This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

This week, the late rapper, Tupac Shakur,

would have turned 52 years old.

He was killed in 1996 at the age of 25,

and over the decades, a flurry of books and documentaries

have been created and written about his short life,

and the way he used rap lyrics to convey messages

about the world around him.

Come on, come on.

I see no changes, wake up in the morning and ask myself.

It's like work, live it, shut up, blast myself.

I'm trying to feel your poor need to work some blast

and I'm a coach so I'm never for a person.

That's The Song Changes by Tupac Shakur.

writer Santi Elijah Holly wanted to delve even deeper

into the family behind Tupac, and what made him

an electrifying presence in the voice of a generation.

In his new book, An American Family,

The Shakurs and the Nation They Created,

Holly explores the complex legacy of the Shakur family,

and the different factions of the black nationalist movement

in which they were apart.

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