Thirty years after rapper, actor and cultural icon Tupac Amaru Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, a jury has finally convicted someone in connection with his murder.
That jury decided that Duane “Keffe D” Davis is guilty of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon. In the three decades of discussion surround Tupac’s killing, the name “Keffe D” has often come up, largely because he brought it up himself. In interviews with the police years ago, in a memoir and in a documentary, Davis said he organized the drive-by and handed his nephew the murder weapon.
Prosecutors called Davis, now 63, a “shotcaller” for the South Side Compton Crips and said he sought revenge on Shakur after he attacked Davis’ nephew. But during the trial, Davis’ defense argued that all the claims he’d made about being involved were lies. The jury, obviously, rejected that argument.
Davis’ conviction, which could bring a life sentence, marks the end of a case that has been the talk of the hip-hop community — and the source of conspiracy theories — for 30 years.
All the other people Davis initially said were with him in the car the night of Sept. 7, 1996, are dead, and he was the only person ever charged. Davis’ conviction, which could bring a life sentence, marks the end of a case that has been the talk of the hip-hop community — and the source of conspiracy theories — for 30 years.
The verdict coming so close to the 30th anniversary of Tupac’s Sept. 13, 1996, death — he died six days after being shot multiple times — makes it a good time to expand our focus beyond his violent end and Monday’s conviction and examine his enduring relevance.
Some people, especially in the ’90s, may have pigeonholed him as a “gangsta rapper” caught up in an East Coast-West Coast beef, but anyone today who takes his work seriously will be reminded that he was more prophet than problem. Pac’s poetry and social commentary were steeped in an awareness of state-sanctioned systemic inequity, and his artistry was fueled by a spirit that refused to accept incrementalism as a substitute for real progress.
Listen to “Changes,” where he famously rhymes “They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor,” and try not to think of the recent combination of cuts to SNAP and a war in Iran that has cost, at least, tens of billions of dollars.
“Trapped,” Tupac’s condemnation of excessive surveillance and police violence, fits in well with today’s debate over Flock cameras and their disproportionate effect on poor and Black communities.
In 2026, Americans continue to feel stretched and shut out of an economy that is growing on paper but in reality only seems to benefit a select few. In a 1994 interview, Tupac used the analogy of poor, hungry people standing outside a door seeing an abundance of food — some of it going to waste — but not being allowed in to eat. Those people would start by asking for food, he said, but eventually do something more drastic.
A son of Afeni Shakur, a leader of the Black Panther Party in New York who spent time in jail while pregnant with him, he was named for Túpac Amaru, the 16th-century Incan emperor who fought the Spanish conquistadors.
A son of Afeni Shakur, a leader of the Black Panther Party in New York who spent time in jail while pregnant with him, he was named for Túpac Amaru, the 16th-century Incan emperor who fought the Spanish conquistadors.
Politics for Tupac was never about red v. blue. It was solely about improving the conditions of Black people in America. He knew and appreciated the sacrifices made by leaders from the past, but he eschewed outdated respectability politics and was even more impatient with taking small steps than, say, today’s insurgent Democratic socialists are with mainstream Democrats.
In Davis’ murder trial, the prosecution and some witnesses spoke of a hip-hop era with deadly conflicts involving chart-topping artists and record executives who capitalized on the sensationalized beefs, violent imagery and aggressive lyrics. We should also call out the mainstream media outlets that sensationalized beefs involving hip-hop stars, giving them front-page coverage that damaged the image of Black men broadly and arguably obscured the very real danger those conflicts posed.
Between September 1996 and March 1997, we lost Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G., two of hip-hop’s most iconic figures. The artists, the diss tracks, the producers, the record companies, the media coverage — all of it formed a toxic nexus spiraling out of control.
Although Tupac was involved in that beef and used violent and aggressive imagery and lyrics, that’s not all he was or all his work was. Songs like “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” about a young girl giving birth in secret, and “Dear, Mama,” an appreciation for the Black Panther leader he saw struggle with addiction, reflect a complexity that few of his peers at the time had.
While Monday’s conviction is a reminder that he was taken too soon, his catalog continues to show us what it means to take seriously the responsibility of being a witness and to tell the truth even when it makes America uncomfortable.
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