Dear Mama
1995 single by Tupac Shakur
"Dear Mama" is a song by American rapper 2Pac from his third studio album, Me Against the World (1995). It was released on February 9, 1995, as the lead single from the album. Dedicated to his mother, Afeni Shakur, Shakur details his childhood poverty and his mother's addiction to crack cocaine, but argues that his love and deep respect for his mother supersede bad memories. The song became his first top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number nine. It also topped the Hot Rap Singles and Hot Dance Music Maxi-Singles, and made success in three other US charts. As of March 2021, "Dear Mama" is certified 3× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
"Dear Mama" has been consistently ranked among the best of its genre, appearing on numerous "greatest" lists. In 2009, the song was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, who deemed it a work that is "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States", making it the first hip-hop recording by a soloist to be inducted. In a press release, the organization called the song "a moving and eloquent homage to both the murdered rapper's own mother and all mothers struggling to maintain a family in the face of addiction, poverty and societal indifference."
Background
The song is a tribute to Shakur's mother, Afeni Shakur. She and her husband were active members of the Black Panther Party in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“Dear Mama” enters the record as 1995 single by Tupac Shakur. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dear, Mama and single can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Dear Mama” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dear, Mama and single provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2043750. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 2021 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dear Mama” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.