The Makaveli Theory: Did 2Pac fake his death?

“Fuck you!” uttered Tupac before chocking on his own blood and losing consciousness in a policeman’s arms after being shot several times. The revelation of ‘Pac’s last words’ was made in May 2014 by Chris Carroll – the first officer on the bullet-riddled scene of  25-year old Tupac Shakur’s drive-by shooting, which happened on 7 September, 1996 in Las Vegas, a few minutes after he and his record label boss Suge Knight left a Mike Tyson boxing match. But is 2Pac really dead?

Tupac’s ‘fake death theory’ is something of a taboo topic on contemporary hip hop forums. It’s a subject to be kept on the hush unless you want the hip hop Gestapo knocking on your door after midnight with long knives concealed. I too dismissed these conspiracy theories until I did some digging of my own and unearthed so many mind boggling clues suggesting… Pac is alive. It’s been 20 years since Pac’s gruesome murder shocked the world, and still new fragments of the story are coming to light.

Retired Las Vegas cop Chris Carroll says he only revealed the final words of one of rap’s G.O.A.Ts (Greatest Of All Time) in 2014, 18 years after his brutal murder because he “didn’t want Tupac to be a martyr or hero because he told the cops ‘fuck you’” with his final breath. But looking at how so many people around the world are still getting 2pac or Thug Life tattoos so long after his death, it’s obvious that any attempt to stop Pac’s ascent to martyrdom are futile.

Almost every year since his ‘death’ 20 years ago, more evidence is emerging suggesting he faked his murder in order to fool his enemies and stage the biggest comeback in music history. Even Carroll’s statement is a bit dodgy. He says that he called for an ambulance to take Pac to hospital, whereas Suge states that he is the one who drove Pac to hospital. Someone’s fibbing.
I could write a book using this mountain of information, but I selected these three key points as I feel they irrefutably prove that Pac lives.

The hologram Pac actually made a comeback at the 2012 Coachella music festival in California, as a state of the art 3D hologram.  He performed his infamous single, ‘Hail Mary’ from his last album alive; The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory where he began using the name Makaveli, after an Italian philosopher Machiavelli who coincidentally faked his death at the same age Tupac was allegedly merked. The projection shouted “What the fuck is up Coachella?” which is really spooky because Coachella only came into existence in 1999, so how could he have known about it? That’s like the Brenda Fassie holo which performed at the 2013 Hansa Festival of Legends shouting “Sanbonani Festival of Legends.” Could Tupac have pre-recorded the holo specifically for Coachella?

Not Tupac's corpse?!

His autopsy picture After his alleged death (seven days after the shooting), Pac was cremated and his public funeral plus memorial services promptly cancelled. What is intriguing is that Pac always rambled about his funeral in his raps but never once mentioned anything about cremation plus no pictures of him in hospital were ever disclosed. Moreover, it’s illegal in the state of Nevada to cremate a murdered body before an autopsy. A graphic picture of his sliced up torso lying on a morgue table did surface on the Internet a while ago, allegedly to show that an autopsy did take place. But it was soon debunked as a fake – because one: Pac’s body was missing a recent Machiavelli neck tattoo, and two: the image is an identical match to a frame of him lying in bed at the end of the ‘California Love’ music video, so the image must have been edited using some old school software.

Pac's last picture alive a poor photoshop job?

His last picture aliveThe final picture of Tupac alive was him and Suge Knight in their vehicle parked at a red a robot. What is really weird is that if you take a look at the ignition you will see that there are no keys in it. The date at the bottom of the pic is wrong, and since they were stopped at a red robot, why is there no reflection of the red light on the windscreen or on the vehicle’s smooth, black surface which reflected the camera flash so brilliantly?  Also, the picture of Pac sitting in the front passenger seat, looking blankly outside of his rolled-down window has been proven to have been cut and pasted in from another pic.

