Tupac (The Source 1994)

Tupac: Hellraiser (The Source, 1994)

Juneteenth 1994
Detroit, Michigan

I have this recurring dream about Tupac. I'm riding around LA in the middle of the night with Tupac and his boys. Whoever's driving stops at a red light. Tupac, who is sitting in the front seat, cranes his neck in both directions of the crossroad.

"Nigga what is you doing" He screams at the driver. "Ain't no cars coming. The whiteman got you so fucked up that he flash a color at you and you'll stop!"

"Nigga, drive!"

The rest of us look around at one another. Is he serious?

"Nigga, look if you gon' sit here and be a l'il bitch, I can't fuck with you."

And with that he jumps out of the car.

There is purity to Tupac's rage. Yes, he's dangerously emotional, but righteously so. He believes something and is willing to act on it. For him conformity means the death of truth. We plea for him to return to the car but he has already pimped his way into darkness.

January 31, 1994
Blue Palms Recording Studio
Burbank, California

"They got toys for guns/ Jails for guns/ But no jobs for guns."

Tupac likes to add effects to his vocals; Chuck D-style reverbs and echoes that give his voice that Godly quality. He instructs his engineer, a Blackman at a Black-owned studio, to isolate the track so he can perfect the pitch.

In exactly 12 hours, Tupac will be required to appear in a Los Angeles municipal court for a case filed agaist him by Allen Hughes, one half of the directorial team that bought us Menace II Society.

"I been sitting on this all day," he pulls an 8th of LA's now famous chronic from his back pocket, appraising the red hairs in the Hawaiian sensimilla. His older brother, Mopreme rolls up no less than six blunts in a row. As everyone else gets more mellow, Tupac picks up steam.

"Nigga, pass that!"

Tupac has been dying to get his clown on. Stretch, Tupac's producer/collaborator and constant road dawg from Queens, is holding the blunt. "Fuck you—she just passed it to me."

Tupac's eyes light up, his whole face starts beaming with smile. A challenge. He looks Stretch up and down for a total of five seconds before he gets in that ass.

"This nigga got blue carnations on his drawers."

"Fuck you, nigga." Stretch passes him the blunt but it's too late.

"Blue mothafuckin' carnations. Can you believe this, dream? Feminine-ass blue carnations. Look at me!" Tupac raises his shirt—THUG LIFE, his now infamous tattoo sprawls across his abdomen, the small of this back reads EXODUS, his pants are sagging and his boxers are navy.

"I got on some masculine-ass plaid mothafuckin' drawers! We go shopping together Stretch, niggas could see you bend over and think I wear flowers on my ass!"

He grabs his 40; by now Mopreme is doubled over and the engineer is in stitches.

"That did it for me, all niggas from Queens wear flowers on they drawers!"

"Aw nigga, suck my dick." Stretch is a laid back brother but he's had enough.

Tupac throws his head back and laughs, a big beautiful infectious laugh, and all is forgiven.

"It's all good. Wait! Don't ever let me say that again. Can you believe that?"

All of a sudden Tupac's changed the subject to Hammer, and I'm still trying to peep Stretch's boxers while he's not looking.

"How does he do it? " he asks me.

I'm too slow, the chronic is kicking my ass.

"Timing. This nigga manages to come out while everybody else is getting arrested and shit."

Naw, it's his crib. It's cuz he threw his crib up in the video, I offer.

"You might be right," then from nowhere he wheels his swivel chair my direction. " You know what Thug Life's new code is: 'No mothafucking comment'."

I ain't ask you no question yet, I spit back a little defensive.

"Naw, I'm talking about them," he motions outside the back-door, to the studio's parking lot, where teams of invisible cracker journalists are hiding in the bushes.

"Why are you so angry? Why do you smoke chronic? Why cain't you stay out of trouble? Why is the earth round?' Eat a dick!" He leaps to his feet, frustrated with the pesky media. "Niggas ain't meant to be understood. Thugging. So back up off me!"

I remind Tupac that the latest attack on him has come not from Dan Rathers, but Dionne Warwick who along with the National Political Congress of Black Women objected to his scheduled appearance at the NAACP Image Awards.

"These niggas ain't want me there and they gave mothafuckin' Michael Jackson a standing ovation. Ain't that a bitch! How much money you gots to sling at them sorry ass Negroes to get them on they feet!"

He rolls a little closer and confides, "I'm fucking grown-ass women. That's my crime—I'm a freak! I let a bitch suck my dick in the middle of a dance floor."

He's referring to November 16th of last year. He was at Nell's, a New York nightclub, dancing with a young hottie when she dropped to her knees and did her thing. Three days later she would accuse him of rape.

"Goddamn them child molesting fake-ass mothafuckas, damn them all to hell!"

"And Dionne Warwick," I thought he'd never get to homegirl. "Fucking dream reading, psychic bitch! Don't get me started, I'll tell the real on they whole family!" He's on his feet again, throwing up Thug Life.

Stretch and Mopreme aren't even listening anymore. Pac notices his audience is diminishing and changes the rules. "The first nigga to fall asleep is getting hot-ass quarters on they forehead. You here that Mo? You gots to stay up and trip with the rest of us, nigga."

An assistant from the studio is going on a food run to the rib shack. " Y'all better put your order in, cuz when my ribs come I don't want none of you righteous vegetarians, smegetarians up in my shit."

In less that 20 minutes Mo is snoozing. Pac pulls a lighter from his pocket.

"Who got a quarter?"He heats the quarter with a devilish grin on his grill.

"This nigga is crazy," Stretch says, shaking his head. 'Oww!!! What the fuck!' Mo comes out of dreamtime swinging. "Get yo' crazy ass away from me!"Pac gives Stretch a pound, "I got 'em!" You saw the right? I'll teach you never to fall asleep on one of my sessions!"

February 1, 1994
Los Angeles County Municipal Court
Case #RO617, The People v. Shakur

The Hughes brothers arrive at court with four bow-tied hired security, presumably the Nation of Islam's Fruit Of Islam. Tupac strolls in twenty minutes later with the completed tracks from last night blasting in his headphones. He sits several rows in front of his brother Mo and his manager Watani, so that he can stare Allen and Albert down while he waits for his case to be called. When the clerk calls the case, "The People v. Shakur," we are informed that there has been a change of venue. We are required to make our way to Division 75, located in a separate building. Two of the Hughes brothers security post themselves outside the courtroom as the Hughes brother's entourage prepare to make their exit. Tupac makes it outside before Allen and Albert and walks up to one the brothas in a bowtie.

"What I wanna know is, since when did y'all start protecting niggas from other niggas?" he demands.

The brother is taken off guard but he tries to answer Tupac with a blank military stare. Just then the Hughes brothers come out of the courtroom.

