who believes that he is a risen Lord and true Son of God. For Paul the apostle, who became a convert through a miraculous event, although he had been an adroit Jewish believer and fervent denier of Christ, was convicted about the resurrection of Jesus and did not buy the story that the disciples could have stolen the body off after two days in the grave. In 1 Corinthians 15:12,13,14,15,19 he says, “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ was raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that we are found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead…If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”

So this is purely an indication that the Christian faith’s strength is in the resurrection of Jesus and the hoped for of the saints. Paul was a religious man, so he spoke in religious terms, that if there is no resurrection, Christians have to be pitied of all (religious) men. This faith has no other thing to believe on except for the returning of Christ and the coming resurrection, and this means in this lifetime the believers are going to look stupid because they believe in something that is not yet. This faith has nothing to do with now, unless of course believing now. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen… Since the faith is in a Christ who died and resurrected, it is best to believe he will come for believers after death. So those who claimed that Jesus was dead and his body stolen had knocked the faith at its very core. This can only be religious men, who had the capacity to grasp the profound meaning of believing in a resurrected Christ. That’s why on the eve of the third day they sent out orders to seal Jesus’ tomb, fearing he might truly rise. Regardless, he rose.

Could this be the reason Tupac wanted to fake his death if he did? So that he could show power over the other Mc’s who know that when death knocks they’d be gone forever? And what would this mean to his fans that would be eagerly waiting for him? This shows how much Tupac must have understood Jesus and the meaning of a messiah’s death and resurrection. He himself though was very aware of the fact that unlike Jesus, he couldn’t be a spiritual messiah, therefore if he experienced physical death he would never be resurrected, unless of course as a reborn disciple at resurrection. So Tupac’s one option to become a messiah in this lifetime, was to fake his death, and then would come back resurrected to those who thought he was dead.

Eminem as well, as a potential messiah who lacked spiritual qualities like Jesus but had physical abilities as Tupac and the societal experience of both sees the need for death and resurrection, even if faked. It is in his song I’m Shady that he reiterates his wish to be the two mentors. Like a maverick he bellows, “I don’t just wanna die a normal death, I wanna die twice.” This is the same reason Tupac wails that “Expect me nigga, like you expect Jesus, I’ll be back nigga, I’m coming.” In Christ Jesus these brothers found inspiration to face charges of faking death and coming back resurrected. They want to taste the feeling of having been thought of as gone while they were still around and ready to say Still I rise nigga. These guys would go to deeper waters to prove their need to rule the game like Jesus, and this book serves as a vehicle that is also carrying these rappers to their messianic destiny. Makavelli made sure that it was understood very well in his religious track Blasphemy. “The media crucifying brothers severely/ niggaz gettin’ shot comin’ back resurrected.” He got shot, and somebody out there is waiting for his resurrected appearance.

Jesus, after his resurrection said to Mary of Magdala who had been crying, “Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?” Yet he knew she was looking for his corpse. This line of thinking could never evade a crafty disciple like Afeni’s wise son, Tupac Amaru Shakur. In the depth of the Until the end of time album he let out a few clues so much that you don’t know if he was prophesying or he’s just written those lines recently. “You bitches wanna know who shot me, no luck/ ask Jay Z, while yo still caught up in raptures, I’m in Jamaica sippin’ Daiquiri.”

This is where our taste of Dukofelli's revelations end, for now. Let's hope that one day he gets published.