He won't die (ie stop having albums released in his name) because like most
musicians and especially
rappers, he is way more valuable as an idea to
record companies than as a person. Who knows? If he had lived he might have gone the way of
Public Enemy and abandoned the
recording industry entirely. Or gotten off the whole
Gangster nonsense and ended up trying to raise the consciousness of his listening public. I actually think this was pretty likely, Tupac was not a stupid person. He was a confused person who did things that were wrong certainly, but he was smart and surprisingly sensitive. He came from a background of socially progressive black activists, (his mother is a fairly famous
Black Panther). He went to a
performing arts highschool and while it has been said of him that he was comfortable with his gangster image one can catch glimpses of a softer and more thoughtful side in his music.
When he died he was probably in the process of breaking his contract with
Death Row Records (never a good idea). All the albums being released now are just milking his status as a
martyr. It's the greedy goddamn record execs that know what a blessing it was for them that he died. The strange thing about all this for me is that I hate his music, but his death is a perfect example of how awful commercial culture really is. It's kind of like how much more attention was turned on
Princess Diana after she died. It was a sad thing of course, but how many people had even thought of her (including all the people that went to mourn her) before she died? Now she's just the gravy train of the
collectible plate industry.