"Aww, you l'il bitch!" Allen Hughes throws up his fists at Tupac. "Put 'em up!"

Tupac's heart ask his ears for a soundcheck. Still, he's not at a loss for words. He begins stripping—he tosses me his walkman.

"L'il bitch? Nigga you wasn't saying that shit when I was whoopin' yo ass all up and down the set of your video!"

"You and about 12 of your niggas," retorts Allen with new-found confidence.

By now the bodyguards are holding Allen and Albert back and creating a barricade between the two crews, making the mistake of pushing Pac. Le'chelle Wooderd, Tupac's attorney, and I, try and calm Pac down but it's way past that. Before we can say 'chill' Pac has both Hughes brothers, their boy and all four of their security backed up against the wall.

"You gon' need mothafuckin' Farrakhan to calm me down! You got that? Farrakhan! You bean pie slinging, bow-tie wearing bitches. You wear bow-ties, remember that! I'll have niggas from Crenshaw with AK's and rags up here! Nigga, you don't even know who you fucking with—these roots run deep!"

Finally, the sheriff's department come storming around the corner. They throw Tupac against the wall and instruct the Hughes brothers to make their way downstairs.

"Officers. I'm so glad you arrived. These men were trying to attack me! Can you believe that? They tried to attack me with the Nation of Islam. Those are Farrakhan's boys you know." Tupac isn't so hyped that he doesn't know how to feed fat white-boys lies. "I'm so glad you here. I have full confidence in the law's ability to handle the situation." Watani rolls his eyes at Pac and refuses the Sheriff's offer of an escort. After five minutes have passed, the officers allow us in the elevator.

When we get to Division 75, we're searched and seated on separate sides of the courtroom from the Hughes brothers, who arrived five minutes earlier. Two of the bodyguards pull Pac aside. They want to assure him that although they are fans, they were hired by the Hughes brothers. They tell Pac that Allen and Albert are cowards, something he already knows, and seeks Pac's reconciliation.

"This is the only one I'm really guilty of." There are more than four outstanding criminal charges against Tupac, including rape and a possible manslaughter charge. But the Hughes brothers case is the most annoying for him. There is an unspoken law in our community that two Black men should avoid fighting when possible and when they do it, it should be fair and not fatal. Someone loses, someone wins. There may be retaliation. In worst case scenarios it may escalate to into full blow violence and neighborhood wars, but never should it be taken to the police.

As part of evidence, Allen Hughes submits photos taken the day he was beat down by Tupac. Allen claims that Tupac jumped him with a crew of people. Outside of the courthouse Pac denies planning to outnumber the Hughes brothers. "Them niggas [the one who jumped in once the fight began] knew them [the Hughes brothers] just like they knew me—from around the way. That wasn't my video. That was a Spice One video. I got them niggas started making videos anyway. Plus, I came ready to kick both they asses myself!" Then with a grin. "Those other niggas didn't get down with Thug Life until after that shit happened."


February 10, 1994
Louise's Pasta
Melrose Boulevard, CA

After a relatively boring morning in court we decide to lunch at a sunny, posh Italian restaurant Tupac remembers enjoying. Even as we dine, a New York court is examining evidence in the rape case that has become Tupac's personal demon.

The rape charges surfaced amongst a barrage of others. Most significantly they came a short three weeks after the cop shooting case earned him front page status. The obvious irony is that he was accused of rape as "Keep Your Head Up"—the most genuine peace offering to B-girls to date—flooded the radio waves and implored Black men to love and respect Black women. The alleged victim claims she was sodomized by Tupac and two other co-defendants. A fourth suspect disappeared from the hotel room before the police arrived and has never been found. While admitting that he and the alleged victim did engage in consensual sex since their first meeting at Nell's, Tupac emphatically denies that he raped anyone. He claims that he and the alleged victim did not even engage in sexual intercourse the night of the alleged rape. Nor did he aid and abet in, as New York dailies reported, and "gangbang."

Earlier this week I spoke with a sister who's been active in nationalist struggle, as has Tupac's family, for years. I admire this sister for her political consistency, her grassroots work ethics and her genuine desire to understand and support young people. She is torn with ambivalence, as are most of us, because of the charges that Tupac allegedly raped a young woman in a New York hotel room. She's met with other sisters, her comrades in struggle, and has decided that his behavior is neither revolutionary nor New Afrikan. She and her sisters are planning to share their position with Pac through Watani, also a long-standing political and community activist. I've not yet found a way to talk about the real concerns and criticism that Black women in particular have around this case. I decide that these sisters and their obvious integrity is a possible way to get him to respond to these issues. What I don't realize is that in the week that passed they've not spoken with him.

'Fuck those bitches! I don't need that shit!"

I'm frightened by his venom.

"I'm on the front lines of this shit. Not 30 years ago. Now! Where were they when we didn't have no food or fucking electricity? When we were eating hard-boiled eggs and they pulling off million dollar heists and shit!"

He's referring to the years spent as an infant of the Black power movement when his mother, a convicted and certified revolutionary, found herself struggling to support her baby. The "million dollar heists" were those bank and brinks robberies, some of them foiled, that placed every known member of the Black Liberation Army of the FBI's most wanted list. "Fuck them! I need support not criticism!"

I've opened a painful space for Tupac. That of betrayal. That I should expect Tupac to regard these sisters's opinion with more weight than anyone else's has to do with my notion of Tupac's respect for legacy and the movement in general.

Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mother, was numbered amongst the Panther 21, members of the New York Panthers accused of conspiracy to blow up the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. She and her comrades stood defiantly on the principle of anti-imperialism during their hearings. They were imprisoned when she was pregnant with Tupac. In 1986 Tupac's stepfather, Mutulu Shakur (also Mopreme's biological father), was convicted of conspiracy linked to the Assata Shakur case. An extremely high profile political prisoner, Assata was liberated from prison in New Jersey after being convicted of killing a white police officer who killed her partner Zayd Shakur, one fateful night on the New Jersey Turnpike. In Assata's autobiography she recalls reuniting with Afeni, then pregnant with Tupac, in a prison gymnasium.

To suggest, as many do, that Tupac should be "responsible to his legacy" in some ways simplifies the legacy. But to suggest that Tupac's interpretation of this legacy should fit some romantic ideal of "the movement" is to deny reality specificity. Tupac's childhood, those years underground, above ground, the years when his disillusioned mother began smoking crack, are as much a party of his legacy as the black leather jackets and clenched fist.

Outside the restaurant a vagrant brother is arguing with himself. He's oily and tattered, but he wants no money. He may not even want an audience for the argument he is staging with his ghosts.

