Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur appears at the MTV Video Music Awards show in New York on Sept. 4, 1996. Reuters

Wednesday marks the 21st death anniversary of American rapper and actor, Tupac Amaru Shakur, better known by his stage names 2Pac, Makaveli, and Pac.

The hip-hop legend whose birth name was Lesane Parish Crooks took up music as a career to bring to the fore hardships and injustices endured by many African-Americans, making him a face for the struggle for equality.

According to the New York Times, Shakur grew up in the Bronx, New York, and later moved to Baltimore with his mother. There, he enrolled in the High School of Performing Arts to study acting.

Shakur wrote his first rap on gun control after a friend was shot while playing with guns and began performing it. He eventually dropped out of high school and moved to Northern California.

After a stint with the group Digital Underground, he started a solo recording career in 1991 with the album ''2Pacalypse Now'' (Interscope), which sold half a million copies. Prior to the release of the album, he played the role of a Bishop in the Ernest Dickerson film ''Juice.''

Over the years, he emerged as one of the most influential rappers in the U.S., with his albums "All Eyez On Me" and his "Greatest Hits" considered among the best selling albums in the United States.

The rapper was also indicted on charges of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old woman in a Manhattan hotel suite in November 1993. He was sentenced to 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 years in prison for sexual assault and was later released on bail. He died in 1996 of wounds sustained from a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas.

Here are some of the rapper’s most famous quotes to remember him by, courtesy Goodreads.

  • “You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened... or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the f*** on.”
  • “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.”
  • “Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping its dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”
  • “I know it seems hard sometimes but remember one thing. Through every dark night, there's a bright day after that. So no matter how hard it get, stick your chest out, keep ya head up.... and handle it.”
  • “They Have Money For War But Can't Feed The Poor.”
  • “Reality is wrong. Dreams are for the real.”
  • “If you can make it through the night, there's a brighter day.”
  • “Everybody’s at war with different things…I’m at war with my own heart sometimes.”
  • “Out of anger comes controversy, out of controversy comes conversation, out of conversation comes action.”
  • “I didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose me.”
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