The Best Tupac Songs

From “Changes” to “Troublesome 96” to “Dear Mama” to “Keep Your Head Up”, we're counting down the best Tupac songs of all time.

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best tupac songs lead

It is a strange misfortune. Despite their many successes, legends like JAY-Z, Snoop Dogg, and Nas are now cursed with the unhappy fate of growing older, less interested, and ever more mortal. Death, on the other hand, preserves. The Notorious B.I.G., Big L, and Aaliyah will always be in their prime.

Nobody benefits from this gone-too-soon bonus more than Tupac Shakur.

By 1996, 2Pac was at the center of a violent explosion of creativity and media-saturated drama. Then he was struck down in mythical fashion—something he called for early and often, in both word and deed—in Las Vegas, on September 17 of that year. His killer remains at large, though numerous conspiracies unsurprisingly point to Suge Knight.  

In the years following his death, Pac was ready-made for Internet godhood: His life was fully documented and rife with street intrigue, conspiracy theories, and a massive collection of songs, video, the works—a fully scripted multimedia docudrama.

Twenty years later, Tupac's image as king rebel poet and unrelenting voice against injustice remains untouched by the ravages of time and commerce. Imagine if JAY had lived through the release of The Blueprint and then got cut down right before dropping The Black Album. How many churches would have been erected in his honor of him and music? Instead, he has to contend with rumors about the Illuminati and faking a pregnancy.


 

MAKAVELI REMAINS BECAUSE HE IS STILL HERE. NOT IN SOME CUBAN HIDEAWAY, BUT IN HIP-HOP’S EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY.


 

Pac struck mythic chords in large part because he was all in. His records are a testimony to his complete commitment to building his own legend. He tapped into the matrix like Neo, finding a formula that resonates around the globe. A formula only a handful of artists ever attain. Like his Peruvian namesake (we dare you to Google Tupac Amaru—ill), Pac consciously made himself a sacrifice. It also made him one of the most prescient and influential artist of his time. Just like he planned it.

Makaveli remains one of the greatest because he is still here. Not in some Cuban hideaway, but in hip-hop’s every nook and cranny. We see his tattoo game reflected in how overboard the ink thing has gotten. T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. begat Fear God begat thunderous ice cream Brr-Brrs. We see his hyper-prolific approach to recording becoming the standard on the mixtape circuit, partly thanks to his great fan and acolyte Lil Wayne. And we've seen his rebellion become a commodity that can be mass-produced.

Wayne, JAY, 50, and T.I. all borrowed and reconfigured the blueprint Pac authored. We can go on and on. But there's one thing about Pac nobody has been able to duplicate: He bared his soul, to its very core.

Intense and passionate, Pac ran with thugs and killers, starred in a cult classic, and shot cops and walked free—only to be shot five times, survive and then go to prison and be reborn. But somehow he remains the rapper that your mama could love. Very few have been able to manage this sort of high-wire act with such bluster. He didn't live long enough to become a rap mogul, but his outsized presence in America's pop culture landscape cannot be overstated.

Pac lacked the intricate rhymes or flow patterns deemed worthy of praise by rap puritans, but his sometimes prophetic lyricism ran the gamut from player to rider to revolutionary. As such, he remains the blueprint for 75% of these so-called rappers out here. Here is a walk through the many highlights of one of hip-hop’s most influential artists—one that set the tone for all that would come after it. These are the best Tupac songs.

2Pac f/ Notorious B.I.G. "Runnin' (Dying to Live)" (2003)

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Producer: Eminem

Album: Tupac: Resurrection [Original Soundtrack]

Label: Amaru


Eminem stitched together two performances by the friends-turned-rivals to make an emotional track that reminded all of us what we'd been missing since their deaths. After being murdered within six months of each other, Big and Pac immediately came to represent all the tremendous talent lost to ego, violence, and the insanity of tribalism. They also became intertwined inextricably forever and ever.


Listening to the two on the same track, it becomes crushingly clear how senseless their deaths were and how devastating a loss it was for the art.


Two weeks before Pac was shot, I conducted the interview that's sampled at the top of the track, in which he talks about the fact that this was a war for the soul of hip-hop. In the end neither Big or Pac could claim the entire “n---a kingdom.” They only achieve that together in death.

2Pac f/ Outlaw Immortalz "When We Ride” (1996)

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Producer: DJ Pooh

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


"Bow down to something greater than yourself, bitch." This fire-ass crew track displays the various colors of the Outlaw Immortalz—including Hussein Fatal, Kastro, Napoleon, Mussolini, EDI Mean, Khadafi, and Mopreme. Much of the track comes off as so much smoked-out jibber-jabber but the song succeeds because the beat rides.

2Pac "16 on Deathrow" (1997)

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Producer: 2Pac

Album: R U Still Down?

Label: Amaru/BMG/Jive


Still working out his style, Pac tests several techniques here that he would go on to use continually. You can hear the Geto Boys' influence in both flow and subject matter—particularly his intense descriptions of a world seen through paranoid eyes.


On this track, as in most of his work, he portrays the world as a dark unjust place full of haters and racists attempting to imprison him. He slows down his rhymes to tell his stories more clearly. He also starts gravitating to the funk and blues, both musically and lyrically.


Pac's evolution as an MC owes an enormous debt to slow-flow masters like Too $hort and Ant Banks, but an equal amount of credit goes to Scarface.

2Pac f/ Cocoa Brovaz and Buckshot "Military Minds" (2002)

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Producer: Darryl "Big D" Harper, E.D.I.

Album: Better Dayz

Label: Amaru/Death Row


Pac's final call to arms. After his time in prison, Pac came out more and more focused on military strategy. The art of war increasingly became a theme in his music and the rationale for his movements. In the months and weeks before his death he made plans to counter his image as strictly a West Coast artist, making specific alliances—and none more intriguing than the one with Brooklyn's Boot Camp Click, who had their own issues with Biggie.


Tek, Steele, and Buckshot join Pac on this track, hoping to usher in a new era in hip-hop that Shakur dubbed "one nation." The spit from everyone on this record boded well for the alliance. Pac seemed enthused as well. By the end he's emphatically chanting "Where my soldiers, where my soldiers at? on some Che Guevera shit. Unfortunately this project would never come to fulfillment.

Too $hort f/ 2Pac, MC Breed, and Father Dom "We Do This" (1995)

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Producer: The Dangerous Crew

Album: Cocktails

Label: Jive


The big ol' pimp Too $hort, MC Breed, Father Dom, and Pac chop it up on some thick Bay Area funk. Pimpin' and Breed focus on the art of managing females, Short's specialty. Pac touches on the subject but strays off topic and starts rapping about his various issues with the police instead. Funky all the same.

2Pac f/ Nate Dogg "Thugs Get Lonely Too" (2004)

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Producer: Eminem, Louis Resto

Album: Loyal to the Game

Label: Amaru/Interscope


Nate Dogg makes an appearance, and as usual he exudes West Coast pimpness. Em and crew construct a flashy and dramatic cut. Pac lays his seduction game down. You do the rest.

2Pac f/ Big Syke, Kurupt, and Natasha Walker "Check Out Time” (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


A wistful recounting of the stage-to-hotel lifestyle. The lighthearted production mixes with Pac's nostalgic rhymes about the fun of the touring to create one of the few genuinely happy songs by Pac at this time.

2Pac "Out On Bail" (2004)

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Producer: Eminem, Louis Resto, LG

Album: Loyal to the Game

Label: Amaru/Interscope


This seemingly innocuous song may have been the very match that set off the east coast/west coast conflict that would end in the spectacular murders of their two brightest stars. Not surprisingly, the scene was the first Source Awards. Due to a cueing problem, Pac and a group of pre–Thug Life hooligans burst onto the stage screamin' “We Out On Bail!” interrupting A Tribe Called Quest as the group accepted an award.

This was interpreted as disrespect, and led to a string of threats and warnings from the Zulu Nation, of which Tribe were members. The resulting turmoil gave rise to territorial feelings in New York, where many already felt a little resentful at the rise of the west coast. What nobody in the awards show audience could deny was the performance itself: over a rollicking track Pac cussed at judges and prosecutors and the like in what was, ironically, one of the most “east coast" sounding records of his entire career.

2Pac f/ Natasha Walker "Bury Me a G" (1994)

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Producer: Thug Music

Album: Thug Life: Volume 1

Label: Out Da Gutta/Amaru/Interscope


Request granted. Some boom bap and the Isley Brothers were all Pac needed to make this early classic. Sometimes this record sounds more like self-motivational mantra than a club song.

