In the suit, Sekyiwa accuses Whalley of embezzling millions of dollars while hoarding Tupac’s items she believes are now hers and failing to provide a proper fiduciary accounting.
Nine days before the exhibition launched, Tupac’s lone sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, filed a lawsuit against the trustee of Afeni Shakur’s estate, music executive Tom Whalley. However, the exhibit also arrives in a time of turmoil for the Shakur estate. (Most notably in 2021, when a woman assumed the role of the background singers watching Tupac fire off profanity-laced insults at the end of the track.) “Wake Me When I’m Free” isn’t the only way Tupac’s name has returned to the forefront of culture his incomparable diss track “Hit ‘Em Up” received a prime placement in the “Euphoria” Season 2 premiere and has trended multiple times on TikTok. It’s made it easier for unknown artists to develop a handshake relationship with eventual fans, but it’s made it almost impossible to break through the clutter.” “Today, there’s 60,000 tracks uploaded to Spotify each day. “There was a time in the ‘60s and ‘70s when there were less than 300 albums commercially released each year,” Jampol said.
The potential of hologram tours and NFTs, along with tried and true methods such as documentaries and posthumous albums, have also created more avenues to expand an artist’s legacy outside of their recorded music.Īt the same time, the newfound abundance of art competing for our eyes and ears makes it harder for aspiring musicians to reach the same pinnacle their predecessors once did. While it’s difficult to assign a singular reason for this growth, streaming services have made it easier for younger fans to latch onto music from icons from yesteryears and for older fans to relive their childhood soundtracks. (An estimate of the value of Tupac’s estate wasn’t available.) Not long before, Bob Dylan sold his songwriting catalogue to Universal Music Publishing Group for at least $300 million.
The increased attention to such songs have made the business of legacy artists, including those who are no longer living, increasingly profitable.ĭavid Bowie’s estate recently sold his global publishing rights to Warner Chappell Music for over $250 million. music market, according to music-analytics firm MRC Data. Old music - anything released outside of the past 18 months - now makes up 70% of the U.S. “You’re taking the idea and the legacy of this artist, and if you can connect that magic to an 11-30 year old, they can become instantly interested in everything that artist did,” said Jampol Artist Management CEO Jeff Jampol, who previously managed Shakur’s estate and currently manages the estates of artists such as the Doors and Janis Joplin.
In the past decade, there have been documentaries on Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain, along with retrospectives on younger artists who recently passed away such as Juice WRLD, Lil Peep and Mac Miller. “Wake Me When I’m Free” is the latest effort to pay tribute to the life of an artist taken before his or her time.