“2Pac ended up taking the verse off.” Wu-Tang Clan’s Inspectah Deck was another artist who missed out, his verse failing to be included due to some misplaced tapes and a misunderstanding between Dillinger and Dr Dre.Įlsewhere, there were happy coincidences: KXNG Crooked, then 19, says he was initially offered the beat for “How Do U Want It” but turned it down because his older brother had already used the same “Body Heat” sample, originally by Quincy Jones, on one of his own tracks. “She was on there doing some hard s*** but unfortunately she didn’t want to be a part of it,” Dillinger alleges. Not everything ran smoothly: rapper The Lady of Rage reportedly pulled out of her spot on “Got My Mind Made Up” because she was uncomfortable with the number of male rappers on the track (Method Man, Redman, Dillinger, Kurupt). “And if it wasn’t a song a day, it was a couple of songs a day.” “Prince would literally do a song a day and that’s how 2Pac was too,” he says during a Zoom call. Once you get in a creative zone like that, nothing can stop you.” Jimmy Jam, one half of the legendary R&B songwriting duo with Terry Lewis (behind hits for Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Usher and George Michael), compares the late artist’s output to Prince.
“But then you realise it was his passion fuelling the urgency. “I always wondered if he had the entire album written while he was in prison,” says California rapper KXNG Crooked, speaking on the phone from LA. It was evident he had a lot to get off his chest, having just been released from prison and keen to turn public opinion around. The fact that it was recorded in just two weeks after he was released from prison astounded everybody. Tragically, All Eyez On Me would be the last album to be released during his lifetime, though it created a sonic boom that would be felt by the music industry for years to come. In fact, all of Shakur’s predictions became true far sooner than anyone could have guessed – he was killed in a drive-by shooting just two years later when he was 25 years old. It was about defiance, women, paranoia, ego, and anger – and going out in a blaze of what he imagined to be glory.” “But his life was about juggling plums while bullets nipped at his ankles. “Like most American heroes, Tupac Shakur had glide in his stride, big guns, and leather holsters,” music critic Danyel Smith wrote in Vibe’s biography of the late artist. Months later in his cell, he would wake up from his nightmares convinced that he was being fired at again. Fast-forward to 1994, the night before Shakur was convicted of sexual assault and sent to prison, he was shot five times in the lobby of a New York recording studio during an alleged attempted robbery. His stepfather, Mutulu, an activist, was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. His mother, Afeni, was eight-months pregnant with him in 1971 when she was acquitted – along with 20 other members of the Black Panther Party – of more than 150 charges stemming from an alleged bomb plot. The rapper, one of the most recognisable names in hip-hop, had grown up in East Harlem surrounded by persons of interest. When it comes to introspection, hip-hop has a reputation for morbidity, and 2Pac certainly furthered that, but his refusal to sugarcoat the harsh realities of urban life was part of his appeal.All his life, Tupac Amaru Shakur knew he was being watched. Amid all this chaos and his looming prison sentence, 2Pac started laying the groundwork for the album.Ī morbid preoccupation with his own demise is expressed most explicitly on two tracks that more or less bookend the album, “If I Die 2Nite” and “Death Around the Corner.” Both songs present Pac’s fear of death as a persistent, gripping force that looms over every lyric, a fatalistic reality that can only be dealt with an ambivalent approach to mortality. Me Against The World’s introduction sets the stage for this worldview, featuring a string of news broadcasts that are equal parts truth and fiction, recounting robberies, shootings, court drama, and the media storm that followed. Nearly a quarter of a century later, 2Pac’s death is still one of the most impactful events in hip-hop history – arguably the root cause of the music’s wider paranoia and obsession with death. But despite the press labeling his lifestyle (and its harsh consequences) a persona, 2Pac knew better than anyone the realities of thug life, and Me Against The World found him coming to terms with them. Heading straight to No.1 in the US, it also made 2Pac the first star to top the album charts while in prison. Hitting the shelves while he was still in prison, the album helped shift his image from that of gangsta rapper to more of a gangsta poet, setting the stage for 2Pac to become one of the most famous MCs in the world. Released on March 14, 1995, Me Against The World was 2Pac’s most introspective effort to date.
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