The epilogue
Some people say that Tupac’s disappearance was linked to powers way bigger than the rap game, because he knew a lot about the Illuminati and was going to spill the beans on the occult societies controlling America, instead of taking their offers to join them. Rumours say he is hiding in Cuba, which doesn’t have any extradition agreements with America. Reports have also surfaced that soon after his “cremation” there were thousands of calls to the police in Haiti saying that Pac has been spotted in numerous locations around the island.
Where Tupac is, why he faked his death and when, or if, he will ever return might be a mystery, but one thing is for certain – the evidence points to him being alive. If hip hop’s secret police come and drag me away screaming and kicking in the dead of night for writing this, never to be seen or heard from again, let them come… I’m not afraid of speaking the truth.
“Expect me nigga like you expect Jesus to come back / Expect me nigga I’m comin’.” – 2 Pac; ‘Untouchable’

Do you think 2Pac lives or do you think he is really deceased?

Article originally published as The Makaveli  Theory by Mahala magazine

Africa's Own Evil Knievel

*This story is in the current August 2014 edition of Indwe, inflight magazine for SA Express Airways. Read the online version here

I’m interviewing ‘Sick Nick’ De Wit, world number five and Africa’s number one ranked FMX (Freestyle Motocross) champion at a coffee shop in Hatfield, Pretoria. I’m asking the 33 year old Joburger if he ever gets scared of crashing while doing summersaults on his dirt bike and ending up paralyzed or dead. His reply stings like a back hand klap across the Grim Reapers face.   

“If you’re going to die, you’re going to die, don’t let fear of death stop you from achieving your destiny.” He pauses to take a sip from his frothy coffee, locking eyes with me, as if examining if his answer unnerved me somehow…It did, and I think he noticed. “You have to be extremely cautious and have 0% fear to avoid crashes.” 

He says it annoyingly, like talking about crashing will jinx his next stunt. His tone softens while discussing his love for the sport however.

Nick grabbed his first pair of handlebars at age 13 doing motocross races and never let go, but he disliked FMX originally. “When I first saw FMX in the late 90s I thought the riders were insane and I’d never do it.”  Only after winning the FMX competition at Cape Town’s 2002 Woodstock Music Festival did he discover his FMX calling. He won every show until the competition’s liquidation in 2009. In 2003, Red Bull approached Nick with a sponsorship offer that changed his life.

Since then Nick has been stunting in exotic locations worldwide, barely having time to hose his bike before getting called to ramp it in another international venue. He’s also the first African to compete in the Red Bull X Fighters, the boss of FMX competitions. “I rode at the X-Fighters in Spain and Germany in 2009 and Cairo in 2010. I’ve also rode in Singapore, Tunisia, Columbia, Taiwan, Japan, Peru, Dubai, Germany, Namibia and Brazil.”

 He also performed at the world’s biggest action sports tour Nitro Circus at its first tour of Africa in SA this year. Other noteworthy stunts he’s accomplished include setting the world record for the highest FMX show at 3.5km above sea level in La Paz, Bolivia.

On August 23^rd, Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour will host its finale at Pretoria’s Union Buildings for the first time in Africa, and Nick loves it. “I’ll have home ground advantage, and the best thing about it is that I won’t have to sit in a plane for hours and endure jet lag.”

Preparations include tough physical training at the University of Pretoria’s High Performance Centre, and punishing his bike in his backyard motocross circuit, “I’m lucky to have a big piece of land I could develop into a FMX course. It’s got landings, ramps and a foam pit.”

Nick knows he will be up against the meanest FMX riders like feared Frenchman and defending champion Tom Pagès. To gain advantage Nick urges South Africans to show up and show love, “bring vuvuzela’s if you want” he says. But can spectators expect any new teeth gritting tricks? “I’m working on many new tricks. I can’t divulge my secrets but you’ll be blown away.”

