In below, you see the cover of "The Prince" which is not an interesting one, I guess.
Now you see the cover of 2Pac's album after his imprisonment which passed reading that book. Any similarities?
And when I researched his life, I found out that he was really inspired and impressed by Machiavelli that he changed his name -nickname- to Makaveli and mentioned him indirectly with Machiavelli's ideas of power, strategies, etc.
The most interesting and shocking issue is the last one. Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher and strategist and also wrote about faking deaths to fool enemies. For the readers who don't know the conspiracies about 2Pac's death, let me summarise. Some people and his fans think that he is not dead, he faked his own death for different reasons. In addition, his death was after he changed his name to Makavelli. Whether it is true or not, it is sure that Tupac is a real fan of Machiavelli and learned a lot from him regarding to his lyrics.
The last thing is he is not the only rapper inspired by Machiavelli. There are 50 Cent, T-Pain, Lil Wayne...
For more information, I found an interesting blog from different authors and putting their links on here:
Wow, I didn't know that this question of the connection between 2pac and Machiavelli was such a deep and complicated one! I love the idea of him faking his own death... It's also very curious how Machiavelli's ideas get picked up in different contexts and transformed into new cultural forms.
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