A crown-shaped ring, designed and worn by California rap legend Tupac Shakur shortly before his assassination in 1996, fetched over $1 million at a hip-hop auction that took place in London. is completed Tuesday at Sotheby’s.
The gold jewel, adorned with rubies and diamonds, is now the most expensive object related to hip-hop ever acquired at auction, according to Sotheby’s, which organized the sale on the internet.
The ring comes from the personal collection of Yaasmyn Fula, close to the artist and mother of another rapper, Yaki Kadafi, who founded the group Outlawz with Tupac. He too had died assassinated a few weeks after his childhood friend. “This is a ring designed by Tupac. He had just come out of a period of incarceration in 1996 (for sexual assault, editor’s note)”, during which “he read” The Prince “, by Machiavelli”, a book which “fascinated him”, explained to AFP Cassandra Hatton, head for science and popular culture at Sotheby’s.
The jewel sold for exactly 1,016,000 dollars, including fees and commission, much more expensive than its initial estimate, between 200,000 and 300,000 dollars. The rapper, born in the Harlem district of New York but who symbolized the rap of the Californian west coast, had worn the jewel during his last public appearance, an MTV Video Music Awards ceremony, on September 4, 1996, nine days before his assassination by bullets, at age 25 in Las Vegas. With titles like “California Love”, “Dear Mama” or “Brenda’s got a baby”, he is considered one of the greatest American rappers. His murder nearly 30 years ago remains unsolved, and Las Vegas police raided it a week ago as part of the investigation.
The ring was the star of this sale of more than a hundred objects, including rare clothes, posters, photographs or first demo tapes of rappers or groups who have become famous, such as the Wu-Tang Clan. The birthplace of hip-hop, New York celebrates this summer the 50th anniversary of the birth of this movement, which was born in the ghettos of the Bronx and has become a ubiquitous culture and brewing billions of dollars.
