So Tupac Shakur's dead.

The victim of a second shooting in as many years, the L.A. rapper finally met with one of the violent ends he rhymed about for so much of his young life.

Hard to say it's surprising.

Hard to say it's a tragedy, either.

And maybe that's a cold thing to say. But what has the world lost with the passing of this young star? A musical genius? A spokesman for the downtrodden? One of the lucky few, who through force of will climbed from the gutters created and reinforced by a society that doesn't know or doesn't care what to do with poor, young black males? Or in Shakur's death, has society lost just another thug?

Shakur made his living by selling songs about shooting people, hating cops, dealing drugs and showing women their (second-class) place. No Vanilla Ice, he was a gangsta rapper who lived the life of which he sang ­ or at least appeared to. Arrogant and swaggering, he mixed his street smarts with a quasi-talent for rhyming into a volatile musical fuel that launched him into the luxury class.

Then he brought that violence along with him.

He proved that money and stardom aren't perfect insulations from trouble. Arrested for multiple offenses, including assault and sexual assault, Shakur had seen his share of prison cells.

But his brushes with the law didn't make him publicly repentant or inspire him to encourage his listeners to avoid his mistakes. Instead, he continued to rap about the violence and machismo endemic to the gangsta lifestyle.

But was Shakur glorifying violence or simply reflecting the violence that is part of life in the inner city? The argument can go both ways. Certainly, there is a considerable amount of anger in poor neighborhoods toward the police, and some of it is justified. And the obituary pages give mute evidence to the existence of violence in places like Compton. Unfortunately there are people who believe it is OK to call women bitches and whores and who think that armed response is the justifiable response to any slight.

In defending the lyrics that have upset so many parents across all racial and class boundaries, Shakur and gangsta rappers like him have fallen back on the same excuse that journalists have used since the invention of type: We're just saying it like it is. Don't blame the messenger.

And to an extent, that reasoning is correct. Society has to become aware of a problem before it can fix it. So illumination and then discussion are the first steps.

But when the messenger always harps on the gory and the negative and never offers a solution, he or she stops serving the community and starts tearing it down. That's one reason the press has begun trying to search out good news stories to offset the bad and offering articles that suggest solutions to community problems instead of just focusing on how terrible life is.

The solutions Shakur rapped about primarily involved the kind of gunplay that hospitalized him on one occasion and ended his life on a second. Who could he have influenced had he included more positive songs on his albums? Maybe the person who ultimately killed him. It's too late to know now. He who made his fortune singing about violence has lost his life to it, and he'll never have a chance to offer any other solutions now.

Was Shakur a role model? Hardly. And if he was, he certainly wasn't an original one. Everything he did in his life had been done before and done better. Shakur's influence on the rap world was negligible compared to Run DMC or Public Enemy. Even as a symbol of a rebel he was bested by everyone from James Dean to Billy the Kid, both of whom lived faster and died as young and will be remembered longer than Tupac Shakur.

Since Shakur was shot, some have said that his death is the tragic exclamation mark to his music and the ultimate proof that his lyrics merely reflected society's failings.

They're wrong.

The tragedy in Shakur's death is not in that it happened, but in that he brought it on himself. If inner city poverty, overcrowding and lack of opportunities are responsible for the violence and the hatred he rapped about, then Shakur is the one person who should have been able to avoid the kind of death he depicted in his music. He had the money, the freedom and the opportunity both to save himself and many others less fortunate than he from that fate. And Tupac Shakur blew it.

And got blown away in turn.

Todd Foltz still lights a candle for Ian Curtis, who hung himself 17 years ago because love, indeed, will tear you apart.