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cinerxtor. Asked by his lawyer whether he considered the song a political state- ment. Tupac said, “Yes. ... When this song came out, no male rappers ar all anywhere were talking abour problems that iemales were having, number one. Number two, it talked about sexual abuse, it talked about child molestation, it talked about families taking advan- tage of families, it talked about the effects of poverty, it talked about how one person's problems can affect a whole community of people. It talked about how the innocent are the ones that get hurt. Ic calked about drugs, the abuse of drugs, broken families... how she couldn't leave the baby, you know, the bond that 2 mother has with her baby and how... women need to be able to make a choice.” Rap music is notorious for having lyrics that are degrading to women, and—much as Tupac would appear to be an advocate for women in “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” and also, even more, in a later song, “Keep Ya Head Up"—he wrote lyrics that were misogynistic as well. In “Fha’ Lunatic,” another song on “2pacalypse Now,” he boasted, “This is the life, new bitch every night.” In the deposition, when asked how he David Kenner (left) wound up at the top of one of the hottest black labels, Death Raw, which was cofaunded bv Dr. Dre. could reconcile the conflicting senti- ments, he says, “I wrote this when I was seventeen. ... It's about a charac- ter, somewhat like myself, who jusc got into the rap business, went from hav- ing no girls to now there's girls all the time and he's just getting so much sex- val attention and he's, in his mind, a dy- namo. He’s Rudolph Valentino and Frank Sinatra, he's everybody. ... He . van get anybody he wanted. ... I'm an’ actor and I was a poet. So I felt like... 1 have to tell the multifaceted nature of a human being. ... A man can be sex- ist and compassionate to women at the same time. I was. Look at ‘Tha’ Lunatic’ and look ac “Brenda's Got a Baby.” Tes moved to Los Angeles early in 1992, and the stories he vold in his music began to reflect, more specifi- cally his fascination with gang life. “Each gang clement wanted to claim him,” his stepbrother, Maurice Harding, a rapper known as Mopreme, says. “The cover of ‘Suictly 4 My N.LG.G.A.Z. "Tupac's second solo album——“was red, so every- body thought at first he was a Blood.” But though he hung out with Bloods and, more often, their rival Crips, Tupac did not join either gang. He was at bot- tom an observer and chronicler, pro- foundly utilitarian in his approach to experience and, some thought, people as well. And South Central L-A.— which is almost like a foreign country within a city, so singular and baroque are the gang customs, culrure, and laws that govern it—iwas che richest territory he'd ever scen. , “He could be with this poet, this pimp, this thug—he could suck every- thing from each of them and that would be part or him,” said Man Man, the triend who moved with him from Northern California to L.A. and be- came his road manager. “He started hanging around thugs. He would suck it up out of chem and then use that, in his music and his acting. People would be saving, ‘Fred just got killed’... next thing vou know, it’s in his song. ... He waa saving, ‘If you don't know what's going on in the gherto, shis is what's going on.’” Tupac was particularly vulnerable, however, to the charge thar he had not paid his dues, thar he was aot a “real* gangster. For all the swaggering ma- chismo that would come to dominate his public umage as a gangsti rapper, he was