2Pac f/ Elton John "Ghetto Gospel" (2004)

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Producer: Big D, Eminem, Luis Resto

Album: Loyal to the Game

Label: Amaru/Interscope


Elton John and early Tupac sounds like an unlikely pairing, but it works in an end-credits-of-Rocky kind of way. "Peace to this young warrior without the sound of guns."

2Pac f/ Danny Boy "Heaven Ain't Hard 2 Find” (1996)

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Producer: QDIII

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


This album closer finds Pac spitting game to his real core audience: the thug-loving civilian chick. The lush groove is inviting and more female-friendly than much of All Eyez On Me. “Love me for my thug nature,” as if to say he didn't forget about them he promising some new level of pleasure.

2Pac f/ Yaki Kadafi and Big Pimpin' "Who Do U Believe In?"

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Suge Knight Represents: Chronic 2000

Label: Death Row Records


Tupac could spit under any circumstances, and rarely did he sound completely out of his range. In this jazz-inflected meditation on God, he displays some of his trademark versatility. Pac trances out, demanding that we examine our core beliefs.

2Pac f/ Stretch "God Bless The Dead" (1998)

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Producer: Tupac

Album: Greatest Hits

Label: Amaru/Death Row/Interscope


No, this is not Pac pre-emptively mourning Big. Nor did he write this from his bunker in Cuba. This record mourns the loss of a Live Squad associate of the same name. It's spooky still. The track, a combination of Bomb Squad wall-of-sound with Wu-Tang influenced samples, is a driving march like many of the early Tupac/Stretch collabos.

Despite their lengthy friendship, things would end badly after the Quad Studio shooting in '94, with Pac suggesting Stretch's involvement in setting him up. Exactly one year later Stretch was murdered execution style. In one of his most cold-hearted lines, Makaveli seems to reference this record in "Against All Odds": "And that ni**a that was down for me, rest the dead/Switched sides, guess his new friends wanted him dead.” Chill, God. Chill.

MC Breed f/ 2Pac "Gotta Get Mine" (1993)

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Producer: Warren G, Colin Wolfe

Album: The New Breed

Label: Wrap Records


Pac makes quick work of this early Warren G track with an equally agile MC Breed. He was just coming out of his Fubu-sock-hat era and committing to the shirtless guns-and-blunts look.

2Pac "This Ain't Livin'" (2001)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Until the End of Time

Label: Amaru/Death Row


Another Johnny J masterwork—pure gangsta funk showcasing Pac at the height of his powers. Johnny J understood that Pac required accompanying angels to to start blacking out on the mic. On this one, Pac offers razor sharp analysis and takes you into the minds of the forgotten ("I be staring watching parents sacrifice they child") all while claiming his innocence to real-life court cases ("Never pulled the trigger/Never touched the bitch."). There are more popular songs, but music like this is the reason Tupac Shakur evokes such pure and widespread devotion.

2Pac "Black Cotton" (2004)

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Producer: Eminem, Louis Resto

Album: Loyal to the Game

Label: Amaru/Interscope


Nice mic work by the Outlawz on this one; Eminem and Louis Reston on the drums. The slavery reference in the title—cotton that is not picked turns black—provides the backdrop for Pac to assault the system of modern slavery and all those who accept it.

Throughout his life Pac maintained a righteous anger at being given less. His intolerance for any sort of injustice, and his willingness to rhyme it loud and rhythmically, is ultimately what motivated him. This generosity of spirit is what made Pac's war-mongering about more than just him. He thought it was crazy to be sane in a crazy world—and spoke this truth with his entire being.

2Pac f/ Michel'le, Napoleon, and Storm "Run tha Streetz” (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Gangsta barbeque music. Michel'le, the Westside's Anita Baker, makes an appearance on the hook to root the track in the original L.A. sound. Never mind the other MC spitting forgettable rhymes. This one's all about Pac offering hilarious advice to the unfortunate women attempting to tame the thug.

2Pac "Nothin' 2 Lose" (2001)

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Producer: Tupac and DJ Daryl

Album: Until the End of Time

Label: Amaru/Death Row


Pac's attitude toward life, summarized in three minutes and some seconds. Ain't no stopping at the red lights. Keep it all the way greasy.

2Pac f/ Dramacydal "Outlaw" (1995)

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Producer: Moe Z.M.D

Album: Me Against the World

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru


The Tupac Shakur mentor program generally consisted of him and his group of Thug Lifers moaning over gunfire and swearing allegiance to outlawism, keeping it real, and general mayhem. Pac also innovated the technique of talking shit at the end of the record way before that became the best part of 50 Cent records. “Stop being a player hater—be an innovator.”

2Pac f/ E.D.I. Mean and Young Noble "The Uppercut" (2004)

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Producer: Eminem, Louis Resto

Album: Loyal to the Game

Label: Amaru/Interscope


This is pre-fight music. The track slowly builds as Pac follows threats with more threats until it no longer matters what he's saying or who he's speaking to. He himself falls into a trance of violence and brings you with him. Pac's value to hip-hop was in his ability to Ride, capital R. He was a Rider Incarnate, which meant that—given a powerful enough beat, he would become it.

Unfortunately for the Outlawz—in this case, E.D.I Mean and Young Noble—no matter how good their verses are on any particular record, they're always entering the booth in the aftermath of a gangster seance. Pac didn't play fair.

2Pac f/ Stretch "Crooked Ass N*gga" (1991)

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Producer: Stretch

Album: 2pacalypse Now

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope


Pac shows an early penchant for getting on tracks with inferior rappers and having to drag them to the finish line. Stretch–RIP–of Live Squad was hot garbage on the mic and at this early stage of his life, Pac was only marginally better. Still the contrast comes out in Pac's favor, mostly because Stretch sounds like gravel at a skatepark.

Stretch's production brings back a less cynical time in hip-hop, even as Pac fetishizes guns and fantasizes about killing cops. To be fair, 75% percent of the rappers circa 1994 were talking tough about guns and police officers, but never going quite as far as young Shakur—nor saying it with as much meaning. You can already tell that this Pac character is headed for trouble.

2Pac f/ Treach, Apache and Live Squad "5 Deadly Venomz" (1993)

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Producer: Stretch

Album: Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope

A crew track featuring some of the nicest MCs of the early '90s. Pac put in strong mic work but was renegaded by Treach something awful. Shakur seemed to redeem himself somewhat later on the track only to get lyrically outpaced again, this time by Apache. (The east coast had a deep bench in the early '90s.) The juxtaposition of happy-go-lucky production, police sirens, and highly aggressive content gives the whole track a cartoonish, if-Pixar-was-ghetto feel.

2Pac f/ Stretch "Tha' Lunatic" (1991)

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Producer: Shock G

Album: 2pacalypse Now

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope

2Pac is still working that iggity-iggity flow over frantic production. But even as a rapitty-rap emcee, he displays an unhealthy obsession with guns. Stretch of Live Squad prods Pac's destructive thinking, and plays a gravel-voiced Flavor Flav to 2Pac's Chuck D-iggidy.

2Pac "Str8 Ballin'" (2003)

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Producer: Easy Mo Bee

Album: Tupac: Resurrection (Original Soundtrack)

Label: Amaru

Easy Mo Bee gives this early track a light touch while Pac sounds like molasses on wax, already claiming to be the realest motherfucker ever born. His slow, heavy flow (a precursor to the DJ Screw sound) would serve him well in later recordings. “Even if they kill me/They could never take the game from a young G.”

2Pac f/ Eric Williams of Blackstreet "Do For Love" (2001)

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Producer: Soulshock & Karlin, J Dilla

Album: Until the End of Time

Label: Amaru/Death Row

Hot Groove. Pac's flow is near perfect on this reworking of Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do For Love.. Like sonic chocolate. Still, like much of the posthumous work, it feels like something is missing. This is testament to 2Pac's performance chops. More often than not, he would not just body a song, but embody it, imbuing the track with physical energy. After he passed, this intangible was mostly missing from subsequent releases.

2Pac "Life of an Outlaw" (1996)

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Producer: Big D and Makaveli

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope

In the strange and confusing days after Pac's death, many speculated that the 7 days in the album title stood for the time between Shakur's September 7 shooting in Las Vegas and his death on the 13th in a Vegas hospital. But Pac explained that The Don Killuminati: 7 Day Theory referred to how long it took to record the album.

