From a recent interview by This weeks newspaper:

"My heart belongs to Tupac Shakur," Giovanni said. "If you said, 'What is missed?' I would say Tupac. The air just went out. Everything has changed since the death of Tupac."

Giovanni didn't know Shakur personally, but his murder in 1996 had a profound impact on her. She dedicated her 1997 collection, Love Poems, to him. It included a poem written for him, "All Eyez on U."

She felt compelled, though, to do more. So she had the words "Thug Life" tattooed on the inside of her forearm. Shakur had the words inked across his stomach.

"For me, it was a way to mourn and to say that this young man cannot be forgotten," Giovanni said. "It was all I could do. ... I wanted to do something more than say it was too bad.

"He had a thug life. He used to say, 'I'd rather be with the thugs than the people who are putting them down.'"

Giovanni said the tattoo was a way to show that she shared the sentiment.

The poet's ties to the hip hop and rap communities aren't limited to her respect for Shakur. As a writer who is known for her readings and was making recordings of her poetry in the early 1970s, Giovanni is among the musical movement's forebears.

2Paczone.com