Thirty years after Tupac Shakur’s death, the number that remains hardest to comprehend is his age: 25.

The rapper known as 2Pac died Sept. 13, 1996, six days after being shot in Las Vegas. In a brief career, he had become one of music’s most recognizable and debated figures. His death left a generation mourning an artist whose voice seemed too urgent to fall silent. Background on Shakur’s death

For listeners who encountered him as teenagers, the anniversary carries a particular weight. Many are now parents or grandparents, considerably older than the man whose music helped shape their youth. What once sounded like the certainty of an adult can now sound like a young person struggling to understand a world that offered him fame, danger and little peace.

Tupac’s power came…