In the parking lot of a west side Detroit school, there's one corner where, residents say, drug deals go down daily.

At the opposite end of the lot, so-called gang bangers have been said to gather, flashing the telltale finger signs of the Bloods and the Crips.

The center of the lot is where the cheerleaders sometimes hold impromptu rehearsals and the Girl Scouts wait to board buses for field trips.

The contradictory uses for this parking lot make it an all-the-more appropriate place to serve as a memorial for Tupac Shakur, the rapper who promoted thug life yet condemned violence, who insulted women but said he loved his mother.

It is here that a group of young African-American men stand about 20 deep, ranging in age from 15 to 47. Shakur's "If I Die Tonight" pounds from the speakers. They play it over. And over. And over again.

"I'll live eternal/Who shall I fear/Don't shed a tear for me nigga/ I ain't happy here. I hope they bury me and send me to my rest/ Headlines readin' murdered to death."

Meet Shakur's newest fans. They are among those across the country who, while hearing of Shakur's antics in life, never discovered his music until his death a little more than a month ago. These men are now drawn to Shakur's music, they say, because he prophesied so often about his own demise. And with good reason. Shakur, who at 25 had several skirmishes with the law and a prison term for sexual assault under his belt, barely survived a 1994 attempt on his life.

So as the lyrics bounce off the walls of the school building, the words come back to haunt this group of black men, who know others who "went out the same way" as Shakur, says Maurice Lipscomb, who owns the boom box but not the compact disc that's playing in it. "The same way: In a hail of gun fire," says Lipscomb, 29. "And for no good reason."

And it's that similarly violent way Shakur died -- less than a week after he was ambushed in Las Vegas while riding with Marion "Suge" Knight of Death Row Records -- that has drawn this group and other new converts to the rapper's music.

It is a morbid curiosity, but it is nonetheless fueling business. Sales of Shakur's most recent album, All Eyez on Me, tripled within a week of his shooting. Within two weeks, the album jumped from No. 69 to No. 6 on the Billboard pop chart. Album sales peaked the week of Sept. 22 at 76,000. The week ending Oct. 6, the album sold 62,000 copies, according to Soundscan, the Hartsdale, N.Y., firm that monitors music sales.

Shakur's death also is expected to propel his Nov. 5 posthumous release, Makaveli the Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, to debut at No. 1 on the charts. Shakur also filmed two movies, Gang Related and Gridlock, before his death. They are scheduled to be released in January.

Increased record sales after the death of a singer are nothing new in the industry, but there are those who are willing to bet Shakur's afterlife success will be long lasting, due in part to those who are not fans.

"They're going to gravitate to it," says Dr. Dre, disc jockey on New York's HOT 97-FM and former host of Yo! MTV Raps. Dr. Dre (not to be confused with Dr. Dre, former head of Death Row Records) attended the Nation of Islam's recent Rap Day of Atonement in New York, a memorial of sorts for Shakur and the violent urban culture in which he lived and died.

Requests for Shakur's music have "laid back a little bit" at the station, says Dr. Dre. "But it's always going to be more popular. He was Tupac. And more people are coming to know just who Tupac really, really was."

Local record stores report that it's those who never purchased and seldom heard the rapper's music who caused the sell-out stampede after his death. Now the stores are restocked, and the albums are selling briskly, again to those just discovering Shakur's rap renditions of thug life.

"I just can't explain it, but I've just had a need to buy his music," says Sharron Clark, a 32-year-old accountant, as she prepared to purchase the album in a downtown record store. "I've never supported that kind of music, but there was something so tragic about the way he died, something so weird about the way he always said he would die, just like that, that made me buy it. It's almost like I'm looking for answers."

Chico "The Quiet Storm" Hicks, a local nightclub disc jockey, agrees. "The way he was struck down will pretty much guarantee sales for a long time to come. People liked him, but they didn't talk about him as much as they do now. He didn't seem to affect people with the drive he does now."

The sure-to-come hype for the new album release, the movies and any yet-to-be released videos Death Row Records has on hand will ensure Shakur -- or at least his label -- sales for what could be years to come, says Mike Bernacchi, professor of marketing at the University of Detroit-Mercy.

"His death was a lot like his life: controversial, attention-getting," says Bernacchi. "The song lives beyond the singer. He may make more money in the hereafter."

For some, the question isn't how long he will be remembered, but which side of the multifaceted rapper people will remember.

Just days after his death, Death Row released his single and video, "I Ain't Mad At Cha," which showed the rapper dying in a drive-by shooting. Once in heaven, Shakur sings to a friend who abandoned thug life, supporting his decision.

Had Death Row allowed "I Ain't Mad at Cha" to be his final release, "the last Tupac would have been the angelic Tupac," says Kevin Taylor, music researcher for Black Entertainment Television (BET).

"Unfortunately that's not where the label is going to leave it," says Taylor, " 'I Ain't Mad At Cha' won't be the last image. He's going to come back with this gansta knucklehead stuff."

Taylor describes the upcoming album as "gruff" and says it revisits the East Coast-West Coast rap division and insults rappers Sean Puffy Combs and Dr. Dre, the former head of Death Row.

"Five years from now, he will be a reference point," says Taylor. "The question, and perhaps the problem is, what will he refer to, the glamor of thug life or the nonsense of it?"

Ruby Bailey is a reporter for The Detroit News features department. Copyright 1996, The Detroit News