Jewish mudshark brought gangster rapper Tupac Shakur to fame
0/06/2023
She gave him a roof over his head and faith in himself. And she made a legendary rapper out of a difficult teenager. How a Jewish teacher raised Tupac Shakur.
A suspect in the murder of Tupac Shakur has been detained in the United States. The rapper was shot 27 years ago, but until now this crime has not been solved. Among the alleged killers were Tupac's enemies in gangster groups, music competitors, and even American intelligence agencies. The detainee is 60-year-old drug dealer Dwayne Davis. It is believed that he could have fired the four fatal shots at Tupac in Las Vegas in 1996.
“The arrest of the alleged killer did not come as a surprise to me. I knew that this sad story had to end sooner or later,” Leila Steinberg, Tupac’s first producer and the person who largely shaped his signature style, commented on the detention. The Jewish poetess and teacher was one of the first to recognize talent in the 17-year-old black boy. Steinberg gave him shelter, inspiration and motivation to record 2Pacalypse Now, the album that made Tupac great.
Tupac sang about police brutality and black gangs
“I fell in love with him at first sight - not sexually, but spiritually. I could be with him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all the time, and I did for several years. I talked to him non-stop. It was an incredible closeness,” recalls Steinberg. They met in 1988 in one of the Californian nightclubs.
Shortly before this, Tupac and his family moved to the “sunshine state” from Baltimore. He has already established himself as a rap artist and actor. In Baltimore, he studied at an art school, where, among other things, he played the Mouse King in Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker. There he began participating in rap battles and writing the lyrics of his first songs.
Steinberg always remained close to Tupac
Leila Steinberg was 25. She was married to an African-American DJ and had just given birth to her second child. She also conducted poetry workshops for troubled teenagers and dreamed of reforming the education system. The author of a book about Tupac, Verena Wiebeck, describes her as “a businesswoman with a strong character and a tenacious grip.” But at the same time, not without temperament and the ability to “light up” from new ideas. Steinberg said that she inherited her business skills from her father, a Jewish lawyer with Polish roots: his job was to defend criminals in court. In turn, emotionality was inherited from the mother. She had Turkish-Mexican blood flowing in her - since the 60s, Leila Steinberg’s mother was a civil rights activist.
Steinberg taught poetry to children
“On the day we met, we talked a little, and that’s all. But the next day Tupac came to my poetry workshop. And then the magic began: I was surprised how many serious ideas it contained. It was as if I were eight years younger than him, and not him,” Steinberg recalled. According to her, as soon as he crossed the threshold of the audience, Tupac criticized the content of the seminar. He said that participants are given little opportunity to speak out, and suggested that poetry readings should be used in other venues, including nightclubs, where the audience is wider. Then he introduced Steinberg to his rap. “These, of course, were still very youthful texts. But they already raised topics such as racism, oppression, injustice - everything that in the future will make Tupac an icon in the African-American community,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg was 25 when she met Tupac at a club
Tupac has been around radicals since childhood. His mother, Afeni Shakur, was a member of the left-wing Black Panther Party. In 1969, she independently defended herself in court on charges of preparing a series of explosions in New York - and was acquitted. Tupac's aunt Assata Shakur was accused of killing a police officer - she escaped from prison and received asylum in Cuba. In 2013, the FBI named her "the world's most wanted female terrorist." The rapper's godfather, Elmer Pratt, was also in the party. In '68 he was convicted of murder during an attempted robbery, but the charges were soon dropped. Tupac himself would later get a tattoo of a black panther, in memory of the movement in which his relatives were involved.
Tupac was in prison and got into fights
Afeni Shakur suffered from drug addiction. Very soon, Leila Steinberg realized that Tupac had nowhere to live - and settled him with her: “I just brought him home and introduced him to the family. My husband was not happy. He suspected that we were having an affair - although in reality there was never an intimate relationship between me and Tupac.” The rapper lived in her house for about two and a half years. At times he returned to his mother or spent the night with friends, but, according to Steinberg, “there was always a room left for him in the apartment.”
