If you believe in God, believe in Death Row East.

“If you believe in God, believe in Death Row East.” — so declared Tupac Shakur, the prophet-poet of a turbulent age, a man who walked between glory and chaos, faith and fury. His words are both a challenge and a revelation — a proclamation of faith through defiance, a declaration that belief in the divine must not be separate from belief in the struggle of man. In this quote, Tupac does not speak merely of a record label or a music movement. He speaks of a vision — of redemption born from resistance, of a generation determined to build its own kingdom in the shadow of oppression.

To understand these words, one must understand Death Row East, the movement Tupac sought to create after joining Death Row Records. It was more than a business venture; it was to be a manifestation of power and purpose, a new order for the forgotten and the wounded, a platform for voices silenced by poverty and prejudice. For Tupac, Death Row East symbolized rebirth — the rise of the outcast, the resurrection of the fallen. Thus, when he said, “If you believe in God, believe in Death Row East,” he was not equating himself with divinity, but proclaiming that divine purpose can dwell among the broken and the damned.

The ancients would have recognized such a spirit in him. For even in the days of empires and prophets, the call to faith was always joined with the call to justice. Moses stood before Pharaoh with a divine command not just to pray, but to act. David, once a fugitive, rose against tyranny through courage and conviction. So too did Tupac see himself — a modern warrior-poet, crying out against a world that had turned its back on the poor, the imprisoned, and the misunderstood. To believe in Death Row East, then, was to believe in the possibility that grace could be born in the ghetto, that holiness could wear the face of struggle, that salvation could arise from streets drenched in pain.

Tupac’s life was a mirror of contradiction — violence and poetry, rage and compassion, despair and hope. He spoke of God often, but not as one who lived in churches or cathedrals. His God was found in the alleyways, in the hands of single mothers, in the eyes of children with empty stomachs but unbroken spirits. Belief, to him, was not a passive state but a fire — an act of rebellion against despair. When he said, “If you believe in God, believe in Death Row East,” he was saying, “If you believe in divine creation, then believe also that redemption can rise from the ashes of suffering — believe in us, the outlaws, the fallen, the fighters.”

Consider the story of Nat Turner, the enslaved preacher who led a rebellion because he believed God’s justice demanded liberation. Like Tupac, he carried scripture in one hand and fire in the other. The world condemned him as a criminal, but history remembers him as a man who refused to separate faith from freedom. In their own ways, both Turner and Tupac stood against empires that sought to silence them — one through chains, the other through systemic neglect. And both, in their defiance, echoed the ancient truth: that belief in God is hollow if it does not also believe in the dignity and deliverance of the oppressed.

When Tupac spoke of Death Row East, he was invoking more than music — he was envisioning a resurrection. He dreamed of a collective awakening, where artists would become prophets, where their work would uplift rather than destroy, where power would return to the people who had been robbed of it. His words were a rallying cry for faith in something larger than survival — faith in transformation, faith in the creative force that turns suffering into song and rebellion into rebirth. To believe in Death Row East was to believe that a new order could be forged from chaos, that even in the darkest systems, light could be born.

And so, my child, let this be the lesson: faith without action is hollow, and belief without courage is empty. If you believe in God, then believe also in the potential within yourself and your people. Believe that redemption can emerge from ruin, that greatness can rise from pain. Do not wait for salvation to descend from above; bring it forth from within. Build, create, and rise, even when the world denies you.

For in the end, Tupac Shakur’s words remind us that the divine is not distant — it breathes within the heart of the rebel, the artist, the dreamer who refuses to surrender. To believe in God is to believe in the power of change, in the sacredness of struggle, in the holiness of resilience. If you believe in God, believe also in the fight — believe in the rebirth, believe in Death Row East.