"That's gonna be me. Watch!" Tupac is actor now; he performs a dead-on impersonation of the schizophrenic brother.

"Standing on a fucking corner talking about, 'Fucking black panthers hip-hop bitches bitches niggas niggas get away from me you motherfuckas! Back up-It's loaded.' He laughs then looks back as he crosses the street. "Yup, if I make it. That's gonna be me."

March 9, 1994
mid afternoon
Sunset Boulevard, LA

When you're a rap star you never know when something's gonna jump off. It's one of the reasons you roll so thick. There's the constant threat of being 'tested' by that one fan who is sure he can replace you or at least brag to his hood about how he robbed or humiliated you. Ask any number of artists, each will have at least a half dozen stories about the peculiar combination of awe and animosity particular t hip-hop and its audience.

There's a Shell gas station located on this eternally upscale strip of Sunset Boulevard, around the corner from La Montrose, the hotel Pac lives at when in town. Pac throws his rental Lexus LS 300 coupe in park and rushes into the gas station's convenience store for magazines and munchies.

While he's browsing, a group of five brothas from some Crip hood recognize him. One of them decide to fuck with Pac.

"Where you from?"

It only takes Pac a second to place the thinly-veiled hostility in his voice, but it's the middle of the afternoon, he's all alone, and he really just wants a little reading material. Under ordinary circumstances (at least when you're talking to a Crip in Los Angeles), the question carries enormous weight—as in 'What set are you from?' i.e. what's your gang affiliation? Pac is more from Oakland than most places, but he's definitely not down with banging.

"All over."

"No you aint, you from Baltimore. But you don't never claim it. I know cause my homeboy used to take care of you."

"Well your homeboy lied, cause ain't nobody take care of me while I was in Baltimore."

Teenage customers, completely unaware of the escalating confrontation, interrupt, asking Pac for his autograph. While he's hitting them off with his signature he hears the nigga he's been beefing with tell his boys, 'I'm finst to jack this nigga!'

Pac glances a pair of scissors in his peripheral and grabs them, facing homeboy. "Well come on nigga, let's do this!"

The Korean merchant behind the counter gets nervous and picks up the phone. The four other Crips, who look sorry that they brought their trouble making homeboy out the hood, back up towards the double glass doors.

The Crip with the homie in Baltimore tags Pac in the eye and runs out of the store. Pac chases him around his car before he jumps in and they speed out of the lot and down Sunset.

March 10, 1994
Los Angeles Municipal County Court
Case #RO617, The People v. Shakur

The press begins fighting for prime shooting positions by 8:45. MTV, local affiliates and national networks send out the same gumpy whiteboy cameramen they send everywhere. When Tupac steps off the elevator, the media comes alive. The bright fluorescents turn on his chiseled features, creating blinding glares and casting disfigured shadows. "Don't touch my lawyer," Tupac places a protective arm in front of petite Le'chelle Wooderd who is nearly toppled by the swarm.

The Honorable George H. Wu, the judge presiding over the Hughes Brother case, will sentence Tupac after closing statements are made. Attorney Chokwe Lumumba, National Chairman of the Revolutionary New Afrikan People's Organization, is in LA working on the defense in the Reginald Denny case. He is Tupac's constant legal advisor and part of Tupac's extended family, ex- Panther and nationalist comrade to Afeni, who has watched Tupac grow into manhood. He testifies to Tupac's ambition, his productiveness and his desire to be useful to his community. Le'chelle Wooderd reminds the judge that although the media and the prosecutor's office have pursued the case like it was murder, it is simply battery. She pleads that his sentence be congruent with his crime, one that for the most part, Tupac never denied.

The attorney from the prosecutor's office, a perpetually disheveled looking Black woman, ask for the harshest sentencing available. She attempts to weave images of cop-shooter, gangsta rapper, rapist and ghetto bastard into one giant menace to society. At one point she introduces a man who was the subject of a magazine article she read, one born in the perilous Cabrini Green projects of Chicago who apparently overcame white supremacy and capitalism to embody the American dream—a model Negro. Why can't Tupac overcome his anger and do the same, she almost asks. Throughout her diatribe Tupac shifts in his seat anxious to defend himself. The judge allows him an opportunity.


"Your honor, I don't know anything about the South side of Chicago or Cabrini Green projects. I never tried to explain my temper by telling you stories about my childhood, poverty, the plight of Black people or even rappers. I work hard and I have a lot to contribute to my community. And I can best do that by being on the streets, not behind bars. I got into a fist fight with a grown man and I'm willing to accept responsibility for my actions. But I'm not the monster she wants you believe I am."

Judge Wu sentences Pac to 15 days in LA County, a sentence that is, as he points out, relatively moderate. The sentence is suspended and Pac is to report to the jail at 9 a.m. on May 10th.
Reporters rush outside the courtroom to tape the statement Pac promised them.

"Ask me the questions respectfully and I'll answer them," he regulates.

MTV asks the predictable: "What advice do you have for you fans?"

Tupac turns his baseball hat backwards. "Think about it. A fist fight becomes battery in the courts. Two and a have half minutes just cost me 15 days."


October 31, 1993
12:30 a.m.
Atlanta, GA


"Can I get the real niggas in the house to get my back!"

The real niggas are slightly afraid for Tupac. They've spent $15 to see him at Clark Atlanta University's gymnasium and there's a good chance they will head back to their dorms without a full concert. The promoters, also Atlanta University students, spent nearly a half-hour backstage reiterating the school's strict rules about drug use to Tupac. (Apparently neither school officials nor hired security are willing to engage in any lengthy debate about marijuana as healing herb, non "drug.")

He holds the blunt high above his head and the crowd.

"What I want to know is, if I light this will you let them take me to jail?"

The ladies, many of the prim, proper Spelman virgins, shriek at the top of their lungs in support of the most beautiful rapper alive. Nobody's fool, Pac includes the brothas.

"I need to know where the thug niggas is at!"

A masculine war cries echoes throughout the gym.

"If they arrest me I'ma jump in the sea of niggas and they gone haveta arrest each and every one of us."

The crows erupts into what they dream is an impenetrable wall of defiance.

It's common knowledge that Pac is completely unpredictable. And tonight he really surprises. He gives one of those rare things in hip-hop—a good show. And his tightly rolled blunt remains unlit. Until of course he jumps in this Benz and he and his boys, another two cars, head to Midtown where he has a hotel room for the night.

Two traffic lights from the hotel, at the Piedmont and Spring streets intersection, Pac notices some kind of commotion at the car ahead of him as he slows down for the light. From the driver's seat, Pac can see two whiteboys reaching in the window of the car ahead of him. It's dark but Pac is certain that the single person in the car is a Blackman. Without a second thought Tupac jumps out of the car and asks what the fuck is going on. The Southern whiteboys lose their grip on the driver and the car speeds off.

