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Chance the Rapper caused a stir earlier this year, following the release of his politically charged second album Star Line. The record takes aim at Donald Trump and ICE, responding to their attacks on America’s immigrant community, and it does so in the spirit of hip-hop’s radical history. In fact, Chance specifically invokes the memory of one of rap’s most radical figures ever.

On the track, ‘Drapetomania,’ Chance raps, “Love 2Pac ’cause he shot two cops / I got a nine millimeter called Thug Life / I got a new chain, it say FUCK ICE.” What he is referring to here, as he explained on the Dissect podcast, is when, in 1993, Tupac Shakur shot at two white, off-duty cops, who had been beating a Black man on the street. This intervention, Chance claimed, was “probably the most radical thing that’s ever happened to hip-hop.”

The story goes that Pac, who had just finished a gig at Clark Atlanta University, was in a car driving down a street, when he and his companions noticed two white men beating up a Black guy. The two white men were brothers Mark and Scott Whitwell, both of whom were police officers—though they were off duty and not in uniform, so Pac couldn’t have been aware of their jobs. Apparently the cops had nearly been hit by a car, which sparked an argument and, in turn, this brawl that was unfolding before Tupac’s eyes.

Tupac and his companions jumped out of their cars, and, as Atlanta Police Department Captain Herb Carson put it in remarks published by The Washington Post days after the incident, “One of the officers pointed a gun toward the group.” This was Mark Whitwell, as it would later emerge in court.

The Whitwells were wearing civilian clothing, and they were drunk, so their status as police officers was not immediately obvious. It is not known if they attempted to identify themselves as cops, but, in any case, the situation deteriorated. Tupac, responding to Mark Whitwell drawing his gun, in turn produced his own. He fired three shots, with Mark taking a bullet to the abdomen and Scott being hit in the buttocks. Tupac was later arrested and charged with aggravated assault.

The Whitwells’ injuries did not prove to be life-threatening, and they were released from hospital the following day. Tupac, meanwhile, pleaded innocence and was released on bail.

A hearing took place in December, where it emerged that the Whitwells had been drunk and that the weapons they’d been carrying had actually been stolen from a police evidence locker. It was also claimed that the Whitwells had been using racial slurs against the Black man they’d been attacking, while witness accounts alleged that Tupac and his companions had fired on the Whitwells in self-defense, after Mark Whitwell had fired on them first.

Both Tupac and the Whitwell brothers had been charged with wrongdoing, but, in the end, all charges were dropped. Mark Whitwell resigned as a cop in the months following the shooting, but both he and his brother later filed civil suits against Tupac. Mark’s suit was settled out of court, whereas Scott’s one, in 1998, resulted in a default judgment entered against the now deceased rapper’s estate.

Many of the details of the incident remain a bit hazy, but there is certainly a read of what happened that says Tupac had intervened to help protect a Black man being beaten by two out-of-control white cops. He had placed his body on the line to protect a fellow human being from harm. This is the sentiment that Chance the Rapper is celebrating all these years later, as the US government and its law enforcement agencies clamp down on vulnerable communities.

“It’s disgusting,” Chance told The Cruz Show recently, referring to ICE’s activities. “I think we’re just in a space where people are afraid to, I guess, really fight the system. Like, this is a country that’s actually built on bloody revolutions and… radical thought and self-determination, and sometimes I think… that we forget that, like, we’re a country built on fighting the system and fighting the power.”