In Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur, Dean Van Nguyen tears the gloss off hip-hop’s commercial veneer and exhumes the revolutionary fire buried beneath it — a fire that still burns with the legacy Tupac Amaru Shakur has left. This is no sanitized celebration of a multi-platinum rapper or a crime-saga retelling of East Coast vs. West. Instead, Van Nguyen restores Tupac to his rightful place as both a cultural icon and the heir to the radical Black tradition of the Panthers, a vessel through which revolution rapped, rhymed, and raged.
Framing Tupac through the ideological lineage of the Black Panther Party (his mother, Afeni Shakur, being one of its most prominent members), the book illustrates how his lyrics, especially lines like “words for my comrades,” weren’t poetic flairs but political declarations. His music was not about the glamor of thug life but rather about the systemic violence that made “thugging” a survival mechanism.
But what happens when radicalism meets the machine? Words for My Comrades is unafraid to wrestle with that uneasy contradiction.
From Soapboxes to Soundbites
One of Van Nguyen’s sharpest insights is how hip-hop’s political potential was gradually neutralized by capital. While early emcees used verses to mirror articles in The Black Panther newspaper, by the late ‘90s, lyrics morphed into brand manifestos. N.W.A. may have once declared it wasn’t about a salary, but by the time Puff Daddy a.k.a. Sean Combs took the mic, it was all about the Benjamins — literally.
Van Nguyen dissects this transformation with precision. He traces how figures like Puffy helped shift the genre’s ethos from resistance to excess. Bad Boy Records became a temple of material worship, where the spoils of capitalism — luxury brands like Versace, Bentleys, Cristal — weren’t just flexes but philosophical frameworks. Tracks like “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down“ and “Mo Money Mo Problems“ were gospel … And in retrospect, they laid the groundwork for hip-hop’s next generation of moguls, from Jay-Z to Travis Scott.
The recent trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was once the polished face of hip-hop’s billion-dollar ambitions, casts a long, chilling shadow over this narrative. With multiple allegations of abuse, coercion, and violence surfacing, Van Nguyen’s book feels eerily prescient. It reminds us that unchecked power, especially when cloaked in affluence and charisma, often reflects the very systems radical artists like Tupac once tried to dismantle.
Biggie, the American Dream, and the Tragedy of Compromise
While Tupac stood as hip-hop’s rebel prophet, Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.) became its reluctant poster child for the American Dream. Van Nguyen draws an important parallel here: both men were poets of pain and poverty, but their responses to systemic oppression diverged dramatically. Tupac’s answer was revolution. Biggie’s? Rap his way into legitimacy, first on Ready to Die, then through collaborations with Puffy that embraced the spoils of success.
Their friendship, tragically fractured, was symbolic of a larger philosophical rupture within the culture. Words for My Comrades doesn’t play up the tabloid drama. Instead, it critiques how the music industry commodified their beef, how the spectacle was fed to hungry consumers, and how even the diss track “Hit ‘Em Up” became a product in the war for ratings and revenue.
Afeni Shakur’s suspicion — that the infamous rivalry mirrored COINTELPRO tactics meant to pit Black revolutionaries against each other — feels less like paranoia and more like prophecy. It’s hard to unsee the parallels, especially in a world where the Diddy-Trial leaves readers speechless as the power dynamics within the industry come under intense scrutiny.
Legacy or Illusion? Hip-Hop’s Forked Path
Jay-Z’s billion-dollar ascent, which is fueled by Roc Nation, champagne lines, and real estate, stands as a potent contrast to Tupac’s unfulfilled political vision. Van Nguyen doesn’t fault Jay-Z, but he does position him as emblematic of a hip-hop that has assimilated rather than agitated. American Gangster, Jay-Z’s ode to the duality of drug dealer and mogul, functions less as a critique and more as validation: the system works, if you’re savvy enough to beat it at its own game.
But Van Nguyen’s core argument is that Tupac never tried to beat the system. Tupac wanted to burn it down! And that’s precisely why his message still matters. In an age where protest is aestheticized and activism is monetized, Words for My Comrades reclaims Tupac’s voice from the clutches of nostalgia and noise. It’s a reminder that not every artist wanted to become a mogul. Some wanted to remain dangerous.
In Conclusion …
Words for My Comrades is a searing, essential corrective to the myth-making machine. It doesn’t sanitize Tupac. It doesn’t villainize Biggie. And it sure as hell doesn’t let the industry off the hook. In the wake of Diddy’s legal fallout, this book arrives like a bulletproof manifesto, reminding us that behind every platinum plaque might be a Panther’s ghost, still howling for justice.
About Dean van Nguyen:
Dean van Nguyen is a music journalist and cultural critic for Pitchfork, The Guardian, Bandcamp Daily, and Jacobin, among others. He is based in Dublin, Ireland.
