LOS ANGELES — Tupac Shakur, dressed in a suit, stared somberly from a blown-up photo that was erected on an easel like at a memorial service. But the mood along a Hollywood city block on Wednesday pulsed more as a party.
Family members, close friends and other rappers and collaborators hugged, laughed and exchanged memories atop a red carpet along a roadway closed off to traffic.
Pressing against steel barricades, a crowd of hundreds rapped his songs and chanted his name: “Tupac, Tupac, Tupac.” Street vendors hauled boxes from their vans filled with T-shirts bearing Shakur’s face.
Nearly 30 years after the 25-year-old’s death in 1996, the New York-born rapper, actor and activist — whose fame and influence only increased after his death — got his overdue Hollywood sendoff: a star on the Walk of Fame.