The production on “Life of an Outlaw” is representative of the overall sound of Makaveli's debut—stripped down and impressionistic. Gone for the most part is the lush g-funk of All Eyez On Me. Still, Pac's delivery is looser and more confident on this team-building exercise. “Would you give your life for me?” Pac asks his rap soldier E.D.I Mean. “On my grandmother” is his reply. Really?

2Pac "My Block (Remix)" (2002)

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Producer: Easy Mo Bee

Album: Better Dayz

Label: Amaru/Death Row

Easy Mo Bee takes one of Pac's more tender performances and matches it to a children's choir with the expected results. 8 out of 10 mamas prefer this Pac, the one who can be played in the school auditorium.

2Pac "Young N*ggaz" (1995)

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Producer: Le-morrious "Funky Drummer" Tyler, Moe Z.M.D.

Album: Me Against The World

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru

Early Pac pleads with the young ni**a nation over a g-funk track. One thing to love about Pac's discography is the legion of overwrought R&B singers recruited to smooth out his gritty lyrics. The Aaron Hall soundalike on this track is particularly entertaining.

2Pac f/ Method Man and Redman "Got My Mind Made Up" (1996)

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Producer: Daz Dillinger

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

A blockbuster collaboration, especially for that time. Kurupt, Daz, Meth and Red all take turns over Daz's spacious production. This track served Pac's larger war agenda for the All Eyez album. At the height of hip-hop's coastal tensions, every collabo seem to have political implications. Snoop, CNN, Mobb Deep, Ice Cube, and many others chose their sides and made it clear what team they were on.

Others like Red and Meth chose to stay neutral despite their east coast bonafides. Thinking strategically (thanks to his prison reading of Machiavelli), Pac wanted to prove he was not against the entire east coast—just “the bitch ni**as.”

RELATED: METHOD MAN TALKS ABOUT THE MAKING OF "GOT MY MIND MADE UP"

2Pac f/ Ray Luv and Shock G "Rebel of the Underground (1991)

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Producer: Shock G

Album: 2pacalypse Now

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope

Although Digital Underground were better known for hedonistic party tracks like “Dowhutchalike” and "The Humpty Dance," they also projected a black consciousness that was part Oakland legacy, part Funkadelic tradition. Pac represented the full manifestation of this element of DU's creative cauldron. Still forging his mythology at this point, he seems to play with an MC Ren cadence. The whole track is very N.W.A if you ask me.

2Pac f/ Eminem and Outlawz "One Day at a Time (Em's Version)" (2003)

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Producer: Eminem

Album: Tupac: Resurrection (Original Soundtrack)

Label: Amaru

Eminem busts out his renegade flow as he rocks with the Outlaws on one of the strongest tracks from the soundtrack of the documentary Tupac: Resurrection. "One Day" finds Pac in a zone: concise social commentary combined with confessional self-reflection: "Why do ghetto birds die/Before we learn to fly?" Em's razor-sharp lyrical analysis blends well with Pac's, creating a back-and-forth that spans the great divide. The transitions between Em and Pac are seamless, highlighting how kindred the two MCs' spirits really are.

2Pac f/ Live Squad "Strugglin'" (1993)

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Producer: Live Squad

Album: Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope

Live Squad is a Queens crew that 2Pac linked up with during his love affair with NY before and after his work in the movie “Juice”. That affair, as we know, didn't last long. While it did he made some overtly east coast records and fell in love with the sock hat.

2Pac f/ Outlawz "Fuck Em All" (2002)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Better Dayz

Label: Amaru/Death Row

"Put your hands up in the air, it's a middle finger affair," proclaims Young Noble on the hook as Johnny J blasts funk through your speakers. Pac is aggravated as ever on this one as he rhymes about how the fame has changed his life, "I went from rocks to zines/Writing raps to movies/I went from trusting these tricks now they all want to sue me."


Shakur touches on his so-called beef with you know who, but it's nothing more than a taunt at the beginning and a "Notorious Biggie killers" reference during his first verse. Another surprisingly quality cut off one of Pac's best posthumous albums, Better Dayz.

2Pac f/ The Click, C-Bo, Richie Rich and E-40 "Ain't Hard 2 Find” (1996)

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Producer: Mike Mosley & Rick Rock

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

Pac seemed to know how to make certain tracks serve multiple purposes. This track was as much California rap politicking as it was an opportunity to build with some of the heavy hitters of the day. Bay area legend E-40 trades rhymes with Richie Rich, C-Bo, and The Click—displaying the spectrum of styles that developed in Cali.

2Pac f/ Anthem and Tena Jones "Letter 2 My Unborn” (2001)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Until the End of Time

Label: Amaru/Death Row

Pac dropping prophecy over xylophones—how could you lose? Kanye and Jay studied this blueprint before making “New Day” on WTT. While the singing on the track may be unfortunate, Pac's rhymes are particularly candid and clear. Count this as one of his many preparations for what he clearly knew was coming.

2Pac "Just Like Daddy" (1996)

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Producer: Hurt-M-Badd

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope

One of the few crew tracks where you don't really mind the Outlawz. E.D.I. and Kadafi hold up their end, keeping the groove going as Pac goes into seduction mode. Tupac had a intuitive sense of what women wanted to hear from a tatted-up fresh-from-prison madman like himself. “You never had a father or family/But I'll be there....” etc.

Along the way, he manages to tell a few stories about real-life street relationships. He was good at laying out the unspoken law, rhyming “Value the girl that tells you when your man tries to fuck her” and other such gems. The flute and sensual bounce make this the perfect end-of-the-night let's fuck in the car music.

2Pac "Ghost" (2003)

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Producer: Eminem

Album: Tupac: Resurrection (Original Soundtrack)

Label: Amaru

Killuminati rising. Too many quotables, but this one stands out: “Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin' pussy.” This posthumous release is probably Shakur's most haunting track, and that is saying something. The otherworldly bells and religious overtones amplified the eerieness of his death by a thousand trillion.

What follows is some of the most resonant verses ever spit. Makavelli gets his Thug Christ on and demands that the Thug Nation (“flesh of my flesh”) follow him into “the wild.” Recorded just weeks before the fatal Vegas shooting, Pac was starting to catch the holy ghost in the booth.


2Pac becomes a thug vessel, letting spirits speak through him on some Hendrix shit. “Never realised the precious time that bitch ni**as be wasting.” He ends his verse reaching for the infinite. “To my homeboys in Quentin Max, doin' they bid/Raise hell to this real shit, and feel this/When they turn out the lights, I'll be down in the dark/Thuggin' eternal through my heart.”

If this shit don't get you charged to go hard on the cyclebike, you might be the walking dead. Pac's opening was so heavy and ill, even E.D.I. Min comes through with the best verse of his career. The same cannot be said for the cat with the fakest Jamaican accent ever, who 2Pac somehow allowed to ride this hellified track out. “Hell Merry, Hell Merry.” Fail.

2Pac f/ Richie Rich "Ratha Be Ya Ni**a” (1996)

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Producer: Doug Rasheed

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

Pac rocking over the famous Ni**az4Life sample. This also features smooth-talking Milkbox candidate Richie Rich. Pac's seductive power was based on his refusal to be domesticated. Chicks dig that.

2Pac "Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z." (1993)

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Producer: Larry "Lay Law" Goodman

Album: Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope

Mr. Fuck-a-cop is back. “I was framed! I got a crew of zoo ni**as!” Over a gangsterish groove, Pac offers a sometimes meandering treatise on the trials of Amerikkka's most hated. “I can't take it being me/Ever since the movie motherfuckers wanna do me/Or sue me.” Yet another example of a consistent 2Pac formula: rapping as a lonely voice surrounded by dark oppressive atmospherics.

The production is ominous—a siren sample adds to the morose mood—and the lyrics speak to the newfound pressures of post-Juice fame. Still Pac was capable of coherent criticism against so-called gangsters: “You can kill a ni**a but you afraid to pop a cop.”

2Pac f/ Sleep Brown "Hennessey (Red Spyda Remix)" (2004)

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Producer: Red Spyda

Album: Loyal to the Game

Label: Amaru/Interscope

The Dungeon Family's Sleepy Brown laces a '70s style romp with silken vocals. Pac talks to himself on this certified banger dedicated to the joys of the dark liquor—admitting that the Henny has way too much influence on him. “They wanna know who's my role model” he confesses. “It's in the brown bottle.” Hennessy was one part of Pac's favorite cocktail, Thug Passion. The cognac was his silent partner through much of his wrathful ride, advising him on various matters. This explains a lot.