The whiteboys, brothers Mark and Scott Whitwell, look up and find their audience is three cars full of Black men. They panic. Mark Whitwell pulls out a gun and tells Pac to 'Run!'

Tupac can hardly believe his ears.

"I started having' mothafuckin flashbacks of Rodney King and Kunta Kente," he remembers. "We been running all our mothafuckin' lives," he thinks.

He reaches in his car for his heat. Mark Whitewell fires his gun. Pac, who spends free time at firing ranges, leans over the hood of his car and catches both of them non-fatally; Mark in the abdomen and Scott in the ass.

There's nothing in Tupac's personality that would have allowed him to be passive to this kind of attack. In fact, there's little in his person that would've allowed him to sit there and watch—as two whiteboys harassed that Black driver. As so many of us would have. We would have hesitated, considered "reality", which has so little to do with truth, imagined innumerable "real" consequences and sped by. If we hope to understand Tupac at all, we must realize this is impossible for him.

Truth is these were two whiteboys who'd threatened and attacked him. Reality is they're both off-duty cops, with the authority of Confederate Georgia behind them. This Tupac finds out only when he is arrested an hour later at his hotel room in the Sheraton. Because the Whitwell brother as so shady—the gun that they possessed was stolen from the room at the precinct where confiscated weapons are held and they were both drunk—a formal indictment has yet to be filed against Tupac.

The night had mythic potential: 'Black knight slays cracker dragons (centuries old) who emerge in the night, fangs bared.' In the South no less! It's the kind of community work we all dream of doing.

Shooting another Black man post crack era requires little courage. The genocidal repercussions of racism are clearly evidenced in our ability as a people to elevate self-hated to an art form and staggering national homicidal count. In this equation, whiteboys in particular, are untouchable. We talk a good game when it comes to the white devil but rare is the brotha (or organization) who even imagaines physical confrontation with his oppressor. Let alone acts on it. It is in this way that Tupac's actions Halloween night, are so utterly fearless.


April 4, 1994
Royaltan Hotel
New York City


"I'm staying right here in this little ass room. Nigga gotta stay out of trouble."

The Notorious B-I-G is visiting Pac at his hotel. The two did some Gemini bonding the instant they laid eyes on each other more than a year ago and have been road dawgs every since. Pac practices some of his new lyrics on Big over blunts and Hennessey. I videotape the exchange with a brand new camera Pac purchased.

The phone rings and again Pac is required to defend himself. Two nights earlier he'd dropped by NBC studios to watch Snoop's performance of "Saturday Night Live." I'd seen him backstage, but hadn't noticed the pasty whitegirl following around by the tails of his leather coat. I was standing there talking with Malika Shabazz, Malcolm X'S daughter, when Pac rushed by and gave us hugs.

"Is that Madonna?" Malika whispered as Pac walks away. I jump to his defense. "Are you buggin' Pac wouldn't be caught dead with that bitch."

Then they emerged from Snoop's dressing room, Madonna's hair dyed jet black, her eyes red from chronic. I just kinda stood there with my shelltops in my mouth.

It's not that they were intimate at all, even though the outing earned then a "Couple Made In Hell" insert in the Enquier. It's just that we got that treasonous feeling sisters get when they see a brother with a whitegirl. Not to mention whitegirl culture vulture.

"Look Madonna is just another white bitch? I ain't even fucking with her," Tupac insists to the concerned caller. "She's nothing but money and that was nothing but business." With that he ends his call and reaches into his bag from the electronic store.

"Big, did I show you what I bought today." He pulls out a complicated gadget with wires and transistors. "A bug."

"From now on, bitch wanna fuck me I'm getting it all on tape." He puts the headset around his bald head to demonstrate.

"Or I could use it to hear niggas talking shit. Put this little piece right here," he plants a microscopic bug under the hotel's lampshade, "leave the room." he actually leaves the hotel room, " hear 'em scheming on me and come back blasting. Blaow! Blaow! Blaow!" He practically kicks the door in as he re-enters. It's not the first time I see Bishop, the haunting character from the movie Juice, re-emerge in Tupac.

The phone rings again. This time it's a girl Tupac has been trying to see for awhile. She's afraid he just wants the pussy. "No, we can go to dinner anything you wanna do... It's not like that...Can't a nigga just want to see you, take you out?" When he hangs up, he has a date.

He turns up his snifter and starts getting dressed. He decides to change shirts. First he drapes his perfectly toned abdomen with a plain white Hanes, then he slides into an official bulletproof vest, he hides the vest with an oversized shirt. He leave his gatt in the room. We walk him down to the lobby.

"Aiight nigga," Big gives him a pound, "good luck catching a cab."

"That's all I got is good luck."


July 4, 1994
Detroit, Michigan


Dear Lord, Can you hear me?/ It's just me/ A young nigga tryin' make it on these rough streets/ I'm on my knees beggin'/ Please come save me/ The whole world done made a nigga crazy/ I got my .357 cain't control it/ Screamin' die motherfucker/ And it's loaded/ Everybody run for cover/ Aw shit/ Thug Life motherfucker!/ Duck quick/ Momma raised a hellraiser/ Why cry?/ That's just life in the ghetto/ Do or die...


There's a moment in "Hellraiser," a song on Tupac's forthcoming album where Tupac submits totally to pain and vulnerability. Of all the things about Tupac, his music is the least noticed and most improved. "Hellraiser" is compelling testimony to that. Like most hip-hop, it's autobiographical, but it's his passionate delivery that invokes midnight tent rivals where the testifier is possessed by the holy ghost. The song is actually an open letter from Tupac to the Lord. It's not your typical rapper venting empty anger.

Dear Lord if you hear me/ Tell me why/ A little girl like Latosha [Harlan] had to die/ She never got to see the bullet/ Just heard the shot/ Her little body couldn't take it/ It shook and dropped/ And when I saw it on the news, how she bucked the girl/ Killed Latosha now I'm screamin' Fuck the World!

If I close my eyes, I can imagine him locked in a sound booth, the veins throbbing from his neck, voice hoarse, sweat drippin' down this face, grippin' the mic tight like a vice.
Thug Life, motherfucker I lick shots/ Every nigga up out/ drop two cops/ Dear Lord can you hear me/ when I die/ Let a nigga be strapped, fucked up and high/ With my hands on the trigger Thug nigga/ Stressin' like a motherfuckin' drug dealer/ And even in the darkest nights/ I'm a thug for life/ I got the heart to fight...

Jay-Z (Vibe 1998)

Jay-Z: The Life (Vibe, December 1998)

Let me tell you something about money. And drugs. Myth and lore. Mandatory sentencing. Open caskets with bloated, bejeweled bodies.

