His poetic and compassionate nature drew Williams, and it's what drew another poet to Pac. So Tupac isn't just successful for having catchy songs or a good flow. Williams is obviously well acquainted with Tupac's politics as well as his literature, explaining, "We want to expose the hypocrisy of Puritanism in America, and what the American government doesn't want to tolerate about protest speech, which is what Pac was often singing about." Those politics drew one of our generations' best-selling poets to the show. She also serves as producer for the show. His mother, the subject of " Dear Mama," still does important activist work under his name at the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and provides support for young artists.
![2pac 2pac](https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000222844490-q3tjft-t500x500.jpg)
The musical has laid bare the revolutionary spirit of the rapper - a spirit that's still doing hard social work in the real world.
![2pac 2pac](https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3806714153_10.jpg)
Decades later, it's still a potent rallying cry because it's written timelessly like the best literature. The eponymous "Holler If Ya Hear Me," perhaps Tupac's most salient anthem of resistance, speaks of his own trauma and urges others in his community to fight back and stay strong. He confirms what great authors and rappers have said for decades: Tupac is a literary genius. Now Williams is adding unbelievable skill and poetic feel to some of Tupac's most beloved tracks, like "California Love." Williams opens the song a cappella, and it sounds like a work of slam poetry until the beat drops. He wrote and starred in 1998's Slam, which swept Sundance and Cannes, winning multiple awards for his spoken word and publishing his own books while also holding down a career as a rap artist. Slam poet, rapper and wordsmith Williams, like Shakur, is involved in diverse fields. That legacy is even more evident in another literary name connected with the project: Saul Williams. He didn't just make music, he wove philosophy and literature out of words. (Shakespeare was unavailable for comment.) When he met the musical's writer for breakfast in 2001, he gave him a simple testament to Tupac's art: "There's nothing contained in your life that's not contained in that music." Tony-nominated director Kenny Leon, whose credits include Steel Magnolias and A Raisin in the Sun, has only praise for Tupac, claiming that the rapper belongs in the same "army of writers as August Wilson and Shakespeare even." August Wilson agrees.
![2pac 2pac](http://www.empireposter.de/bilder/bilder_l/174086.jpg)
Holler If Ya Hear Me is bringing that Tupac back to life. You got this guy Romeo from the Bloods who falls for Juliet, a female from the Crips, and everybody in both gangs are against them … Real tragic stuff," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1995, less than a year before his own life was taken. "He wrote some of the rawest stories, man. Before he was a rapper, he was originally a student at the Baltimore School of Performing Arts, and a die-hard Shakespeare fan to boot.
![2pac 2pac](https://townsquare.media/site/625/files/2017/06/tupac-collage.jpg)
That has its roots at the start of his career. Pac's easy translation to theater has revealed one common thread of literary and dramatic sensibility in his own work. Successful crossovers between hip-hop and theater are rare (with Lin Manuel-Miranda's In the Heights a happy exception), but if anyone can pull it off, it's Tupac.