2Pac f/ Dramacydal, Jewell & Storm "Thug Passion” (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Tupac advertises his favorite new cocktail: Alize and Cristal. This was before the age of Ciroc and Ace of Spades. Had Tupac survived, we wonder what products he would end up endorsing? Our money is on bubble bath. And Kevlar.

2Pac "Hellrazor" (1997)

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Producer: QDIII

Album: R U Still Down?

Label: Amaru/BMG/Jive Records


Pac's ability to convey pure emotion on the mic is unsurpassed, and never more so than on this early collaboration with his erstwhile friend Stretch from Live Squad. All of the basic Pac elements are there in his adrenaline-soaked verses: his outrage at every-day injustice; his deep roots in a full-blown resistance movement; his insight on the psychological implications of oppression. He's not having any of it.

2Pac f/ Nanci Fletcher "Holla At Me” (1996)

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Producer: Bobby Ervin & DJ Naya

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


The song that launched a thousand Ja Rule lyrics. This mid-tempo cut seems to rise from oblivion as 'Pac confronts his betrayers yet again. The hook demands his former friend man up and face him, but evidently love don't live here no more:

“You and me was homies/No one informed me/It was all a scheme/You infiltrated my team/And sold a ni**a dreams/How could you do me like that?/I took your family in/I threw some cash in your pockets/Made you a man again/And now you let the fear/Put you in a place/Complicated to escape/It's a fool's fate/Without your word you a shell of a man/I lost respect for you ni**a/We can never be friends/I know I'm runnin' through your head now/What could you do?/if it was up to you I would be dead now.”

Was this tirade directed at his former bestie Big? Or was it meant for his longtime collaborator Stretch? We'd love to have been a fly on the wall in 1996 when the Bad Boy crew and Death Row clashed backstage at the Soul Train awards, but lacking a time machine and a transmogrifier, this track will have to do.

2Pac f/ Outlawz & DJ Quick "Late Night" (2002)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Better Dayz

Label: Amaru/Death Row


More cowbell! Pac and the Outlaws rock light rhymes over this breezy production reminiscent of Gil Scott-Heron's "The Bottle." Sounds better in the dark.

2Pac "Krazy" (1996)

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Producer: Big D, Lance Pierre and Kevin Lewis

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope


This woozy, drunken album cut from Killuminati finds Pac rationalizing his recent past and answering critics. “They say that my ghetto instrumentals is detrimental to kids/As if they can't see the misery in which they live.” Yes, Pac is acutely aware that he might have a few screws loose, but he revels in it.

2Pac f/ Faith "Wonda Why They Call U Bitch” (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Pac justifies his use of the word bitch when referring to scheming women of a certain demeanor. He describes this one without hate, in fact he loves her “like a sister.” His advice: “Keep your head up eyes open legs closed.” Biggie's estranged wife Faith sings the hook, a chess move that set the stage for "Hit Em Up." C. Delores Tucker, the anti-rap activist, gets a shout out too.

2Pac "They Don't Give A Fuck About Us" (2002)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Better Dayz

Label: Amaru/Death Row


Michael Jackson would second this emotion a few years later.

2Pac f/ Digital Underground "Same Song" (1991)

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Producer: Digital Underground

Album

Label: Tommy Boy


A star is born. Pac entered rap as a member of the hip-hop funk collective Digital Underground. Still an infant in the game, Pac already shows off the charisma that would make him a force to be reckoned with. Still 2Pac's very first appearance on record gave little clue of the maelstrom that would follow.

2Pac f/ Nate Dogg "Skandalouz" (1996)

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Producer: Daz Dillinger

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Daz and Nate Dogg bring that lush L.A. sound—a jazzy version of Dre's g-funk—inspiring Pac to tell a few hedonistic hoochie tales. Nate Dogg, master of the seductive hook, makes you a believer. There is something in how Nate and Pac put it down that convinces you that they know a thing or three about these scandalouz women of which they speak.

2Pac f/ Shock G "Trapped" (1991)

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Producer: The Underground Railroad

Album: 2pacalypse Now

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope


A bluesy funk sound swept over hip-hop in the early '90s and Pac was starting to synthesize the west coast gangster funk with Black Panther agitprop. The influence of Bay Area pioneers Too $hort, Digital Underground and E-40 is fully evident here. The deep rolling bassline and bluesy organ are part of a sound that producers like Shock G turned into hits like “Humpty Hump” and would ultimately morph into Hyphy.


Still a young MC, Tupac wrote articulate dispatches about America's war on black manhood, articulating the pain and confusion of a person watching his options dwindle without sounding defeated. His crisp descriptions of police brutality were cut with righteous rage. Tupac sounds like he is swimming against the tide on this track.

His flow feels antiquated when compared to New York rhyme patterns at the time, but he finds his own grooves over this thick west coast production. Slower and more melodic than his east coast peers, Pac's singsong style is somehow comforting—even when spitting about the violence and paranoia of the street life.

2Pac f/ Anthony Hamilton "Thugz Mansion" / 2Pac f/ Nas and J. Phoenix "Thugz Mansion (Acoustic Version)" (2002)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Better Dayz

Label: Amaru/Death Row


Still mourning the death of his own mother, Nasir drops a reverent verse over this wistful guitar riff. Pac, for his part, returns to a favorite theme: gangster paradise. He was deeply concerned that there be a heavenly place reserved for good-hearted criminals who committed sins due to circumstances beyond their control—and where the metal detectors are platinum and gold.

2Pac f/ Outlawz "Hell 4 A Hustler" (1999)

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Producer: Damon Thomas

Album: Still I Rise

Label: Amaru/Death Row/Interscope Records


Some of Pac's posthumous material suffers from sounding dated, or worse, overproduced in an attempt to compensate. But this single from the Outlaws captures Pac during the wild-eyed days right before his death. His rhymes are not as polished as they are on Killuminati, but riveting all the same. Still, by the time this was released we had heard it all before—only better. The Outlaws, however, are much improved.

2Pac f/ Nate Dogg "How Long Will They Mourn Me?" (1994)

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Producer: Nate Dogg, Warren G

Album: Thug Life: Volume 1

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru


A looong, loooong fuckin' time.

2Pac f/ Yaki Kadafi, Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg "All Bout U" (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J" and 2Pac

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


More thug passion. This hoochie track—produced by ace producer Johnny "J"—is a light romp into the realm of rap stardom and features Yaki Khadafi (who was shot and killed soon after Tupac, perhaps because he was rumored to have seen the killer and was ready to testify).

Over a reinterpretation of the bassline from Cameo's hit “Candy,” the Death Row boys lament the fact that they always seeing the same vixens at every video shoot. Only the esteemed crooner Nate Dogg could make misogyny sounds so groovilicious. Snoop's outro says it all: they're “only being real.”

Bone Thugs N Harmony f/ 2Pac "Thug Luv"

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Producer: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, DJ U-Neek, 2Pac

Album: The Art of War

Label: Relativity/Ruthless


Outside of perhaps Scarface's “Smile,” this is one of the greatest Pac collaborations recorded. The combo of the flitter-tongued Bone Thugs with Pac's hellraising over a backdrop of rhythmic gunshots and piano vamps make for some real gangster operations.

2Pac "Blasphemy" (1996)

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Producer: Hurt-M-Bad, Makaveli, D, Lance Pierre and Justin Isham

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Citing Biblical prophecy, the song opens with a disembodied voice speaking about the resurrection of Christ, setting up the sacrilege to follow. This continues the mood set by “Hail Mary,” in which Pac dares to speak as a new thugged-out prophet leader of these latter-day saints. Again sounding like a man lunging forward into darkness, Pac claims to have “the new word” and predicts “this thug life will be the death of me.”

Then he takes it further, brazenly suggesting that he is a new Christ in the flesh—a notion reinforced by the Makaveli album art. “Tell me I ain't God's son/my mama's a virgin... Brothers gettin' shot comin back resurrected." Later on he's splitting blunts like Moses split the Red Sea, and—as always—preparing for his demise: “I leave this [song] here and hope God see my heart is pure. Is heaven just another door?”