About kamikaze capitalists who just happened to be teenagers. Young black boys who may have never understood their position—that of mere pawns—in the larger scheme of this but who quickly expanded their tightly wound worlds. Then set them afire. With the heaviest, most sophisticated weaponry countries like Israel had to import. How aunts and uncles became somnambulant street stalkers and parents police informants.
About the little girl who had always loved the little boys and quickly learned to love the things these boys now had to offer---all that glittered.

I'm not saying this was every black person's experience. Just those who were coming of age, poor, and living in a major city in the '80s. In New York, hustlers like Fat Cat from Queens and Calvin Klein from Brooklyn—they were becoming famous. Cities and small towns in Maryland, the Carolinas, Virginia, and even the nation's capital—especially the nation's capital—became bloody war zones for enterprising, murderous hustlers from New York City looking to "open" them up.

A lot of speculation/ On the monies I've made/ How is he for real/ Is that nigga really paid?/ Hustlers I've met or dealt with direct/ Is it true he stayed in beef and slept with a Tech?

"I was never a worker," say Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter. "And that's not even being arrogant. I was just never a worker." Jay, who made his fortune a decade before the release of his debut, 1996's Reasonable Doubt, isn't exactly forth-coming about his past. You half expect him to pat you down or check the hotel room smoke detector for cameras—and I've known him for a little while. We both knew and loved Big, and became friends because of him. "My situation—" He restarts, tensely, "I went out of town, not far, to Jersey. Me and my man. We was pioneering some shit. I was never around the Calvin Kleins, 'cause to be around them you would have to be under them. You weren't going to be over them. That would have been conflict."

The Life, as those who live it like to call it, sets the tone of all three of Jay-Z albums (Reasonable Doubt, 1997's In My Lifetime Vol. 1, and his new Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life), and the subject matter has opened him up to a fair amount of criticism. Jay's history as a New York baller is further complicated by his current closed, defensive, often unreadable demeanor. Folks who keep this kind of lore running are divided on Jay's '80s' status. He was either a) the nigga next to the nigga, but not That Nigga, and that he's simply telling other people's stories. Or b) Jay's money is still on the streets, with Roc-A-Fella serving as a front for his hustling business partners. Or c) His past is far darker than he tells it, and grudges over bodies and monies are still held.

Then there are my my dawgs, true hip hop heads who absolutely refuse to listen to any of Jay's albums; they hold someone in his camp responsible for their brother's murder. I was getting more money than most of the cats—than all of the cats I was with," Jay says, dealing with rumor one. On the possibility of his money still being dirty, he is utterly dismissive. "Come on now." And about brothers and bodies, well, some things are too real to be asking for some article.

Still, stories are passed. From one housing project to another. Brooklyn to Queens and beyond. The streets say Calvin Klein owned brownstones in Brooklyn with a purported million dollars stashed in each. The streets say that Killer Ben, who, like Capone, relieved ballers of their jewelry quite regularly, moved on to rappers, one of whom had him killed, if you believe the rumors. Let the mythmakers tell it, Fat Cat's war in D.C. became so intense that his solders began shooting at jake on sight. Those stories that are so mammoth or unbelievable morph into myth and in this way ghetto superstars are born; legends are made.

The one name that is a constant in relationship to Jay, from believers and nonbelievers alike, is Danny Dan—also from Bedford-Stuyvesant's Marcy Houses. It is said that when Dan was buried in the late '80s, he was wearing at least $100,000 worth of jewelry. His funeral, which was talked about for five years after, was one huge fashion show. But more than the jewelry or the girls in furs is the remarkable detail that Danny Dan died with a will. "Danny Dan was a cat in the projects, coming up," says Jay. "He was very influential in my life, but from afar. Holmes was doing it. He'd always put something away, not touch it. I was like, I need to be doing that." Danny Dan was five years older than Jay and was know for being the kind of reckless driver who would push German sedans past 100 m.p.h. down New York's crowded streets. "He always said he'd die in a car crash, and he did," say Jay. "Coming back from D.C. on I-95." Those that talk say Danny's death left a vacancy, further south, in Virginia and that Jay moved on it, opened it up further, and creamed off.

We've flown to Virginia; Jay and Roc-A-Fella upstarts Memphis Bleek and a trio of dimes called Major Coins are performing at a Labor Day weekend concert at Hampton Convention Center. I've followed him here to interview him about hustling. Jay takes a sip from his rum punch and looks out the hotel room window, over the harbor, in the direction of Newport News and Virginia Beach. " Yeah, this did it for me, for sure." Indeed, VA is like a second home to him. His man, a baller from Richmond, has a small fleet of cars driven down so Jay can get around.

I ask him how a city is opened and am surprised by the answer. "Everything that has ever happened has to do with a girl." Not that shit about blaming women's obsession with Dynasty on your appetite for destruction. "No, no, far more specific. You meet somebody and befriend her. You need her and the most thorough nigga in town. Because girls yap, she'll tell you who that is, who has money. You meet him; you've got something for him—better prices. He'll bring everybody else in line." And resistance?

"A lot of little fires. But in small towns you ain't wildin' out. You go to jail. This is like a Commonwealth; they'll lock you up for cursing. It takes a special nigga to do a small town. Anybody can D.C. You strong-arm D.C. Ya'll can shoot at each other every weekend." D.C. Exactly. Locals there got so fed up with New York frontiersman they began firing at almost anything with a N.Y. license plate. "I know. It was sweet for a minute, New York niggas fucked up. A lot of shit happened 'cause of bitch." Ho-hum. "You gotta believe that. You go into a nigga's town, you shining, and you messing with all their broads. You go into their town; drive whatever you want. Shine, fine. But don't fuck my baby's mother, man. And my man's baby's mother and his man's baby's mother. 'Cause now we sitting at Sizzler like this nigga fucked all our baby's mothers. Now it's a problem."

Have you ever killed anyone?

Nah. And I wouldn't tell you that.

Have you ever had anyone killed?

I wouldn't tell you that either. But no.

Just thought I'd ask.

Oh brother [sips from rum punch]. ‘You just thought you'd ask.’ Let me ask you something, Am I going to jail when this comes out? Should I just map out my little exit from the country now?

The thing is, there are no clouds above Jay. He is hands down the wittiest person I've ever met. He misses nothing and will floor you with quick one-liners. He is, more often than not, laughing. His laugh is odd, like a sneeze, and just as contagious. He drives around Manhattan by himself, blasting Aerosmith. And if for some reason you missed your daily fix of The Simpsons or Seinfeld, you can call Jay and he will act out the episode for you. The whole rapper thing, the obsession with dying and life being one bleak apocalyptic nightmare, just went right by him. His crew: Ty Ty, Wais, Radolfo, and Bleek; his business partners Damon Dash Kareem "Biggs" Burke, and ballers like Percy and Juan are a walking Def Comedy Jam concert. Except they're all really smart.

