Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur

Biographer Pearlman (The Last Folk Hero) chronicles the brief, chaotic life of rap legend Tupac Shakur in this excellent biography. Shakur was born in 1971 to mother Afeni, a Black Panther who successfully defended herself in the Panther 21 trial but fell into crack addiction, often leaving Shakur to fend for himself. They moved from New York to Baltimore in 1984 and later to California, where Shakur found acting success as an “intimidating street hustler” in 1992’s Juice, a role the sensitive young man sometimes seemed to play in real life to gain acceptance, according to Pearlman. That persona—along with drugs, alcohol, the effects of childhood trauma, and a general recklessness—contributed to Shakur’s erratic, sometimes criminal behavior, Pearlman suggests. (He was convicted and imprisoned for sexual assault in 1995, the same year his album Me Against the World launched him to commercial success.) Drawing on interviews with nearly everyone in Shakur’s orbit, including the man who, as an infant, inspired “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” Pearlman paints a complex, three-dimensional portrait of a passionate artist who could be single-minded and obstinate, who was driven by a nagging need “to fulfill his destiny before it was too late” (which became tragically prescient when he was killed in 1996), and whose contradictions were many (his legacy as “hip-hop’s greatest booster of women” seemingly runs counter to the numerous sexual assault allegations made against him). The result is an endlessly captivating portrait of a singular artist. (Oct.)