Altadena is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in the San Gabriel Valley and the Verdugos regions of Los Angeles County, California. Directly north of the city of Pasadena, California, it is approximately 14 miles (23 km) from downtown Los Angeles. The population was 42,777 at the 2010 census, up from 42,610 at the 2000 census.
Afeni Shakur Davis was an American political activist and member of the Black Panther Party. Shakur was the mother of rapper Tupac Shakur and the executor of his estate. She founded the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and also served as the CEO of Amaru Entertainment, Inc., a record and film production company she founded.
Raymond Tyson, better known by his stage name Ray Luv, is an American Bay Area rapper from Santa Rosa, California, United States, who is best known for his contribution to the Bay Area hip hop scene in the mid-1990s.
"Dear Mama" is a song by American rapper 2Pac from his third studio album, Me Against the World (1995). It was released on February 21, 1995, as the lead single from the album. The song is a tribute to his mother, Afeni Shakur. In the song, Shakur details his childhood poverty and his mother's addiction to crack cocaine, but argues that his love and deep respect for his mother supersede bad memories. The song became his first top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number nine. It also topped the Hot Rap Singles chart for five weeks. As of March 2021, the song is certified 3× Platinum by the RIAA.
The East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry is a dispute between artists and fans of the East Coast hip hop and West Coast hip hop scenes in the United States, especially from the mid-1990s. A focal point of the rivalry was the feud between East Coast–based rapper the Notorious B.I.G. signed by Puff Daddy and their New York City–based label, Bad Boy Records, and West Coast–based rapper Tupac Shakur signed by Suge Knight and their Los Angeles–based label, Death Row Records. Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. were murdered in drive-by shootings within six months of each other, after which the feud entered a truce with a "peace" summit in 1997 at the behest of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The Panther 21 is a group of twenty-one Black Panther members who were arrested and accused of planned coordinated bombing and long-range rifle attacks on two police stations and an education office in New York City in 1969, who were all acquitted by a jury in May 1971, after revelations during the trial that police infiltrators played key organizing roles.
Cathleen Scott is a Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestselling American true crime author and investigative journalist who penned the biographies and true crime books The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls, both bestsellers in the United States and United Kingdom, and was the first to report Shakur's death. She grew up in La Mesa, California, and later moved to Mission Beach, California, where she was a single parent to a son, Raymond Somers Jr. Her hip-hop books are based on the drive-by shootings that killed the rappers six months apart in the midst of what has been called the West Coast-East Coast war. Each book is dedicated to the rappers' mothers.
Joan Larkin is an American poet, playwright, and writing teacher. She was active in the small press lesbian feminist publishing explosion of the 1970s, co-founding the independent publishing company Out & Out Books. The science fiction writer Donald Moffitt was her brother.
Lucy Jane Bledsoe is an American novelist who often writes about the intersection of family, wilderness and survival.
Samiya A. Bashir is a queer American artist, poet, and author. Much of Bashir's poetry explores the intersections of culture, change, and identity through the lens of race, gender, the body and sexuality. She is currently the June Jordan visiting professor at Columbia University of New York. Bashir is the first black woman recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature. She was also the third black woman to serve as tenured professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Leila Steinberg is an American manager, business woman, educator, writer, poet, and founder of AIM4TheHeART, a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to helping at-risk youth find their voice using an emotional literacy curriculum and writing workshops. She is best known as the artist mentor and first manager for superstar rapper Tupac Shakur. They met when he was a student in her writing workshop, The Microphone Sessions, in the Oakland Bay area. Today Leila manages the rapper Earl Sweatshirt, formerly of Odd Future.
On September 7, 1996, at 11:15 p.m. (PDT), Tupac Shakur, a 25-year-old American rapper, was shot in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The shooting occurred when the car carrying Shakur was stopped at a red light at East Flamingo Road and Koval Lane. The driver, Marion "Suge" Knight, was grazed by a bullet in the shooting. Shakur died from his injuries six days later, on September 13, 1996.
Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.
Craig Venegas Alvarado, known by his stage name DJ King Assassin, is an American disc jockey, producer, and engineer from Los Angeles, California.
All Eyez on Me is a 2017 American biographical drama film directed by Benny Boom. Titled after the 1996 studio album, as well as the song of the same name, it is based on the life and death of the American rapper Tupac Shakur. The film stars Demetrius Shipp Jr. as Tupac, with Kat Graham, Lauren Cohan, Hill Harper, and Danai Gurira. Jamal Woolard reprises his role as Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace / The Notorious B.I.G. from Notorious (2009).
Dina LaPolt is an American entertainment lawyer and artist rights advocate based in Los Angeles, California. After an early career in the music industry, she became an entertainment lawyer in 1997. She is the founder and owner of LaPolt Law.
Rafael "Ralph" Salamanca Jr. is the councilmember for the 17th district of the New York City Council. He is a Democrat. The district includes portions of Concourse Village, East Tremont, Hunts Point, Longwood, Melrose, Morrisania, Port Morris, and West Farms in The Bronx.
Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, also referred to as BAAD!, is a New York performing and visual art workshop space and performance venue located in The Bronx. The Academy is home to the Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre and The Bronx Dance Coalition.
Mariette Pathy Allen is a photographer for the transgender, genderfluid, and intersex communities and a writer. She has published five books, Transformations: Cross-dressers and Those Who Love Them (1989), Masked Culture: The Greenwich Village Halloween Parade (1994), The Gender Frontier (2004),TransCuba (2014) and Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Burma and Thailand (2017). She is an activist for gender consciousness and reflects positivity towards underrepresented communities.
Eric Dinowitz is an American teacher and politician. Dinowitz represents the 11th district of the New York City Council. Dinowitz is a registered Democrat. Dinowitz was elected in a special election held on March 23, 2021, after the resignation of Andrew Cohen, who was elected to the New York Supreme Court. Dinowitz assumed office on April 15, 2021 after weeks of the New York City Board of Elections counting ranked-choice voting ballots which were instituted for municipal elections beginning in 2021.
