'Every Time I See The Paper I See My Picture'

[Bender]

a lyrical quote from the track Hellrazor, what do you think Tupac is talking about?

 

[DarkPhantom13]

He's saying he's always in the headlines and in the news.

 

[Casey]

He's just talking about seeing his face in the tabloids, he wasn't the first celebrity to talk about it in a song and certainly not the last.

The next part of the line is :

"when a nigga's gettin richer
They come to get ya"

and that makes this pretty clear. As we all know, generally speaking fame = money. Hence the phrase "Fortune & Fame", as Tupac also sang about in the song "Fame". The two go hand in hand - that's generally understood as fact.

So to break it down in the most simple terms, Tupac is talking about people coming to get him, as in bring him down or hurt his character, because they see his face in every newspaper and therefore realize that he has money.

This is what happens to everyone famous. You have money, people try and take what they can get. Let's look at Michael Jackson as the ultimate example. Do you know how many bogus lawsuits are filed against Michael every year? Hundreds of them. They're all complete and utter nonsense. You hear reports of people that have never met him suing him for psychological damages because they convinced themselves that he was secretly in love with them despite never having met them. Then they get stalkerish and get rebuffed by security and try and sue. There's a guy trying to sue now, claiming that the O2 concerts violate an agreement he had with Michael for a Jackson 5 reunion tour. There's no way in hell Michael would ever do that, he has rebuffed much bigger sums of money and is completely anti- the idea of touring with his brothers. Yet this sycophantic asshole promoter guy somewhere has convinced himself that he's right, and that he isn't just a delusional douchebag. There are so many examples of this!

Happens to everyone in these circumstances. If you're a celebrity and you've obviously got money it's something you have to deal with. People will come to get you. Whether it's journalists with an axe to grind, stalkers, groupies, delusional people, or in some cases, just people from the street life you used to live before you made it.

 

[Jon]

He mentions this first in Point Tha Finga:

Everyday I read the paper, there's another lie.
They show my picture for the crimes of another guy.

 

[Bender]

He's just talking about seeing his face in the tabloids, he wasn't the first celebrity to talk about it in a song and certainly not the last.

The next part of the line is :

"when a nigga's gettin richer
They come to get ya"

i initially thought tabloids, but the line seems to work on so many levels, and one of the reasons i thought of paper as money is as you quoted about getting richer directly afterwards. plus i don't think tupac was much a fan of the tabloids and reading the newspapers, especially with afeni making him read the new york times to read as a punishment as a kid

 

[Stone_Cold]

I always thought it was about him always being in the newspapers, and the tabloids always printing bullshit lies about him and putting his name in their headlines to crucify him.


Papers always out to get him and take him down

 

[Bender]

all in all, those appealing to Tupac's thug image would obviously vote tabloids, and maybe few that recognize tupac as something other will see something that's different

 

[Kobe]

Its like there was a point in time every bad thing that happened, the media pointed to Pac. He had plenty of lawsuits he had to sort out everyday and, even when he died, people were still suing his estate.