Oakland street to be renamed in honor of rapper Tupac Shakur
A stretch of a street in Oakland will be renamed in honor of slain rapper Tupac Shakur.
The City Council voted unanimously to add “Tupac Shakur Way” signs on part of MacArthur Boulevard by Lake Merritt in the center of the city where the rap icon used to live in the early 1990s.
The Tupac Shakur Foundation will pay for the signs and commemorative plaques.
Although Shakur was born in Harlem in 1971, he lived in the Bay Area for a few years in the late '80s and early '90s. There, he met the Oakland-based rap group Digital Underground and became their roadie and backup dancer. Shakur released his 1991 solo debut album “2Pacalypse Now,” which was recorded and mixed in San Francisco and Richmond.
Shakur said Oakland was the place “where I got the game at.”
Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996 when he was 25 years old.
According to the city council's resolution, public streets can be renamed “as a tribute to an individual, or as a result of a significant event or activity if one of the following conditions is met: The individual has positively impacted the lives of a nation or the world.”
“MacArthur Boulevard between Grand Avenue and Van Buren Avenue where [Shakur] once lived serves to remind us of his contributions to Oakland and our communities through the celebration of art and culture as an awakening tool towards changes in society.”
The City Council has previously voted to rename streets after baseball player Joe Morgan, Black Panthers co-founder Huey P. Newton — who Shakur references in “Changes” — and rapper Too $hort, among others.
“Tupac Shakur's legacy will continue through his contributions in art and social outreach, through his family and fans, touching countless lives of children and elders over the years while alive and after his death, taken too young by gun violence,” the resolution concludes.