2Pac f/ Rappin' 4-Tay "Only God Can Judge Me" (1996)

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Producer: Doug Rasheed and Harold Scrap Fretty

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Tupac's ability to give memorable performances with mediocre rappers is unsurpassed in all of hip-hop. Bay Area MC Rappin 4-Tay (SMH) comes through with some heartfelt—if rhythmically challenged—rhymes. “When you're locked down/That's when I'll be around.” Ugh.

Still, Pac gives one of his most powerful lyrical performances. He struggles with memories of multiple betrayals by friends, family and society, seeming to question everything—including his own sanity. “And in my mind/I'm a blind man doing time.”

The electronic voice on hook makes the “he who is without sin” argument, an extension of the looming synthesizer whine that seems to cosign Pac's desolation. The affect is chilling and hard to dispute. “I been trapped since birth... And they say the white man i should fear/But it's my own kind doing all the killing here.”

About midway, Pac knowingly rhymes over the beeping of a heart monitor until it flatlines. “I'd rather die like a man than live as a coward/Dear mama can you save me?” Pac keeps a brave face at the end of this record, but he's already losing his religion.

2Pac "When We Ride On Our Enemies" (2002)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Better Dayz

Label: Amaru/Death Row


Johnny "J" provides another epic soundscape to contain Tupac's limitless supply of rage. On this track Pac screams on a new set of East Coast enemies. His attack on Mobb Deep is cold-blooded: "Ni**a you barely livin'/Ain't you got sickle cell?/See me on stage/You ain't feelin' well." He even goes in on Da Brat—and wait... did Tupac just threaten to cut Lauryn Hill? Lauryn Hill? "I heard the Fugees was tryin' to do me/Look bitch I'll cut you/This ain't a movie." We love how he refers to Pras and Wyclef as the "other two." Someone take the mic away from this man before we all go to hell.

2Pac f/ Dave Hollister "Brenda's Got a Baby" (1991)

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Producer: The Underground Railroad

Album: 2pacalypse Now

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope


This song became as famous for its music video as it was for its tale of a black girl lost. Over syrupy sweet '80s style R&B, Pac bears emotional witness to a common tragedy. Pac's narrative about the stress and fear that comes with having a child in the ghetto gave him an opportunity to speak to women, who were starting to pay more attention to him after his star turn in the film Juice. The success of this single taught him a critical lesson that would lead to a string of chart-toppers: Make music for female fans. They actually purchase music.

2Pac f/ Synar "Shorty Wanna Be a Thug” (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Channelling Scarface with a little Nas thrown in, Pac paints a picture of how the young thug comes to be. His delivery is tinged with regret, suggesting that for many young men the thug life is inevitable. “I tell you it's a cold world, stay in school/You tell me it's a man's world, play the rules.” Is this foolishness or the realest of realities? Was he rapping about his younger self? Does he sometimes secretly wish he never played the dirty game? Producer Johnny "J"'s mournful bagpipe in the background says probably.

2Pac "Unconditional Love" (1998)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Greatest Hits

Label: Amaru/Death Row/Interscope


Pac could pander when he wanted to. Naming a song "Unconditional Love" was just the first step. Shedding gangster tears and reminiscing about the struggle over fairly generic R&B are steps two and three. Even in such formulaic work, Pac has bright moments and higher goals. "My ambition is to be more than a rap musician/The elevation of today's generation if I can make em listen."

2Pac "Death Around the Corner" (2004)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Me Against The World

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru


Pac's other go-to producer Johnny "J" creates a track reminiscent of Dr. Dre's "Little Ghetto Boy." Pac responds by venting his paranoia and stress. A melancholy flute empathizes with Pac, who seems to have lost hope in everything, calling for an early grave. "Here's hoping I die like lived/Straight thugging." If there was a word cloud for all of Pac's lyrics it would read THUG, DEATH, DIE, BITCHES, NI**AS in massive letters surrounded lots of fine print.

2Pac f/ Outlawz "Starin' Through My Rear View" (2003)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Tupac: Resurrection (Original Soundtrack)

Label: Amaru


This track belongs in the All Eyez On Me family. 2Pac employs his chanting style to ride this over-produced interpolation of the Phil Collins classic “In the Air.” This track might have worked better without all the gratuitous electric guitar.

2Pac "Toss It Up" (1996)

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Producer: Dr. Dre, Demetrius Shipp

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Pac embraces his dark side on verses that swing between sex and violence. The tensions within the Death Row Camp had reached epic proportions. Dr. Dre, founder of the Death Row sound, was unhappy with CEO Suge Knight and his violent new capo, 2Pac, who seemed intent on igniting a coastal war. By the time 2Pac recorded this, Dre had left Death Row and Pac replaced the dap he'd once given him with pure vitriol: “You as fruity as this Alize."

This beat was originally produced by Dre, but would later be sold to Blackstreet for their monster hit “No Diggity.” The video shows Pac seducing Lisa Raye(!), setting fires, and smashing a mirror (Freud would have a field day), as K-Ci, Jojo and what looks to be a fake Aaron Hall sing into flame throwers. Pac was awash in blood and champagne; the Black Panther spirit of Pac's earlier work nowhere to be seen.

Though it was a step down from "Skandalouz," the production was funky enough to shoot up the charts despite the vicious attacks on Dre's manhood. Somehow K-Ci and JoJo were the perfect voices to capture the out-of-controlness of the entire venture.

2Pac "Life Goes On" (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


"Pour Out A Liquor" part deux. Despite all his time spent as a vengeful madman, Pac truly became legendary because of his ability to speak about loss and tragedy. It is on these “last of a dying breed” lamentations, full of slice-of-life lyrics, that he fostered such undying devotion from his fans. Here Pac mourns the lifers and the gone-too-soon, displaying his trademark generosity of spirit and a sensitive eye for emotional detail.

2Pac "Ballad of a Dead Soulja" (2001)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Until the End of Time

Label: Amaru/Death Row


Some posthumous aggressive content by a growly-ass 2Pac, wondering aloud if he's lost his mind. He combines two of his favorite themes—death and war—making a pretty compelling electrofunk track. The loopy, distorted hook sounds like some haunted house shit. Even the title is gangster gothic, a subgenre that Pac became the master of.

During his life he was always able to find the production to match his macabre imagination. Pitch: It's 1996. The east coast/west coast war is raging. L.A. is overrun by Zombies. A small group of Outlawz led by 2Pac must cross the country to get to the east coast if they want to survive. But their rap rivals lie in wait. Hoochie Zombies! G-funk! Someone call AMC immediately.

2Pac "White Man'z World" (1996)

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Producer: Hurt-M-Bad, Makaveli, D, Lance Pierre and Justin Isham

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope


This apology to Black women in general and to his sister and mother in particular draws heavily from Shakur's roots in the Black Panther movement. The singing is pleasantly amateurish, and Pac speechifies throughout the song, as if at a rally. For obvious reasons, the rape trial took its toll on Pac's image as a fairly pro-woman conscious rapper.


In response, he crafted humble tributes to those who bear society's greatest burdens: Political prisoners, mothers and children, the have-nots. Even with his militant perspective, Pac again proves himself a potent voice against injustice of all sort. Listening to tracks like these makes us wonder what this world might have been like had Pac survived his addiction to gangster glamour.

2Pac f/ 50 Cent "The Realest Killaz" (2003)

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Producer: Red Spyda

Album: Tupac: Resurrection (Original Soundtrack)

Label: Amaru


50 Cent finally gets a piece of the Pac legacy. As one of the main beneficiaries of 2Pac comparisons, Fifty became the new hot rapper when his life began to feel like an echo of the greatest story hip-hop ever told. 50 used the opportunity to get at Ja Rule again for his 2Pac biting. “2Pac got a cross on his back and you get cross on your back.” Never mind the fact that 50's flow also borrows heavily from Pac. On this track he gives back to the Pac legacy, or at least maintains the association. It's hilarity nonetheless.

2Pac "No More Pain " (1996)

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Producer: DeVante Swing, Timbaland

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Co-opting a Method Man refrain for the hook, Pac glories in his new power as hip-hop sex symbol and all-around "it" ni**a. He also revels in the hate his lyricism now seems to run on. He speaks like someone drunk with power, maniacal in fact, riding on the energy of prison release and surviving a near death experience. “Busta shot me five times/Real ni**as don't die.” The eerie piano and whispering that layer this track is orchestrated by Devante of Jodeci, another creative mad man and former Puff protege. “Prison ain't change me ni**a,” he warns his multiple enemies, “it made me worse.” It also made him a better, more focused MC.

