K-Ci & Jo-Jo, Run-D.M.C.'s Run, Mos Def and Pharcyde rapper

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Tre will be among the artists featured on an upcoming spoken-word album built from the poetry of slain rapper Tupac Shakur.

The untitled project likely will be released in two volumes, with the first planned for a September release, according to Shakur's former manager and poetry mentor, Leila Steinberg. Also on tap for the project are Quincy Jones, the Outlawz, Danny Glover, Jasmine Guy, Russell Simmons, Morroccon group Providence, poet Sonya Sanchez and Black Panther Geronimo Pratt.

"We've taken Tupac's poems, left them intact, and let people interpret them in all the different genres and styles of music that we could," Steinberg said.

All the poems were published in "The Rose That Grew From Concrete," which hit stores late last year and features 72 poems Shakur wrote before he released his first solo album, 1992's 2Pacalypse Now. Musical styles represented on the LP include jazz, blues, classical, African, rock, reggae and rap. "The bed of music takes on that genre, but the poem itself is spoken," Steinberg said, adding that some artists have chosen to sing the poem after reciting it as a spoken-word piece.

Steinberg — a teacher and hip-hop manager who met Shakur when he was a 17-year-old transplant to the suburbs of Oakland, Calif. — is executive producer of the project along with Shakur's mother, Afeni Shakur, Jamal Joseph and Molly Monjauze.

Steinberg said Shakur had planned to release his poetry in different formats. "We're just doing what he always planned," she said.

Afeni Shakur, who collaborated with Glover on one poem, will make the final calls in putting the project together.

Historical And Political Context

Steinberg, who has taught several courses based on the rapper's work and is developing curriculum books using the his poetry and lyrics, said she has a "political, social and historical" agenda in releasing the project.

"Tupac already has 20 million young people who love him, but what this will do is take his material into new markets," she said. "The classical piece will bring the classical audience, and the gospel piece will bring the gospel audience, and all these people will come to know Tupac differently. And that will open the doors for me to bring the curriculum books we're developing into so many more schools and institutions.

"We won't have to wait a hundred years to understand that his relevance socially and historically is what it is," Steinberg said. "We won't have to wait until we're not here anymore to understand that his voice gave us insight to a culture and community that not all the population has wanted to understand or pay attention to."

The project will benefit several charities.

The first artist to record for the project was virtuoso drummer Babatunde Olatunji, who recorded "Please Wake Me When I'm Free" in English and the African language Yoruba over Nigerian-style rhythms and drums.

K-Ci & Jo-Jo will record "Wife for Life" with up-and-coming hip-hop band 4th Avenue Jones', featuring rapper Ahmad, this week in Los Angeles.

Personal Connections

Steinberg, who has videotaped the recording sessions with plans to upload clips to the project's Web site, said the artists chose poems that resonated with them on a personal level.

Recruiting artists for the project has not been difficult, she said. "They read the book, and they fall in love with the poems," she said. "They see such a different side of Tupac. They really get a sense of who he was without the marketing department, or the press, or the publicity, because all of these poems were written before stardom. This is just him, raw and uncut, and the essence of who he is as a human being. He addresses every emotion from love to pain to jealousy to anger to loss to abandonment.

"People are never going to believe that 'Pac wrote some of these pieces," Steinberg said.

Shakur started his career as a dancer for Digital Underground in the early '90s, but upon the release of 2Pacalypse Now, he broke out on his own to forge an acclaimed solo career. The rapper flexed his dramatic muscles as well in his big screen debut, the urban drama "Juice," and films including "Poetic Justice" and "Gridlock'd."

Exploring the divide between his more misogynist, violent lyrics and such tender songs as "Dear Mama" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Fuck the World" (RealAudio excerpt), his 1995 LP Me Against the World entered the charts at #1. The rapper was shot in a drive-by in September 1996 while in Las Vegas for a Mike Tyson&3150;Bruce Seldon fight; he died six days later, at 25. The albums that followed were Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (1996), released under his literate gangsta alias, Makaveli; R U Still Down? (Remember Me?) (1997); Greatest Hits (1998) and And Still I Rise (1999).