One look at the long list of talent shows in the Saturday night TV schedules is enough to see that thousands of people dream of chart music fame & success. However not many people will be expecting to still make it to the top of the charts years after they have died. But that is exactly what Tupac Shakur managed with the release of his single Ghetto Gospel in June 2005. The track, put together by Marshal Mathers (aka Eminem) for Tupac’s posthumous Loyal to the Game album (2004), spent three weeks at the top of the UK charts. Before his death in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting in 1996, Tupac was a massively influential (and hugely controversial) part of the US Gangster Rap music scene. And the lyrics of Ghetto Gospel show that - with their mix of crime, drugs, poverty and God, blended with samples from some of Elton John’s early work. So is there a Gospel according to Tupac, or are the record companies just cashing in on the legendary name of one of their most controversial artists? Like all art forms, Gangster Rap music leaves that kind of decision to the listener. Al Rogers, aged 30, is a youth worker for the parish of Emmanuel Loughborough and St Mary in Charnwood Nanpantan. | 