2Pac "Me Against the World" (1995)

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Producer: Soulshock & Karlin

Album: Me Against the World

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru


Pac does self-pity far more convincingly than, say, Drake, even if you suspect in the back of your mind that a lot of Pac's troubles were self-created. By this time, his life had already taken on violent circus proportions. He had to contend with several court cases, including two separate cop shooters who blamed their actions on 2Pac's music.

Pac ran with the most dangerous and untrustworthy associates in the Tri-state, was betrayed and almost left for dead and at the time of this release, locked in prison with a music and film career hanging in the balance. His rarified blues might not necessarily be your blues, but this lonely warrior track is built to get you through your more mundane troubles. Pac has a way of tapping into some sort of universal loneliness on any almost any track he rhymed on.

2Pac f/ George Clinton "Can't C Me” (1996)

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Producer: Dr. Dre

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope


A full on P-funk re-up with the godfather of the westside, George Clinton. Dr. Dre does his best to recreate the Parliament Funkadelic sound with exacting detail. Pac actually seems slightly out of sync with the entire vibe. Clinton's chanting on the hook seems to speak in more mystical terms—as in “I'm so high-frequency most can't comprehend what I'm laying down.” Meanwhile Pac concerns himself with more earthly matters, using this funscape of sound to once again go rabid on his enemies.


This is one of the rare occasions when Pac misses an opportunity by going nuclear on a record that wants to rise above the bullshit. Clinton, by the end, seems to distance himself from this crazy ni**a on the track. “See no evil," he improvises. “Hear no evil, speak no evil.” Was the Lord of Funk chin-checking Pac on his own record? Whoowee.

2Pac "Hold Ya Head" (1996)

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Producer: Hurt-M-Bad, Makaveli, D, Lance Pierre and Justin Isham

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope


When not chasing pussy or warmongering, Pac crafts beautiful ballads of resistance. He again shows solidarity with society's prisoners—literal and figurative—with an uplifting survival song. We can see his cardboard sign now: "Bitch, I'm one of the 99%."

2Pac "Pour Out A Lil' Liquor Thug Life" (1994)

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Producer: Johnnie "J" Jackson

Album: Thug Life: Volume 1

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru


This song about street-corner libations was right up 2Pac's alley: linking the block, the eternal, and liquored up ghetto tales. Pac spent an inordinate amount of his mic time in mourning. It could be argued that his moaning style was a stylistic extension of his fixation with death and the afterlife. Adding to the woozy nostalgia of those lost in the street game, the track drunkenly wobbles and distorts like an old cassette tape. Completely in his zone, Pac sounds almost joyful.

Funkmaster Flex f/ 2Pac & The Notorious B.I.G. "Live Freestyle" (1999)

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Producer:

Album: The Tunnel

Label:


This shit cray. Witness the undeniable proof that these two remain are hip-hop's livest verse. Both performances are full of energy and display everything you loved about each artist. Biggie's gunchat plays well against Pac's thugspeak and the whole thing is a miracle of talent manifesting live on stage. Bless whoever recorded this brief window in time when it was all good between the two MCs. It still hurts that things evolved the way they did and deprived us of the collaborative album, tour and films they might have created. Pardon the despicable pun, but it would have been MURRDAHHH.

2Pac "So Many Tears" (1995)

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Producer: Shock G

Album: Me Against the World

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru


Unflinching and morose, Pac faces his afterlife. Not only does he—once again—foretell his own death, he also accepts his spot in hell. Where he will burn eternally. He lays out his demons and, most strikingly, confesses: “I'm suicidal so don't stand near me/My every move is a calculated step, to bring me closer to embrace an early death.” Spooky business. Such lyrics are also the birthplace of several half-baked conspiracy theories.

2Pac f/ RL "Until The End of Time" (2001)

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Producer: Johnny "J" and Trackmasters

Album: Until the End of Time

Label: Interscope


Along with "Changes" and “Do For Love,” this track ranks among the most successful posthumous Pac releases. Unlike some of the songs that were cobbled together from old work, this one sounds like he was in the booth spitting. Pac's ability to immerse himself in the sound of any given song was always part of his appeal as a rapper. Here Johnny "J" and Trackmasters achieve that "live in the studio" feel.

2Pac "To Live & Die in L.A." (1996)

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Producer: QDIII

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope


Call this one “California Love” part deux. Pac writes a love letter to the city he calls home, shedding one of the few rays of light on the dark moodiness of the Killuminati album. This poignantly hopeful track is marked by Pac's real affection for the rituals of the Los Angeles lifestyle.

His verses are full of familial love and personal history. The record actually sounds like the city of angels. This would be one of our last glimpses of the calm, insightful and warm Pac, sans violent obsessions and madman-isms that marked the Makaveli period.

2Pac "I Wonder If Heaven Got a Ghetto" (1997)

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Producer: Soulshock & Karlin

Album: R U Still Down? (Remember Me)

Label: Amaru/BMG/Jive


On the first single of his posthumous career, Pac poses a question that he would rework throughout his entire career. Our answer: Yes. There is a ghetto heaven. It's where Biggie, Pun, Aaliyah, Scott LaRock, Big L, Jam Master Jay and Left Eye reside. But it's not the same anymore now that all the fuckin' hipsters are moving in.

2Pac "Holler If Ya Hear Me"

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Producer: Stretch

Album: Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope


One of Pac's several call to arms songs over Bomb Squad–style production. Still more Panther manchild than gangster, Pac makes systemic injustice personal. The spoken-word intro speaks directly about black people taking back our lives. The video televises the revolution as well as Pac's Black Panther lineage. "We don't die we multiply." The Public Enemy influence is manifest not only in Pac's subject matter and delivery but in the screechy siren-like noise that runs through this track.


One of the most militant songs to come out of this era, "Holler" was an undiluted call to revolution, marking Pac's sincere commitment to the cause of black liberation. His vision of an army of street cats turned into revolutionary soldiers in a war against the unjust was a reccurent theme throughout his work. Unafraid, if sometimes misguided, he seemed to know that his ideas were more dangerous than the guns he was brandishing in the video: “Now I'm major threat/Because I remind you of the things you were made to forget.”

2Pac "Intro/Bomb First (My Second Reply)" (1996)

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Producer: Big D, Makaveli, D, Lance Pierre and Justin Isham

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope


"The question everyone wants to know is why did they get this ni**a started." Makaveli the Don defines his axis of evil and spits darts at any and everyone posing a threat to his rap domination. Ironically, it's not his strongest lyrical performance—Pac's barely controlled rage takes something away from his timing. But whatever he lacks in technique he more than makes up with passion: “Pleeease! Reconsider fo' you die.”


This intro track leaves no doubt about the continuation of Shakur's campaign to destroy not just Biggie and Puffy but any and everyone standing too close to them. He accuses Nas of biting him (see #18) and Mobb Deep of laughing at his getting shot on “Drop A Jewel on 'Em" (“You probably screamed louder than opera” sniggered Prodigy).

So it was a matter of principal for Pac to viciously respond. As dismissive as he is of Jay on this track (Pac was the first to hit Jay with the "Hawaiian Sophie" diss, which would be utilized often by various Jay foes), Pac seemed to sense the coming threat. Jay was coming for his throne.

Scarface f/ 2Pac "Smile"

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Producer: Scarface, Mike Dean, Tone Capone

Album: The Untouchable

Label: Rap-A-Lot Records

A beautiful song with Pac's kindred spirit Scarface. The morose intelligence of both MCs finds synchronicity on this track, released not long after Pac's death. Perhaps more than any other rapper, Scarface was the voice to mourn Pac's passing. Both rappers represented a cynical spirituality that comes through loud and clear on this track. Theirs was a collaboration that deserved an entire album. Or two.

2Pac "Troublesome 96"

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: Greatest Hits

Label: Amaru/Death Row/Interscope

If there was any question that something had snapped in Pac by this point, this reckless record should put aside any doubts. “A born leader/Never leave the/Block without the heater/Got me a dog named her/My bitch ni**a heater.” Makaveli, the boss of all bosses, Bad Boy killer, rallies his outlaw family. We'll always love Big Poppa, but we can't lie—we can never get enough of Pac's fury at the Bad Boy camp.

