It’s been 7 years since hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas, but legions of fans and hip-hop scholars still refuse to believe that he ever actually died. After all, since the shooting, “seven posthumous albums have been released – more than when he was alive… His funeral, if there was one, didn’t make the news. We never saw a casket. There was no public memorial.” All the doubt has only solidified Shakur’s place as one of American music’s most influential figures. “If LL Cool J is hip-hop’s balladeer and Public Enemy its enduring conscience, Shakur maintains his status as a supreme urban griot whose gritty, observant rhymes illuminate the plight of disenfranchised black males.”