Tupac Shakur was born under the name Lesane Parish Crooks on June 16, 1971, in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York. He was renamed Tupac Amaru, the name of the last Inca to have revolted against the Spanish viceroy, Túpac Amaru, meaning "shining serpent". Shakur means "thankful to God" in Arabic. Tupac's father had started a new life elsewhere, and his mother, Afeni Shakur (who was a member of the Black Panthers) was imprisoned for conspiring to blow up bombs in New York. She was 5 months pregnant when she was sent to jail. Their stepfather, Mutulu, who belonged to the Black Panther movement, was sentenced to life in prison for armed robbery of armored cars, resulting in the deaths of two police officers and a guard. At twelve years old, Tupac joined a Harlem theater group, the "127th Street Ensemble". In 1984, during his adolescence, he moved to Baltimore where he attended the Baltimore School for the Arts to study acting and ballet. At 17, he moved again to Marin City, California, hung out with hoodlums, started dealing drugs, and discovered that his mother was using drugs. But he quickly realized that this was not the right path for him, so he joined the group Digital Underground as a dancer. He laid down his voice for the first time in 1991 on the track "This Is a EP Release" by Digital Underground, and then participated in the song "Same Song". Before the group had success, Tupac released his own album "The Lost Tapes" (1989) and at the age of 18, "2Pacalypse Now". His success and talent also landed him his first role in the film Juice. In November 1994, he was shot five times in the lobby of the Bad Boy recording studio in New York. He was taken to the hospital and left less than 24 hours after the operation, fearing being killed at the hospital. He went to hear the verdict of his rape trial the next day in a wheelchair. It was from this moment that a bloody but highly publicized page of rap history was written. Indeed, 2Pac personally held Puff Daddy and Biggie responsible, who always proclaimed their innocence. The pinnacle of his acting career was his appearance in Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson. On September 7, 1996, after attending a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon at the MGM casino, 2Pac got into a BMW driven by Suge Knight heading to their hotel. But stopped at a red light, a white Cadillac pulled up beside them and opened fire. Tupac was shot four times in the torso while in the car with his producer. He remained in a critical state for 7 days, during which one of his lungs, too damaged by the drive-by shooting and the previous shooting in 1994, was removed. He succumbed to his injuries and passed away on September 13 at 4:03 PM.