2Pac f/ Big Syke "All Eyez on Me” (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

Pac murked this something awful. After all, it was the title track for his mammoth double album and the bounce was everything he needed it to be. The late Johnny J is still unheralded for his genius work on Pac's discography. The loop from Linda Clifford's “Never Gonna Stop” created subtle sonic drama while leaving enough space to lay out his mythology. (Nas would be given the same sample for his "Street Dreams" single by Trackmasters, which we suspect was part of the reason why Nas became a target on the Makaveli album.) With Johnny J, Pac was liberated to be all the many personas that resided in his restless soul. Big Syke appears and empathizes.

2Pac "Against All Odds" (1996)

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Producer: Hurt-M-Bad, Makaveli, D, Lance Pierre and Justin Isham

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope

Released after his murder, this record became Pac's de facto last will and testament, as well as the greatest bit of dry snitching ever recorded. Over dream-like production, Makaveli declares war on the men he believed were responsible for his New York shooting. In an unprecedented move he speaks their names directly.

After sending lyrical shots at Nas, De La Soul, and Puff, he points the finger at Haitian Jack, an alleged government informant who was involved in the same rape case as Pac but quickly set free while Pac sat in prison for months. Makaveli goes on to name Jimmy Henchman and “Tut”—the suspected Brooklyn gunman—as Jack's accomplices in the attempt to murder him in Quad studios. Pac talks extra reckless, and that recklessness made for one of the most riveting pieces of music ever set to wax.

2Pac "Heartz of Men" (1996)

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Producer: DJ Quik

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

Extra-aggressive content from Mr. Makaveli over a masterful beat by DJ Quik, the West Coast's version of DJ Premier. After giving a quick, emotional overview of the kind of problems one faces in the game, accompanied by angelic moaning, Pac issues a series of precise threats. Everyone who's paying attention knows who he is talking to and talking about. Shots at Stretch and Puffy and B.I.G. and “bitch-ass ni**as” in general.


Quik outdoes himself on the heavily layered track that's somehow both hot and cold, filled out with an insistent horn and a thousand bits of small genius. The Richard Pryor “I have no to heart to fight” sample is a perfect counterpoint to Pac's war-mongering. Perfectly on beat, Pac is on a tear, laying out an entire worldview. “I died and came back... I'm lost and no knowing/Scarred up but still flowing/Energized and still going.” This had to end badly. The music was too good.

2Pac "Temptations" (1995)

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Producer: Easy Mo Bee

Album: Me Against the World

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru

Released while he was in prison, the video for this is one of many that had to be filmed minus 2Pac. He is a ghost in so many of his videos that we have become accustomed to him as a disembodied voice. He seems to play to that, sounding like he could play the ghost on Scooby-Doo on a lot of his records. The sleepy production by Easy Mo Bee creates a lush hedonistic sound that Pac starts to prefer near the end of his career. On this Easy Mo Bee track, Pac moans through a seduction over a track punctuated by a sample of Erick Sermon's oft tune singing.

2Pac f/ Big Syke, CPO, and Danny Boy "Picture Me Rollin'” (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

In this musical letter to his old prison associates and past enemies, Pac musters up some vengeful optimism over a beat built for riding. Now that he was successfully back on top of the rap game, he could not resist stunting on a few former haters. Big Syke and CPO, for their part, offer a nice contrast in mic styles.

2Pac "Changes" (1998)

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Producer: 2Pac

Album: Greatest Hits

Label: Amaru/Death Row/Interscope

"It takes skill to be real," Pac raps on one of his better posthumous releases. "Time to heal each other." Over a reworking of a sentimental Bruce Hornsby tune, Pac lays out his struggle as Amerikkka's most hated. His genius comes in somehow creating a sense of hope in the midst of hopelessness—hip-hop original magic trick. Even though lines like "we ain't ready to see a black president” have gone out of date, Pac's love for his community and his people are undiminished. The biggest surprise comes with his suggestion that we “change the way we eat." Was Pac becoming vegan?

2Pac "Me and My Girlfriend" (1996)

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Producer: Big D, Hurt-M-Bad, Makaveli

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope

Props to Lady of Rage, who gives good gun chat on this track and succeeds in convincing us that she knew her way around an AK. There are a few other interesting things going on here: Pac has now fully embraced the dark side (thanks Suge), and the maniacal persona who made his appearance on “Hit 'Em Up” is here to stay.

Still fresh from the drama of his time in prison and the madness that preceded​ it, Pac enacts a Hennessy-fueled fantasy of death, murder, and gunfire. As Death Row Capo, he committed himself fully to the war for the soul of hip-hop, so this song's thematic parallels with The Notorious B.I.G.'s “Me and My Bitch” point to the possibility that Pac intended to show B.I.G. up as pussy-whipped and soft. That it revealed Pac's own insanity may be beside the point.


His voice is like a force of nature on this track. It's tempting to condone whatever wrong-headed hatred had to be conjured to make this man perform at such heights of passion.

By this point in his career, Pac had advanced as an mic performer in almost every conceivable way, plus this record boasted one of the catchiest hooks of his entire career. (Jay Z recognized the fact, and used it to chart success, replacing images of gunplay with a ripe, just-snatched-up Beyoncé Knowles.) This post-Pac moment can be looked at as a pretty succinct metaphor for the changes in hip-hop's strategy from the '90s to the '00s.


After B.I.G. and Pac's double murder, hip-hop collectively turned from the passionate and sometimes wild rebellion that fueled its pop rise to a more stylish calculation. Visual props in the video aside, I could never glean whether this was a final fuck you or an ode to the pioneering MC. Even after his death, Jay could never fully conceal his contempt for Pac the person. (See his scathing critique of Pac's last night in Vegas in "I Love the Dough"—“I'm in the 1500 seats/same night/same fight/But one of these cats wasn't playing right/ I'll let you tell it.”) Still, Jay understood the importance of 2Pac the artist.

2Pac f/ Snoop Dogg "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” (1996)

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Producer: Daz Dillinger

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

Recorded when Snoop was facing a murder charge with a sentence of 25-to-life and Pac was fresh from prison and still facing several court cases, this record took ginormous balls. Having produced such certified classics as The Chronic and Doggystyle, Death Row's dominance was undeniable by this time. Snoop's reign at the top, despite the emergence of B.I.G. and the Wu-Tang movement was still pretty much unquestioned. The joining of two monumental figures made for heady collabo and good MC politics. Pac seemed like the only credible threat to Snoop's position as king of all hip-hop.


To his credit, Snoop was unthreatened by Pac's insurgent energy and welcomed him as a brother to the Death Row family. Hearing the two biggest rap stars on one track cemented Death Row's status as the gangster-est label ever and Suge as the don of dons. Both prove their fitness on the mic over an appropriately sinister groove. Reflecting the bigness of this moment, Snoop lyrically suggests organizing a million-man march “on some gangster shit.” Occupy Wall Street would shit on themselves.

2Pac "If I Die 2Nite" (1995)

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Producer: Easy Mo Bee

Album: Me Against the World

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru

This record gives a good sense of Pac's mind state at this point in the game. “Addicted to drama so even my mama couldn't raise me." It's a Mo Bee track, which gives it echoes of Biggie's Ready to Die. He opens with a Peter-Piper-picked-a-peck alliteration, but Pac has always been more about flow than lyrics.


This song gives more because of the haunting hook. Did he foresee his own death? It's easy to talk about the prophetic nature of this and other songs, but one should also note that Pac knew what was coming because he knew he was calling for it. In word and deed.

2Pac "Ambitionz Az a Ridah" (1996)

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Producer: Daz Dillinger

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

"Let's get ready to rumble!" After signing with Suge Knight and Death Row Records to get out of prison, 2Pac returns as a “musical mercenary” with vastly improved rhyme skills. Among his first utterances: “My attitude is fuck it/and motherfuckers love it.” Pac uses this track to explain the rationale behind his new religion: Riderism.

A menacing piano adds drama to the track as a reincarnated Pac gleefully gets to lyrical gun bus'ing. “My greatest wish is to rise/above these coward-ass ni**as I despise.”


“Ambitionz” finds him making reference to the New York shooting. Pac intuitively understood how to add this to his mythology. “Blast me but they didn't finish/Didn't diminish, my powers/Now I'm back to be a motherfucking menace.”


What adds dimension to his threats and violent bravado are lines that confess his own vulnerability. He rhymes about having suicidal thoughts, and begs his mama to save him—even as he claims thug immortality and wishes death on his enemies.

