AFENI SHAKUR DIES AT AGE 69

Afeni Shakur Davis, the mother of hip-hop’s most seminal and iconic figures, has died at age 69 in Marin County, California.  Though she is best known as Tupac Shakur’s mom, she was also a Black Panther as a young adult and an activist and philanthropist in her later years.

Afeni’s life is consumed with keeping Tupac’s legacy alive — and her latest effort is the June 11 grand opening of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts.

The $4 million project is focused on helping at-risk youth. It revolves around a six-acre campus in the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain that includes an art gallery, rehearsal area, offices, gift shop and a “peace garden.” There are plans to add a museum, community meeting space and classrooms. A bronze statue of Tupac will be unveiled in one of the peace garden’s fountains in September.

According to Afeni’s attorney, Dina LaPolt, who co-produced the Oscar-nominated documentary “Tupac: Resurrection,” about 80 percent of the center’s cost came from the foundation Afeni set up to receive proceeds from her various Tupac albums, movies, DVDs and other projects.

On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur was leaving a boxing event in Las Vegas when he was shot multiple times. Six days later, he was dead at 25. He left behind an ever-increasing fan base, a catalog of music and one of the culture’s most persistent mysteries. The presumption is that his death was caused by the volatile East Coast/Wast Coast rap war of the era, a feud that held Tupac and New York rapper Notorious B.I.G. as its avatars. Although nearly every fan has his or her own theory on who was involved in the young talent’s death, his killing remains unsolved.