Earlier in the summer Jay took me to a down-low spot on 97th and Amsterdam where he promised I'd have the best lobster ever. It was a nondescript Puerto Rican joint with an awning that read RESTAURANT. The trip was impromptu—I hit him on his cell; we were both in Harlem and hungry—but his crew were already inside, holding down three cafeteria-style tables. Before the first bottle of wine was gone the table was doubled over in laughter. Juan, who is a star of a storyteller ("Did I ever tell you about the time Michael Jordan kicked me out of the VIP room of my own party?") and according to Jay, a baller who is rumored to be "richer than Bill Cosby," screams on a cat—at another table—for pulling out an oversized cellular. "This nigga's walking around with a fuckin' pay phone. Yo, papi! You need a quarter?"

Since Jay surrounds himself with people he respects, not soldiers or people who run errands for him, he will sit back, play audience, laugh so hard he tears.

Back in VA, on the double-decked tour boat that Timbaland has chartered for Labor Day weekend, Jay's crew holds down a table, throwing back shots of cognac and popping champagne bottles. When the DJ spins "Hard Knock Life," all at the table bang the beat out on the white linen and roar the chorus (which samples "Hard-Knock Life" from the Broadway musical Annie) at the top of their lungs. When the first few bars of his and Jermaine Dupri's summer smash "Money Ain't a Thing" begin to rock the boat, Jay and his man from Richmond start throwing Benjamins in the air. Girls, Virginia natives, and college students reach above them, picking money from the sky before it twirls to the floor.

As fucked up as the crack game is, as smoked out as your uncle was, as many dawgs as you've buried, all you really want to do is sit about screaming songs together, throwing shots back, and money towards the ceiling. So, like the benefactors of bloody capitalism since time immemorial, The Life blocks out the death, making the party possible.

"It starts off as one thing," say Jay. "Then it becomes another. In the beginning it's, ‘I gotta take care of my family’, but you can't keep saying that, because in your first month, you've changed their whole situation around. Once you start living The Life it’s just no stopping... It's like making the money, the sound of the money machines clicking—for some people the sensation of the coke under their nails, like dirt for construction workers—the constant hustle, everything from the living to the actual work. It's completely addictive."

He'd tried rap before, in 1988. With Jaz, an MC from Brooklyn regrettably remembered for "Hawaiian Sophie." But the money was, like, insulting. "Jaz got a shitload of money from Geffen, like three hundred thousand dollars [for his record deal]. But he only saw, like, fifty thousand. That turned me off. I was like, Fuck that."

So Jay resumed his hustle. And that was work. He was shot at three times, once from less that 10 feet away, by a childhood friend. "That's why he got so close," Jay says. "I didn't see it coming. It was over some stupid shit, one of his houses in Trenton . We saw each other a couple weeks later at the parole office, no guns allowed. We laughed about it."Jay was arrested and detained for about a week in Jersey. "Why back," he says. "One some juvenile shit." He saw money; put a lot of it away, like Danny Dan before him. Lost friends and worker. And felt it, from a business standpoint at least. "You can always make more money. Once people are gone or locked up, there's no bringing them back or finding lost time. Some cats just think about the money, but it's really about people and relationships." Then, without much ceremony, around '92, he says he just left it alone.

"Being broke at thirty/ Give a nigga the chills..." Jay is reciting the lyric from Biggie's "Real Niggas Do Real Things." It rang true for him the first time he heard Big say it. "That one line right there. That shit just made me shiver. That was my constant struggle. No matter how I was doing, I'd be like, Yeah, I'm all right now, but what am I gonna do when I'm, like, thirty, forty. I can't keep up with this pace." So Jay began shopping himself as a solo artist.

"All of a sudden I was trying to get a deal; essentially become a worker," says Jay. "I guess I thought the sacrifice, the cut in money, was worth it for the peace of mind." Fortunately, his partner Damon Dash—who was trying to break into the music industry as manager of a group called the Future Sound—had that enterprising down-South approach to the record business, convincing Jay—after having endured a string of rejections—that they should take things into their own hands. Hence Roc-A-Fella Records, named after the billionaire architect of New York's ultratough drug policy. Reasonable Doubt was an instant classic in New York, yielding him a gold single— the smash "Ain't no Nigga" with Foxy Brown. His conversational tone, impeccable timing, and sharp observations made him a lyricist lover's favorite. With songs like "Can I Live" and "Dead Presidents," Jay was telling the story of the consummate baller—his own.

Jay and Big, Brooklyn natives with common connects, became friends, appearing on each other's albums. Jay added his vocals to Puff's No Way Out's "Young G's" after Big was gunned down in L.A. He attended the funeral by himself. Stood the entire time and left quickly, speaking to no one. "Going to Big's funeral was a big deal for me. I don't go to funerals, period. I don't want that to be my last memory of them." After the funeral he retreated to an island in the Caribbean, and was basically unreachable for a week or two. Then he came home and knocked out his second album, In My Lifetime Vol. 1, an eloquent but uneven reflection on hustling, breaking a promise he made to his fans on Reasonable Doubt—that that album would be his only. Despite Roc-A-Fella's new joint venture with Def Jam, his sophomore LP—although gold—didn't live up to his commercial expectations. I ask him if he considers the album a failure. "I could never fail... I think eighty-five percent of it is solid. And that eighty-five percent was better than everybody's
else's album at the time."

Less than a year after his rushed sophomore effort, his third, most perfect album, Vol.2 Hard Knock Life, is complete. And his setup couldn't have been better: The anthemic "Money Ain't a Thang," "It's Alright (featuring Memphis Bleek)," and "Can I Get A...(featuring Amil [Major Coins] and Ja Rule)" are all enjoying heavy radio rotation. "This whole thing, me reaching the zenith of my fame on my third album, it seems backwards to other people, but this is how it's always been," say Jay. "People are looking for the sensational, and I'm just not that nigga." When we attend a Norfolk State football game Labor Day weekend, Jay-Z is literally mobbed and has to be rushed out on some real star shit. And while I'm pissed about losing a shoe in the commotion, he admits to enjoying it. "That's love. Who doesn't want to be loved? I understand women," he muses. " I know they're smarter than men, that's why I can write for them... plus, I think it's my lips or something... maybe they think I'm gonna eat their coochie. In '99 that'll be my thing, I'll just hit broads off." A plan. "But mostly, I think they're attracted to The Life. If they don't want to be a part of it, they're at least curious."