2Pac f/ Danny Boy "I Ain't Mad at Cha" (1996)

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Producer: Daz Dillinger

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

This is Pac letting the song cry. His emotional letter to a homie introduced Danny Boy, a Suge Knight favorite, who gave the hook a Baptist church feel. The way Pac details the emotions of a changing friendship gave credence to the idea that Pac was just an artist playing gangsta. The level of sensitivity in tracks like "Brenda's Got a Baby" and "Dear Mama" seem to show Pac as soft-hearted and loving, the precise opposite of his Makaveli persona.


Since his unforgettable performance as Bishop in the Juice flick, he's often been accused of acting out the Bishop role in his real life. A better way to think of it is that he was so committed to his art that it bled into his life. Or that because he hated so passionately, he could also love with equal force. His gift for telling a soulful story let him tap into something so real and so universal that he's still felt throughout the world all these years after his death.

2Pac "Keep Ya Head Up" (1993)

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Producer: Daryl "DJ Daryl" anderson

Album: Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope

This blockbuster hit is probably Pac's most famous song, fueled in no small part by the “Ooh Child” sample, sung by The Five Stairsteps, which gives the track an air of '70s nostalgia. 2Pac staccato stepped through the track—dedicated to his nephew and goddaughter—pointing out the various struggles he witnessed as he grew up. Certainly his most uplifting and mama-friendly song, and the one that best explains his broad appeal beyond the T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. demographic.


Pac instinctively knew to balance his revolutionary persona with a more conscious and female-friendly approach. The feel-good nature and lyrics that betrayed his sensitivity to the plight of the black woman—dealing not only with a system that destroys hope but with black men who ignore and abuse their own—Pac took a stand in a new way.


There is some irony here considering his later rape charges. But in 1994, Pac was a rapper who could speak, unprompted, in sensitive, pro-woman language—a rarity at any time. This fact redeems Pac in the eyes of many. He still wins female devotion to this day, despite his checkered past.

2Pac f/ K-Ci & JoJo "How Do U Want It?" (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: All Eyez On Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

This Johnny “J” track was made to inspire acrobatic displays on a pole. Pac raps in explicit visuals, comparing himself to hydraulics and such. The strip club anthem proved provocative enough to become one in a string of hits for Pac and Death Row.

The addition of two powerhouse voices from Jodeci—K-Ci & Jojo—was clearly a Suge Knight chess move to psychologically fuck with Puff, who shaped Jodeci's image and, with Devante, their sound. This record was basically a sexromp on wax, yet Pac found time not only to send subliminal shots at Puff but also to clown Bob Dole (ha!) and Bill Clinton for being too old to understand the game. Pac was a master at lyrical multi-tasking.

2Pac f/ Outlawz "Hail Mary" (1996)

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Producer: Hurt-M-Badd, Tommy Daugherty, Lance Pierre and Justin Isham

Album: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

Label: Death Row/Interscope

Killuminati rising. Too many quotables, but this one stands out: “Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin' pussy.” This posthumous release is probably Pac's most haunting track, and that is saying something. The otherworldly bells and religious overtones amplified the eerieness of his death by a thousand trillion.


What follows is some of the most resonant verses ever spit. Makavelli gets his Thug Christ on and demands that the Thug Nation (“flesh of my flesh”) follow him into “the wild.” Recorded just weeks before the fatal Vegas shooting, Pac was starting to catch the holy ghost in the booth.


Tupac becomes a thug vessel, letting spirits speak through him on some Hendrix shit. “Never realized the precious time that bitch ni**as be wasting.” He ends his verse reaching for the infinite. “To my homeboys in Quentin Max, doing they bid/Raise hell to this real shit, and feel this/When they turn out the lights, I'll be down in the dark/Thugging eternal through my heart.”


If this shit don't get you charged to go hard on the cycle bike, you might be the walking dead. Pac's opening was so heavy and ill, even E.D.I. Min comes through with the best verse of his career. The same cannot be said for the cat with the fakest Jamaican accent ever, who Pac somehow allowed to ride this hellified track out. “Hell Merry, Hell Merry.” #Fail.

2Pac f/ Shock G and Money-B "I Get Around" (1993)

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Producer: The D-Flow Production Squad

Album: Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.

Label: Amaru/TNT/Interscope

Pac was always 'bout that life. His first big hit finds the post-Digital Underground MC still fully under the Bay Area's sway. The lyrics, of course, run along an ongoing theme in Pac's work: Baggin' bitches. Or, as they say in civilized circles, seducing the honeys. It seems he was competent at such matters as confirmed by the recent release of a sex tape with everyone's favorite hedonist Money B. This early summer joint gives us the 2Pac everybody got along with. A few years later, a rape accusation would dramatically alter the trajectory of his life and career in ways he could never imagine.

2Pac f/ Outlawz "Hit 'Em Up" (1996)

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Producer: Johnny "J"

Album: B-Side

Label: Death Row/Interscope

This is that divide-your-peeps shit. In the first line alone—“First off fuck your bitch and the clique you claim”—Pac delivers lacerations of the apocalyptic kind. Still angry at what he saw as a betrayal by his good friend, he got on a mission to eat Big's food to devastating effect.

Even after Pac began leveling accusations of their complicity in his Quad Studio shooting, no one at Bad Boy was prepared for this. Big and Puff had been enjoying a relatively unmolested rise to the top of the rap heap. Cuts like Junior M.A.F.I.A.'s “Get Money” and “Who Shot Ya?” were flying up the rap charts. Bad Boy was a hit machine, but they were ill-prepared for what Pac would unleash soon after Suge Knight—an avowed enemy of Puffy—bailed Pac out of prison. A raving mad 2Pac reinterpreted “Get Money” and crafted a devastating, and we mean devastating, retort.

In one burst of acidic vitriol, Pac managed to level an attack on not only Biggie but his entire entourage, setting off the war and realigning hip-hop for the foreseeable future. For his part, Big waited till Life After Death to respond, while publicly denying any knowledge of why Pac got on some new shit.

But the damage was done, and Makavelli the Don was born. "Hit 'Em Up" opened the floodgates for a thousand diss tracks along the east-west fault line. Snoop would come crush the buildings, which would spawn CNN, who would let us all know that New York—especially Iraq—wasn't havin' it. Good times.

2Pac "Dear Mama" (1995)

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Producer: Tony Pizarro

Album: Me Against the World

Label: Out Da Gutta/Interscope/Amaru

Pac's mythology begins with the fact that Afeni Shakur was imprisoned during the first eight months of her pregnancy with him. Though she would live to see her child imprisoned and shot, he gave her something to hold on to with this '70s-sample fueled, feel-good song about the struggle. "Dear Mama" would become a critical part of Pac's narrative, introducing her, her history of rebellion, and the role she played in making him who he was.

Always a writer unafraid to speak to his own insecurities and vulnerabilities, Pac was never more courageous than when he penned these lines: “Even as a crack fiend mama/You always was a black queen mama." His ode to the real revolutionary in his life, and what revolution sometimes means, makes for some heart-rending music.

"And there is no way I could pay you back/But my plan is to make you understand/You are appreciated.” Reckless and unpredictable on one hand, poignantly honest and sensitive on the other, this duality was always part of 2Pac's magic.

2Pac f/ Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman "California Love" (1996)

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Producer: Dr. Dre

Album: All Eyez on Me

Label: Death Row/Interscope

This track represents a defining moment for the g-funk era, for 2Pac, and for West Coast rap as a whole. Dr. Dre was already crowned Cali's reigning producer, and when he connected with rap's most controversial star, they created an anthem as colossal as hip-hop itself. Pac was clearly ready for his moment.

He jumped on this "bomb beat from Dre" in rare form: his energy was high, even for him, and his rhymes and cadence were precise and infectious. While Dre kept his attention on praising California, Pac couldn't help but clown the “other” side as not being as real. “L.A. is where we riot not rally.” Dre came away with the illest line tho: “I been in the game for ten years making rap tunes/Ever since honeys was wearing Sassoons.” With the gangsterific Suge Knight scaring the bejeesus out of everyone in the industry, this track could only be interpreted as the opening salvo of a prolonged and potentially violent propaganda war—a takeover bid, if you will.

The futuristic Mad Max style video only added to militaristic underpinning of this hometown funk celebration. Dre's layered production is full of suspense and big basslines. Zapp's Roger Troutman, the original Auto-Tunist, kills the hook, tying the record directly to its electro-funk roots. 15 years later, "California Love" still hits like an earthquake.

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