"I didn't create thug life," Tupac Shakur once proclaimed. "I diagnosed it." A charismatic African-American leading man and one of the most potent and admired rap artists of his day, Shakur was born the son of Afeni Shakur, a political activist and high-ranking member of the Black Panthers who was in jail while pregnant with her son, perhaps instilling an awareness of oppression and political struggle in utero. Shakur began acting at age 13 in a benefit performance of Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" and later studied acting at the Baltimore School of the Arts (Jada Pinkett was a