With that the interview ended, and the waiter brought our bills on one receipt, I requested separate bills, but Nick politely offered to pay both tabs under one condition, “as long as you promise to come and support me at Union Buildings.” While rising to leave we bumped fists and I confirm, “Ofcourse, I’ll even bring my vuvuzela.” 

LEARNING LESSONS | RED BULL BEAT BATTLE

I wrote this article for Mahala, a free South African music, culture & reality magazine who uploaded it yesterday, June 5 2014. Photos by Luke Daniel. Video by CFTV

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m as fanatical about hip hop as Boko Haram is about kidnapping school girls… so my views on other music and dance sub-cultures are undoubtedly skewed and somewhat condescending. For example, I can barely stand house music or sbhujwa culture and I think anything associated with pantsula is as backward as grown-ass men with cornrows.

Look, hip hop has the best dancers in the country hands down, and if you disagree then consider that 90% of all major dance competitions in SA are won by hip hop dancers. Consider the annual Red Bull Beat Battle, which was held last weekend at Walter Sisulu Square in Soweto. The 100k cash prize and drum trophy has (almost) always rotated amongst hip hop crews, ever since the competition’s inception in 2011. The only exception was when a sbhujwa crew called Prophelaz broke the tradition by winning last year.

So I went into the hall confidently thinking I would see MY culture reclaim the drum and consolidate its dominance in SA’s dance scene… but oh I was so wrong.

There were eight crews, half were hip hop and the other four were sbhujwas and pantsulas. By the second round it was clear that the non hip hop crews were going to dominate.

Take the battle between hip hoppers Supreme 1 and Panzan Entertainment – while Panzan performed, Supreme huddled up and wrote “boring” on a large piece of paper and held it up until their competitors finished performing. But their protest was nothing but a gimmick. When it was Supreme’s turn to dance, they were met with howls and boo’s from the audience and discerning dance heads. Even their ghoulish make up couldn’t hide the disappointment on their faces when the judges and crowd voted unanimously for Panzan to progress to the next round.

The other hip hop crew, Psyko Souljahz, also got knocked out in the early stages and Prophelaz took out Warrior Knights from Durban who wore riot gear to bolster their battle tactics. Sure, but all I can remember is the image of a Warrior Knight member crying backstage after losing to Prophelaz. It just shows that the tide is turning… it will go down in history that 2014 was the year sbhujwa dancers sent hip hop crews home crying to their mommies!

In the end, the hip hop crew Freeze Frame proved to be the last bastion of the culture, and they were too good for their competitors. The destroyed pantsula crew Fire, and eventually went on to take overall victory after squeaking past Prophelaz in the final to take the crown.

But for me (and most people at the battle), the real heroes of the day were Panzan Entertainment, a sbhujwa crew from The Vaal. Panzan fuse elements of Latin American beats and rhythms with basic indigenous dance and their own sbhujwa flavour. Early in the competition, I noticed that one of its members was dancing on steel crutches, which I thought were props… just to add flair to their routine. It was only later on that I realised Musa Motha of Panzan was an actual amputee. Panzan Entertainment made it to the semi’s of arguably the biggest and most competitive dance battle in the country, despite one of their members having a disability. Musa’s bravery and skill humbled me greatly.

But in the semi’s, Panzan  ran out tricks and energy and were beaten by the far superior Prophelaz, who went on to face Freeze Frame and take second place on the podium.

After Panzan’s performance in the semi’s, one of the judges, Somizi Mhlongo, stood up from the judge’s table with a mic and awarded them R20 000 for “showing us that nothing is impossible in this world.”

So instead of gloating about a hip hop crew winning the 2014 Red Bull Beat Battle, I must instead pay homage to Somizi Mhlongo and Panzan Entertainment for teaching everyone a few lessons in life last weekend. I learned that you can NEVER underestimate anyone and it’s irrelevant what music you dance to… what matters is how you use your passion to achieve things haters said you never could. It took one sbhujwa dancer to open my mind to the bigger picture. Respect.