For Jay and Roc-A-Fella, the baller lifestyle has become his selling point—the CD, the coke, The Life—all a marketing plan. Instead of enticing would-be ballers into working for him, he has become an iconographic symbol for our generation's hyper-materialism. Articulating The Life, be it the possibility of mutiny by workers("Coming of Age [Da Sequel] featuring Memphis Bleek") or the opening up of a city by using a girl ("Paper Chase" featuring Foxy Brown), Jay is untouchable. He didn't invent these codes. Real-life ballers did that.

I don't know, maybe he did too. Him and all his friends, improvising their way into expansion, past federal laws, and in between bullets. Since he "was never a worker," it is reasonable to assume he had some. I wonder aloud if moneymakers like himself consider the for which they've been directly responsible. I ask him to consider the little boys who just wanted to be him. The ones who are serving 80 percent or paid for The Life with their own. I want to know if he is haunted, if he feels regret. "Sometimes I sit on the edge of my bed for like an hour. I'll be in a zone, and I'll just think about... just everything. But then I shake it off, you know?" Well, no, I don't.

"I live with it. With this whole thing, you don't recruit, people come to you, wanting to work, begging you to be put on. We all know what the consequences are—jail or death." But there are mothers to face, I damn near plead, sons and daughters and baby mothers'. He is neither dismissive nor characteristically quick with his reply.

"We all gotta live with it."

Snoop (The Source 1993)

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RZA (Village Voice 1998)

RZA: Oh Gods (Village Voice

Dec 15 1998)

Long before white boys began embracing in football stadiums and throwing up Jesus for patriarchy, long before Chris Rock served a pathetic, conservative personal responsibility mantra as some new kind of revolutionary comedy, there were the gods. Oh God, the gods. Back in the early '90s, the Earth Medina dragged me to Fort Greene Park a couple of times for those Sunday "Parliament" sessions. They could be massive—I'm talking hundreds of gods, a few dozen Earths, and 12 straight hours of mathematics. The occasional original man would stand up, nuts in one hand, turkey dog in the other, and tell us how as god he had mastered malt liquor, the Times Square turnstiles, or crack. That's my word. The drill, the John 3:16 if you will—Civilization: Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding. Cultural Refinement. But mostly it was good old-fashioned essentialism. Us the original, obviously superior Cushites, reacting to policies and laws with vague mind-over-matter Masonry and numerology. It makes perfect sense to me that the Five Percent Nation would be born, thrive, and to this day survive in NYC. We are a people in search of nationhood.

The Wu-Tang Clan have always been a super–sci-fi, dusted, Dungeons and Dragons–ish, dense god body. Their communal approach, their movement—simultaneously collective and fiercely individual—is all a true and living lesson on survival in the cannibalistic music industry. Producer RZA's sonic melange has ranged from the sub-basement Tical to the murderous Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (yes, violence has a tone), to the love an them reworking of the Motown classic, "You're All I Need." He knows to pull out, be spare, for a spatially innovative lyricist like Genius. He drowns out lesser MCs like the Gravediggaz, Sunz of Man, and himself with chaos.

Wu-Tang have diversified their business by venturing into fashion (Wu-Wear) but their muted sense of style says drug scrambler and is as identifiable as Puff's Sunday Baptist best. They are often incoherent in interviews, with the exception of Method Man and RZA, who are the only two that will always show up. They are inaccessible. They are rock stars. Still, though the Wu reunion album broke sales records its first week (black gods calling whitey devil, even in William Gibson speak, has always brought out the Norman Mailer in whiteboys), 1997 was a Bad Boy year. It was a tearful moment. One that Ole Dirty interrupted, but a marker nonetheless. It wasn't just that Puff had polished hip-hop's edge—Wu don't compete with Mase anyway. Oracles of the underground, they raise their own stakes. And by that standard Wu-Tang Forever was plain listless, uninspired. I doubt RZA drove around listening to Forever.

And I seriously doubt that he'll be banging his solo alter-ego joint RZA as Bobby Digital. RZA is not a good MC. Period. His aggressive delivery may be crammed with knowledge and mathematics (his mastery of the "lessons" is street legend and is a large part of his leadership position within the Clan), but his rhyme style grates the nerves. Perhaps, as a producer, he intentionally subverts his mic skills. A saboteur on his own shit. I've even toyed with the idea that the shower effect you get when he literally spits lyrics is a result of his vampire gold fronts, thus a comment on consumerism and South African gold mines or something. Now, total deconstructionists (especially the architects of techno in my hometown Detroit) would argue that pleasure is last in a long, cold list of aesthetics. And I'm tolerant, I actually find some illbient pleasurable. But RZA as an MC asks too much even of the most devout Wu disciple. Though, in the tradition, there are those who will herald it simply because it is so intolerable.

And then there is the irreconcilable nastiness of his misogyny. When he and his live-in Earth get into an argument he is acerbic yet devoid of wit. "Get the fuck out my house/'Fore I grab you by your hair and slap dick to your mouth/...Girl, I'll fuckin slave trade your ass." Her crimes: "You don't cook/You don't clean.../Sleep all day/Eat/Gain weight.../Started with the body of a model/Pussy tight as a pharmaceutical bottle.../Now when I fuck you that shit echo/Cuz your pussy is so hollow..." A throwback to early '90s, post-Cube for sure, but disturbingly convincing. I imagine again, since I've been locked in far too many debates with Wu heads, that this naked hatred of women is some kind of remedy to hip-hop that in their minds had become too bitch friendly. (I mean, "most of your fans wear high heels" was supposed to register as a dis). Ole Dirty appears only a few bars before the opening of "Fuck What You Think" to calm Earths: "Bitches we love you, motherfuckas." But even if you've never been to Parliament, you know that kind of love is pure slavery. Savage. Not at all godlike.

Method Man has always been regarded as the friendlier, slightly suave, completely accessible clan member, winning Grammys, appearing on joints with Boyz II Men, and racking up film credits. And in pop terms he is the only true star of his tribe. He simply radiates. But he hates that. He wears milky white contacts and fangs, comes out with his hair half braided and crust around his mouth just to dim the appeal to the ladies. And we are not discouraged. We see his attempts to grimy up in the same way we would an impossibly beautiful, serious woman doing some thing like gain 40 pounds. He is elegant. He is beautiful to look at and he is magnetically sexy. He is also the finest of Wu's MCs. (Although I've long waved Inspectah Deck's flag and know like you do that Raekwon's Only Built is the Wu's most perfect album.) His distinct gravelly voice is no crutch or gimmick. Meth's style is relentless. He rhymes like a perfectly reasonable cat with a volcanic temper. He is as witty as he can be hostile.

