Primary Source:
- The photograph of Tupac Shakur below is recognized as the primary source which displays his tattoo “THUG LIFE” stretching across his abdominal region.
http://www.tupachq.com/magazines/tupac_covers05.jpg
Secondary Source:
- The website 2Pac2K offers a variety of information about Tupac. There is a biography on the site which states that in 1994 he released the album “THUG LIFE.” In addition, the tattoo was inked on his body back in 1992. The description of the tattoo is as follows. “It stands for ‘The Hate U Give Little Infants, Fucks Everybody’. The I is replaced by a bullet.”
Tertiary Source:
- A source that shares the same understanding of the tattoo as my secondary source is Urban Dictionary. There are various entries that suggest that this stands for a code that Tupac himself created which consists of twenty six laws gangsters must follow.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thug%20life
- Wikipedia offers an alternative to the meaning behind “THUG LIFE”. It doesn’t necessarily relate to the actual tattoo but does talk about the record album that was made by several of his friends and himself as I already mentioned. The album went gold which is a great accomplishment, as well as a good reason to get “THUG LIFE” tattooed on himself. It is still unclear whether the tattoo is correspondent to the album because he got the tattoo back in ’92 and the album was released in ’94 or if it simply stood for the code Thug Life that he created.
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