Then she began offering Tupac's songs to record labels and organizing his concerts. In the past, Steinberg was a backing vocalist for many pop and reggae musicians - from then on she still had the necessary contacts. “Did I realize what I was getting myself into? Definitely not,” she said. “Back then, the last thing I wanted was for people to think, ‘Oh, again, a black musician got success with the help of white people.’” I crossed out my name from everywhere - from songs, records, lists of producers. Even when we got the first official contract giving me the right to manage, I didn’t take any money. During the few years that Tupac was becoming a star, I barely made ten thousand dollars. But they also spent on the costs of its promotion.”
Steinberg's husband was jealous of her for Tupac
In the early 90s, Tupac's first fame fell. At that time, he joined the rap group Digital Underground. Not without Steinberg’s help, the band’s songs were included in the soundtrack to the Hollywood comedy “Only Trouble.” Tupac himself played a small role in this film. The track from the film called Same Sing with his participation became a hit. But the real thunder struck in ’91 after the release of the solo album 2Pacalypse Now. Two singles from that record, on which Tupac sang about police brutality, poverty and black gangs, immediately entered the top 30 songs according to the authoritative Billboard magazine. The album itself later received “gold” status in the United States - that is, it sold more than 500 thousand copies, and then “platinum” when copies sold exceeded a million.
2Pacalypse Now made Tupac great
In 1993, the rapper consolidated his success with his second album Strictly 4 My NIGGAZ - it also went platinum. Around the same time, Tupac Shakur and Leila Steinberg parted ways. “Obviously he needed a higher-ranking producer. While I was combining work with raising four children and the desire to continue social projects. But the “chemistry” that arose between us continued to live. We often called each other and, as before, talked about everything in the world,” Steinberg recalled.
Steinberg chose motherhood, Tupac chose another producer
Since the mid-90s, Tupac has been closely associated with Suge Knight, founder of the Death Row Records label. He promoted gangsta rap and launched the careers of such artists as Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. At the same time, in the “official” show business, Knight was openly called a “scumbag” and accused of having connections with crime. According to legend, Knight beat off the first artists, the band Death Row, from competitors using lead pipes and baseball bats. At the end of 1994, Tupac went to prison on charges of rape. While the rapper was behind bars, his third album Me Against the World topped the music charts in the United States. Knight offered the artist to pay a deposit of 1.4 million if he signed a contract with Death Row. Tupac agreed. The result of their collaboration was the release of his last lifetime album, All Eyez on Me, in February 1996.
Tupac's songs conquered the charts
On September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas, Tupac and Knight watched a Mike Tyson boxing match and then got into a fight at a hotel. In the lobby of the MGM Grand hotel, Shakur and his friends beat up a certain Orlando Anderson, who turned out to be a member of the African-American gang "Crips". That same night, Tupac and Knight's car was shot up. The rapper received four bullet wounds and died in hospital six days later. Suge Knight escaped with minor injuries. He later said that the shots were fired from a white Cadillac that had stopped next to their car at the intersection. However, neither Knight nor other witnesses - including passengers in passing cars - saw the killers' faces. At the same time, Knight stated that “even if he had seen it, he still would not have told the police.”
Steinberg still blames himself for Tupac's death
For a long time, Orlando Anderson was considered the main suspect in the murder of Tupac. However, later the investigation came to the conclusion that it was not he who could have shot, but the gangster Dwayne Davis who was in the car with him. At the end of September 2023, he was charged and placed under arrest. “It took countless hours, I would say even decades of work to come to this conclusion,” a Las Vegas police officer commented on the arrest. “Some people didn’t believe that we were trying to solve the murder of Tupac Shakur.” But for us all these years the matter has been important.”
Today Steinberg is 61 and lives in California.
He added that they initially had four suspects, but Dwayne Davis is the only one who is still alive. Three others are already dead, including Orlando Anderson, who died in gang violence back in the 90s.
Suge Knight, Tupac's producer, has also been in prison since 2018. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison for murder unrelated to the rap star. In 2015, Knight deliberately hit a rival from a record company with his car.
Leila Steinberg is 61 years old. She lives in California and all these years she blames herself for the murder of Tupac Shakur: “He seemed so independent, so strong. I should have looked after him more: been more of a mother to him than a producer. Perhaps it would have saved him from what happened."