( opposite top ) GE-OLOGY’s personal copy of the 1988 Born Busy demo, featuring some of Tupac’s earliest recordings. The cassette, recorded Jan. 16, 1988, inside Young’s bedroom at his family home on Woodbourne Avenue, included seven, mostly a capella tracks: “Check It Out!,” “That’s My Man Throwin’ Down,” “I Saw Your Girl,” “We Work Hard,” “Born Busy LIVE Freestyle,” “Babies Having Babies,” and “Terror’s On The Tables (Dedication to DJ Plain Terror).” The original cassette was sold at auction this year through Wax Poetics Collections. “Every time I listen to this, it takes me back to when it happened,” GE- OLOGY says. “I see us in that room. I see us laughing, acting silly. It was a very special time in my life.”
( above ) Tupac, GE-OLOGY (at far left), and Darrin Keith Bastfield (top right), aka Ace Rocker, with friends Kittrell Decator (kneeling behind Tupac in the blue hat), James Murphy (in red hat), and Craig Scott (back row center, with arms raised). James, Gerard, and Darrin had been students in BSA’s visual arts department, while Tupac, Craig, and Kitrell studied theater. Visible in the rear of the photo is a banner designed by Bastfield to commemorate the Baltimore School for the Arts’ Class of ‘88, and signed by members of their friend group, including Tupac.
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