(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Six weeks after hip-hop celebrated its milestone 50th birthday and two weeks following the 27th anniversary of Tupac Amaru Shakur's death, police arrested and charged a suspect in his murder. For the legion of Tupac fans, suspect Duane Keith “Keefe D” Davis has been hiding in plain sight. There is a well-documented history — from books to television — of him publicly boasting about his part in Tupac's assassination. Retired Los Angeles police detective Greg Kading told the Associated Press“People have been yearning for him to be arrested for a long time. It's never been unsolved in our minds. It's been unprosecuted.”
Although it's the court of law and not the court of public opinion that will ultimately decide Keefe D's fate, the widespread news coverage and interest in the arrest made something abundantly clear: The general public's attitude toward Tupac's death has shifted from dismissing it as merely a casualty of rap's violence to believing it is a mystery worthy of law enforcement's full attention.
Considering how police departments in major cities have set up “hip-hop task forces” targeting gangster rappers since the early '90s, and the genre has been the focus of ongoing congressional hearings over its violent lyrics, this isolated moment is noteworthy. And it's perhaps one that wouldn't have happened without the money and influence Tupac — and hip-hop culture in general — has generated in the nearly 30 years since his death.
Hip-hop's relationship with society is still on the rocks, though the tokenism of its top artists is more prevalent than ever. The genre upped its tax bracket with multi-hyphenate artists who have become television and movie producers, record label founders, restaurant owners and brand ambassadors. While rappers used to buy their own sewing machines to start clothing lines, they're now fixtures on the sides of high-end fashion shows (with some artists even walking the runway).
It's ironic, though, a testament to the art form's and culture's resilience in translating its “by any means necessary” battle cry into an entire high-profiting global phenomenon.
And there is no doubt that had Tupac been alive today, he'd be amongst the 1% of rap royalty who have coveted seats at the table. While alive, he was more than just one of the biggest rap stars. He branched out into movies, TV shows and poetry, so his ascent to the rap hierarchy in death is not coincidental.
Neither is the fact that it was when hip-hop surpassed Rock ‘n' Roll as the dominant genre of American popular music in 2018 that police began an arguably more dedicated pursuit of Tupac's killer. In a news conference following the Keefe D charges, Las Vegas police homicide Lieutenant Jason Johansson explained, “Over the last five years, we've conducted countless interviews and corroborated numerous facts that were not only consistent with the crime scene on the night of the incident but also corroborated and were consistent with the sequence of events that night.”
That would have been at the 22-year mark of Tupac's death, so why the sudden interest? Maybe because it's in recent years, he has evolved into a curious piece of pop culture iconography.
References to him have been made in countless TikTok creations; retail stores, such as Target, Old Navy, and the trendier Urban Outfitters, sell his face on t-shirts and sweatshirts. Podcasts, documentaries, and biopics have focused on him, with today's rappers paying homage to him in songs.
You can even find votive candles of him on sale for idol worship. Some outright believe he is still alive, tucked away in some compound in Cuba alongside activist Assata Shakur. His prolific release of countless posthumous songs and projects does nothing to debunk those conspiracy theories, even amid autopsy photos circulating through the pipelines of the dark web.
Perhaps the draw to Tupac has something to do with the fact that he died at 25, cementing his youthfulness in our collective consciousness, but it's also about his lyrical prowess to capture the lived experiences of communities within Black America — songs that are as relevant now as they were decades ago.
As a multibillion-dollar empire, an art form that has now found its way from the brick buildings of the Bronx to housewives in middle America, hip-hop is a force to be reckoned with. It was easier to previously dismiss Tupac's murder as a blip on a radar checked with patterns of violence, but not anymore. While the general population thought he was Public Enemy #1 in life, Tupac was canonized in death, amplifying the public's need for closure.
Maybe the police's hands were forced, or maybe young lieutenants in the homicide unit were raised on Tupac and are more invested than ever before. Maybe it's the combination of money, power and fandom. Whatever the reason, hopefully justice is the result.
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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Kathy Iandoli is a journalist, author, documentarian and professor of music business at New York University. Her books include "God Save the Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop."
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