His last album, Tical, was one that Meth spent too much time making excuses for, since after the Wu debut and Rae and right before Genius it is, in my book, the third best Wu album. Those that dismissed it were the underground's version of playa haters (a term I apologize for even employing). Meth's appeal matched with his undeniable talent plain intimidates boys in the all-boys club. And the dense, battle hymn production on Tical, which many argue is the problem with the album, is exactly the kind of sonic work that has earned RZA a reputation as an innovator.

Because of the lukewarm street reception of the platinum Tical, Meth is hungrier than ever on Judgement Day. His sophomore album has the focus and conviction no one seemed to be able to muster for Forever. He is as generous as any Wu when it comes to passing the mic. "Play IV Keeps," featuring Prodigy and Havoc of Mobb Deep and Deck, is so riotous it will make you want to rob someone. Or at least run a red light. But Meth's brightest moments are his own. "Re tro Godfather" loops the classic "I'll Do Anything for You" in a way that is irreverent but uncompromising. "Break Ups 2 Make Ups," a collabo with D'Angelo, is a sour shout out to an ex who wants one more chance, but it comes from the space of some one who actually once had love for the sis, not just the circumference of her. "Sweet Love" featuring Street Life and Capadonna is a street serenade sequel to Raekwon's "Ice Cream." At 110 bpm, the millennium-phobic title track "Judgement Day" is a sequel to the classic "Bring the Pain." "Killing Fields" is a breathless battle rhyme done solo. The album is both anarchic and appealing, hardcore and thoughtful.

How ironic that the god with the most shine would emerge the most consistently listenable of this subpop rowdy bunch? While RZA seems to be burning out—after overseeing almost a dozen albums in less than six years he has begun to relinquish the board; the gods Tru Master, 4th Disciple, and even Deck and Meth submit tracks on Judgement Day—Method Man is picking up steam. I don't doubt the two will resent the juxtaposition. In their communal god body a win for one is a win for all. But they've been shooting like 50 percent for a long time now. Not supreme being status by anyone's religion. End

Octavia E. Butler (Village Voice 2006)

Octavia E. Butler: Parable of the Writer (Village Voice 2006)

Octavia E. Butler, science fiction visionary, 1947–2006

There are those among us who worship Toni Morrison, then sheepishly admit to taking three years to actually make it through 'Beloved'.

Not so with dearly departed sister Octavia E. Butler, who passed away at 58 in front of her Seattle home on February 24. Her 12 science fiction novels, which can be divided into three major series, encourage a compulsion to tear through one after the other, to never want to be away from her sprawling universes and her staggering humanity.

Like most science fiction, hers was primarily concerned with the master-slave relationship. She hated the idea that her Xenogenesis trilogy, the story of generations of Earth's refugees who "pay the rent" with their reproductive systems, could be read as an allegory of the psychosexual torment of plantation life. The Patternist series, which culminates in the 1980 magnum opus Wild Seed, features one of literature's most terrifying villains, the body-snatching Doro. He tracks Anyanwu, a shape-shifter and healer hundreds of years old, to 18th-century Africa. There he forces her to spawn his progeny. She becomes his great love and the only protection her generations of children have from his merciless appetite for fresh flesh.Anyanwu, most at home in her early-twenties body, is beyond fierce: Imagine a Pam Grier who makes the middle passage both as a slave and a dolphin.

The terror in the Western imagination of being conquered by an enslaving military force with superior technology is a conceit revisited countless times by sci-fi writers like Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein. Butler flipped this by pushing the limits of humanity. She embraced the idea of aliens transforming humans into new, enhanced beings. She looked at those takeovers and the genetic flaws they produced as opportunities for exploration, even improvement. In any case, she seemed to argue, the necessary compromises were no worse than what already exists. But if I were to call this a parallel to what slavery has produced in North America, she'd probably spin in her grave. She claimed to be "amazed" that some people would read her narratives as commentary on slavery, but what she really seemed to be resisting throughout her career was a reductive and dismissive analysis of the role her race and gender played in her fiction.

Parable of the Sower, her 1993 soft-science journey, is in the tradition of near-future dystopias. Pyromaniacs chew their way through gated communities and burn post-apocalyptic Los Angeles to the ground. Packs of dogs revert to their wild ways and like the abandoned dogs in post-Katrina New Orleans feast on human flesh. Sower's shero, Lauren Olamina, is a delusional empath, barely out of her teens, who leads her cadre by foot to safe ground in Northern California. Along the way she invents a non- religious religion, Gaia, in which "The only lasting truth/ Is Change." Butler continued the saga in 2000's lesser Parable of the Talent; she began but never finished a third book in the series.

As a six-foot pre-teen with a severe stammer, Octavia E. Butler learned early on what it meant to be an outsider. Raised the Baptist daughter of a shoeshine man, she grew to find religion oppressive, only later taking a more forgiving look at Christianity's promises of salvation. "Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had," she once told an interviewer. "If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish." She wrote her 1976 debut, Patternmaster, while working at a factory. She stuck to her premise that her time-travel paradox, the non-series Kindred (1979), transport a Black L.A. woman in an interracial relationship from 1976 to the antebellum South, even when editors demurred. Though it was her most widely read book, she was only paid $5,000 for it. She spoke in interviews about how friendly a writer could become with a 10-pound sack of potatoes. She lived in Los Angeles but never learned to drive, preferring the bus. She lived her adult life alone, saying her solitude allowed her to better deal with other humans when she emerged from her self-seclusion. In the late '90s she migrated, along with her 300 boxes of books, to Seattle, where after battling a four-year case of writer's block she joyously banged out Fledgling and took classes in public speaking to tour in support of that novel.

Her trip to New York last fall drew her legions of Black female fans out to see their mysterious goddess. Lesbians in the audiences would try and press her to concede that her vampire's (like all vampires') appetite was an allegory for ambisexuality. She seemed agitated that her beloved Shori Matthews could be co-opted, however noble the cause. But what of writer's intention and readers' reception? She may have responded to the criticism from the hardcore sci-fi community (dominated almost exclusively by white men) that her early work was more fantasy than science with the Xenogenesis trilogy, but she bristled at being contained in any way. Her protagonists were always deeply flawed, deeply human, and—whether in love with aliens or white men—deeply principled. And while she chose a life alone with her words, her work and worldview were always concerned first and foremost with community—almost always under the leadership of complex women, who (besides Lilith in Dawn) were almost always Black. She was an optimist in spite of herself, and those of us whose minds she blew again and again will mourn her complicated vision. Of her Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning tale "Speech Sounds," she wrote, "I began the story feeling little hope or liking for the human species, but by the time I reached the end of it, my hope had come back. It always seems to do that."