Tupac Shakur will have a stretch of an Oakland street renamed for him after a vote by the city council Tuesday.
MacArthur Boulevard between Grand Avenue and Van Buren Avenue will be renamed "Tupac Shakur Way." He lived in an apartment at 275 MacArthur Boulevard. That is just north of the street that will be named after him.
His career took off in Oakland, where he first worked with the hip-hop group Digital Underground.
Rapper Shock G told Wax Poetics in an interview,
“At Tupac’s first apartment [MacArthur Boulevard, Oakland], the stack of dirty dishes in the sink was so high it would lean against the refrigerator, while the pile of pizza boxes and take-out containers towering from his big outdoor-style garbage can would do the same on the opposite side. Sometimes, it would get so tall that it met the loose junk on top—cereal boxes, magazines, baskets of snacks, papers—and formed a rainbow of garbage. For real too. Ask Man Man or Mopreme, or especially Mouse or Saafir, they both lived there with him at different times. Like any of the truly prolific geniuses throughout history, Pac’s weirdo traits were just as extreme,”
The City Council legislation says the renamed part of the street will remind people of Shakur's contributions to Oakland and celebrate art and culture as a catalyst for societal change.
