"My Only Fear of Death is Coming Back Reincarnated": Tupac Shakur and the Condemnation of the World

With the approaching 30th anniversary of the tragic passing of Tupac Amaru Shakur, an appraisal of how Shakur conceived the idea of “future” is warranted, particularly in light of his consistent articulation and expectation of his early death. This paper explores Shakur’s notion of death as liberative against the terrors of modernity and its commitments to the subjugation, early death, and disappearance of Black persons. Within this framework, I pay particular attention to how Shakur critiques the organized vision of the future articulated within dispensationalist eschatology, a framework through which Black futures are rendered unavailable under the terms of modernity. Rather than imagining the present as a site where Black flourishing is possible, Shakur calls for the end of the world and its dominating logics while visually and sonically depicting Black flourishing in a deferred future—a Black heaven. This paper reads these themes through the song “Blasphemy” from The Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory and the video for “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.”