La morte dietro l’angolo. Tupac Shakur, icona afroamericana tra hip hop e cinema = Death around the corner: Tupac Shakur as afroamerican icon between hip-hop and cinema

• Main Author: Luca Bandirali
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Università del Salento 2015-06-01
• Series: H-ermes: Journal of Communication
• Subjects: Tupac Shakur; hip hop; icona; afroamericano; cinema; heroes journey; monomyth
• Online Access: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/h-ermes/article/view/14952

Death around the corner: Tupac Shakur as afroamerican icon between hip-hop and cinema. The way an artist turns into an icon in the popular music system is allowed by the deep narrative structures detectable in the artist’s biography. The case of Tupac Shakur (1971-1996) as an icon of the afroamerican hip hop subculture of the 90’s exemplifies the process at issue because his biography can be compared to a mitography, as to say that it concides with the archetypal structure of the mono-myth. These structures are strictly connected with the artist’s work as musician, which is often a sort of autobiographical storytelling. Beyond both artistic and biographical profiles of Tupac Shakur there’s a third iconic level: his acting career, which overlaps both life and music, introducing a series of symbolic relations and building a picture of himself. This picture is the main support to the cult icon Tupac Shakur has become.