When Tupac Shakur railed against Michael Jackson’s wealth: “There’s people starving”
Michael Jackson was one of pop music’s biggest ever stars, and his influence on the culture was profound. His sound and style helped to inspire so many other artists, including those working within hip-hop. Yet one of hip-hop’s biggest legends, Tupac Shakur, had a particular issue with Jackson, and he spoke up about it.
Jackson’s music has been extensively sampled by hip-hop artists, and even Tupac dipped into his back catalogue. The songs ‘Letter 2 My Unborn’ and ‘Thug Nature’, both released after Pac had died, contained Michael Jackson samples, with ‘Liberian Girl’ from the Bad album appearing on the former track and ‘Human Nature’ from Thriller being used on the latter one. There’s no reason to think, then, that Tupac had an issue with Jackson’s music.
But what Tupac did have a problem with was Michael Jackson’s insane riches. In an interview he gave to MTV in 1992, Pac expressed his exasperation with the extreme levels of wealth inequality that he was already observing in America at the time, citing Jackson as an example of it in action. Wealth inequality has only worsened since that period.
“There’s no way that Michael Jackson or whoever Jackson should have a million thousand droople billion dollars, and then there’s people starving,” Tupac said. “There’s no way! There’s no way that these people should own planes and there people don’t have houses. Apartments. Shacks. Drawers. Pants!”
This was less a direct attack on Michael Jackson. It was more a broader expression of frustration with the wealth inequality that a star like Jackson personified. He did live a life of absurd luxury, and Pac, at least during this period in his life and career, found that distasteful and unjust.
“I know you’re rich,” he said of these wealthy people like Jackson. “I know you got $40billion, but can you just keep it to one house? You only need one house. And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it to two rooms? I mean, why have 52 rooms and you know there’s somebody with no room?! It just don’t make sense to me. It don’t.”
Pac, while arguing his case against wealth inequality and greed in this interview, actually mentions by name the man who, come 2017, and again in 2025, would be serving as the US president. He cites Donald Trump as an egregious sort of wealth-hungry role model.
“This world is such a gimme, gimme, gimme, everybody back off place,” he noted. “You’re taught that in school and in big business if you want to be successful, if you want to be like Trump, it’s, ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme. Push, push, push. Step, step, step. Crush, crush, crush.’”
Tupac was a mess of contradictions, and his own life and career, of course, took a turn towards a gangsta rap sensibility that fetishes wealth and luxury. His radicalism arguably wavered towards the end of his life, and it’s arguable as to whether or not it was entirely coherent to begin with. But the fact remains that, whether or not it was always consistent, his social consciousness was a key part of who he was as a person and as an artist, especially at the start of his career. It shouldn’t be forgotten.