On Friday, Nov 3, a street in Oakland, California, was renamed for Tupac Shakur, 27 years after the killing of the hip-hop luminary.
A section of MacArthur Boulevard near where he lived in the 1990s became Tupac Shakur Way, following a ceremony that included his family members and Oakland native MC Hammer.
“Let his spirit live on the rest of these years in these streets and in your hearts,” Shakur’s sister Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur told the crowd, wiping away tears at the end of a nearly two-hour ceremony. The sign for Tupac Shakur Way was unveiled moments later.
MC Hammer said in his remarks that Shakur was “hands down, the greatest rapper ever, there’s not even a question of that.”
The “U Can’t Touch This” musician spent many of Shakur’s final months with him before the rapper was shot to death at age 25.
Shakur collaborator Money-B and Oakland hip-hop legend Too Short also spoke at the ceremony.
The “I Get Around” rapper was born in New York and was raised there and in Baltimore. He then moved with his mother to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1980s. He lived in Oakland in the early 1990s and embraced it as an adopted hometown.
“He claimed Oakland,” said City Councilwoman Carroll Fife, who led the effort to rename the street. “He said Oakland gave him his game.”
The ceremony came the day after a former street gang leader pleaded not guilty to murder in the 1996 Las Vegas shooting death of Shakur.