Folk legend Joan Baez called for a new era of activism and slain rapper Tupac Shakur was hailed as a nuanced hero Friday as they entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Grunge icons Pearl Jam, progressive rock leaders Yes, the experimental Electric Light Orchestra and arena packers Journey also were inducted into the rock shrine at the gala in New York.
Tupac, who was killed in 1996 at age 25 in a still murky Las Vegas shooting, was introduced by his contemporary Snoop Dogg, a fellow force in creating gangsta rap in California.
“You’re gonna live forever. They can’t take this away from you, homey,” Snoop Dogg said as he hoisted the Hall of Fame trophy toward the sky.
Alicia Keys on piano led a medley of songs by Tupac — who was born in New York but strongly associated with the West Coast — before the packed Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Snoop Dogg called Tupac “the greatest rapper of all time” and described themselves as “two black boys struggling to become men.”
Portraying Tupac as more complicated than caricatures, Snoop Dogg said: “To be human is to be many things at once — strong and vulnerable, hard-headed and intellectual, courageous and afraid, loving and vengeful, revolutionary and, oh yeah... gangsta!“
One of the leading protest singers in the 1960s, the 76-year-old Baez said: “Now in the new political cultural reality in which we find ourselves, there is much work to be done, where empathy is failing and sharing has been usurped by greed and lust for power.”
She urged the crowd to “double, triple and quadruple” attempts at empathy.

Source: Arab News