Profile: After All These Years, Tupac Is Back

(Image Source: @thugangel12)

Tupac is still alive, now working as a teacher in New Jersey.

Baldness, bushy eyebrows, a piercing on left nostril, raspy voice, and a bandana is all it took for Richard Garcia to be known as “Pathmark Tupac.” Garcia’s journey to renew his idol’s voice commenced in his teenage years.

It all starts with a bad haircut. “My friend messes up my hair,” and “So…boom, everybody just start calling me Tupac,” reflects Garcia on origins as an impersonator.

His uncanny resemblance with the West Coast rapper has exposed Garcia to countless opportunities to entertain audiences. Garcia has carried his rapping skills with a great burst of energy for more than a decade at birthday parties, weddings, graduation ceremonies, bars, and nightclubs across more than eight states and Egypt as well. Adding to that are his numerous appearances in music videos and television shows, including an episode of the 2014 MTV show “Jobs That Don’t Suck. “

Garcia wears his Tupac persona part-time, despite offers knocking on doorsteps and emails every day. He commits to only three-four bookings per year to stage performances sponsored by event company GigSalad.com. Part of the reason: he’s a workaholic.

Being a “Tupac tribute artist” and job as a substitute teacher at William L. Dickinson High School is inadequate for the Jersey City resident, aspiring him to be a versatile worker. Landscaping, roofing, and produce cutting are some of Garcia’s other careers unknown to fans, including his students.

Nevertheless, Garcia manages to deliver Tupac to fans, regardless of the odds of a hectic work life. When caught in a tight work schedule, he directs clients to other impersonators available to perform.

“We don’t die, we multiply,” says Garcia in riotous laughter, requoting Tupac to explain how keeping the former’s legacy alive is a collective effort of a wider community of impersonators he has befriended over the years.

What makes Garcia distinctive from the rest of his doppelganger friends are the parallels convincing many to believe him as a “resurrection” of Tupac Shakur. Besides sharing an appearance and a birthday, he bonds with Shakur’s family. “I met his father and his mother. They’re the ones that I asked permission to do what I do,” says Garcia, who has never signed commercial projects without their approval.

He recollects meeting Afeni Shakur at a performing arts center in Atlanta, Georgia on his 35th birthday. “It started raining on us when we hugged each other,” says Garcia, describing the beginning of a relationship he always cherished. He also maintained a longstanding string of communication with Shakur’s biological father Billy Garland, and his stepfather Mutulu Shakur.

Garcia stands up from his chair, retires to his bedroom, and returns with a thick-layered book. In a blue album laced with golden borders, he shows letters Mutulu Shakur wrote from prison. Among many artworks and letters by fans, Garcia also points to pictures he received from Shakur.

Garcia showing letters from Mutulu Shakur.

The mutual affinity shared with Shakur’s family is regarded by Garcia as one of the few parallels he shares with real-life Tupac. “It’s like my way of living. I feel what he feels,” he says thumping his chest.

Garcia’s fame has also managed to make its way to Shakur’s inner circle. After Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey, a client approached him to perform at a relief event. His vocals and dance moves soon came to be noticed, by none other than Anthony Criss, better known as Treach. “After I performed he was crying. He was like, ‘you really got it. I really miss him (Tupac).’ He had tears in his eyes,” reminds Garcia of the reaction he saw from one of Tupac’s closest friends.

His side job almost delivered him to doorsteps of filmmakers willing to produce biopics on Tupac. Garcia’s acting career, however, hit the brakes two years ago.

Once again he rises, moves the living-room ahead, and pulls out a framed poster titled “2Pac: The Great Escape from UMC.” Sitting in his chair with his right arm leaning on the poster, Garcia speaks about the film’s demise.

“2020 hit and it all went backwards,” explains Garcia on quitting the film. The film’s premise allegedly promoted a conspiratorial belief of Tupac being alive on Navajo reservation, an idea opposed by Garcia and other affiliates of film’s director Rick Boss. “He got locked up, so the film’s on hold, it’s probably not gonna happen,’ adds Garcia on latest development of the film.

“People don’t take me seriously,” says Garcia, blaming nepotism in the music and film industries for his lack of exposure to a vast array of mainstream audiences.

His passion to echo Tupac’s legacy does not prevail without setbacks. The stage often requires him to travel alone to destinations, leaving him vulnerable to fears of separation, and safety.

“I have fear all the times. I have fear somebody might try to hurt me,” reminds Garcia of his concerns while traveling.

Although appreciative of a nomadic work life, spending hours at airports and on roads is a tiresome routine for him. Performances can keep him occupied for days, sometimes weeks, isolated from his family.

“There was a time when I was moving too fast with the Tupac thing. I was traveling so much in a month, I couldn’t even talk to my mother,” he says in a murmured tone.

Other than “blessings” of the Shakur family, Garcia equally credits his own family for shaping his life as a tribute artist. He largely dedicates his fanbase in Egypt to his wife Mary Ibrahim, a middle-school teacher in Jersey City.

“I am a father first, I am a grandpa second, I am a husband,” he says, retelling his devotion to family that is unknown to most admirers.

Behind the stage, Garcia barely misses an opportunity to cater community members that revere him as an influential figure.

Phone calls and emails often invite him for motivational speaking at schools and colleges, a job he carries out at cost of nothing. “I don’t ask for money though. They literally just walk up to me and give me envelopes,” says Garcia, narrating the aftermath of every speech he delivers.

A devout Christian, Garcia believes in providing to urban communities of New Jersey, whom he regards as inspiration for his impersonation career. His Tupac makeover also sometimes caters to resolve grievances. Gang violence counts as one. If a fight lasts for days, Garcia braces up to intervene as a peacemaker.

“No problem, I am on my way,” he once responded to a friend after getting informed about a child’s death caused by a conflict between local gangs in Camden, New Jersey. At midnight, he rushed to the scene with his brother.

After decades of leaving people starstruck with his facial features, Garcia has no plan to retire.

In upcoming years, he plans to move out, buy a house, and follow a new pursuit of making toy review videos for children from his basement – using Tupac’s face.

“And he’s alive in all of us. We don’t die, we multiply,” says Garcia, declaring his intent to perform as Tupac; for as long as his energy thrives.