How Tupac's All Eyez on Me launched the greatest year in rap | 02.10

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the right time a wave original my name is bomani jones thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast thanks for watching us on youtube subscribe like rate us review us give us five stars you only give us four stars i'm inclined to believe you are a hater it is time machine tuesday and what we are doing we're kicking off the series This is the first episode of six on the year 1996 in rap. So we're not just doing just like a top 10 or something like that. The plan is to really go through six different aspects of that year and then kind of bring them together. So it's actually six, but it could be more depending upon what my mood happens to be. So I got two guests that are going to be joining us later on for half the episodes. We're going to have my man DJ Wally Sparks out of Atlanta. Shout out to Atlanta and Chattanooga. But right now I got my man, Jason Anglin. Check him out with his work at The Defector, a few other places, talking about rap and really the world in general. And can we tell them about the other one yet? Are we holding off on that? Oh, the forthcoming piece? Yeah. We can hint toward it, but, you know, it hasn't come out yet. So, you know, I'll let it be a pleasant surprise mostly. Yeah, yeah. It's on the way. Be sure to check that out. But the first thing I wanted to talk about was the year of rap 1996. That for me, and I admit that I'm trying to do a little bit less of treating rap or music like sports, right? And getting a little bit too caught up in milestones and top this and everything else, right? Like I feel like in a lot of ways when we do that, we, it's almost technocratic, right? Like it's like we're trying to code it into something we can put into a computer instead of kind of letting it live as it was. However, I do think that if we were to do 1996 power rankings, even if this was not the year that had, to me, like the best quality of albums from top to bottom and regional, like maybe the first year of true full on regional diversity at the upper echelons where there's depth from every region at the top of what was going on. Right. Like that's what 96 was. However, the biggest thing about 96 to me was it's the year of Tupac. Right. Like, he only lives for nine months out of this year. Just to be clear, he's dead on September 13th. But even after death and before this, from the very beginning, before he gets out of jail, I want to say at the end of 95, he gets out of jail. He puts out an album in March of 95 from when he is in jail, right? That is an era-defining piece of work, even if it isn't necessarily my favorite. I get what it is. He gets out of jail and apparently lives in a studio. That is the only thing that could have happened because he puts out three discs worth of music in 1996. And without question, I think becomes the defining figure of the year. Yeah. I hate to make this comparison and I don't mean it in any spiritual way. All right. I was sitting there looking over the Epstein files as one is wont to do lately. And yeah, you got, you got to soften it before you start. You got to. and I'm a Tupac fan so I know Tupac's fan base and they'll come and kill me but I was sitting there and I someone made a comment they said you might want to look at Cormac McCarthy's screenplay The Counselor that was made into a movie by Ridley Scott because it's possible that the Cameron Diaz character is based on Jelaine Maxwell and I said there's no way Epstein is touching Cormac McCarthy too who is he not touching and did he ever sleep was he was all around the globe. And this was how I felt about Tupac. You said he lived in a studio. He never lived anywhere except on the road. He didn't have a home so much as he had places just to stay temporarily. But he was the most alive person that I ever experienced in hip hop. He was 25 when he passed. And like you said, that nine month run that you mentioned is an impossible run to conceive of for most artists in terms of its cultural impact and just his productivity coming out of Yeah. But at 25, he had six albums and six movies in the can. That is an insane thing to say at 25 for a man who also lost part of his life to jail and was such a nomad wandering around this country. It was as if Tupac and my therapist said this to me one time. She said, you're too sensitive to the world. Sometimes you turn the volume down on it for your own good, because total awareness is actually psychosis. And he had too much awareness and had seen too many things and had too much energy. It seemed like he was destined to burn out early as he did. And look, those six and six is really the stuff he put out, right? Like we're not even talking about this endless reservoir of reserves, right, in the music end of it. But when you think about it, he gets out of jail on bail in October of 95. September 13th of 96, he dies. So what we're really talking about here is 12 months, more or less. it is from the second the Shug Knight bails him out of jail till the end is I think it's a point you know not to steal your thunder on this but a point that you made earlier when we were talking getting ready for this was that you knew how this was going to end even if you didn't know necessarily when it was going to end like there are various points and markers after he gets out just looking around and even I'm 15 when this happens I don't have like I'm not world weary at this point but I'm looking at it and I'm like oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a short-term bargain that we are looking at, right? But if we just talk about the music to start, he gets out and it goes straight to the studio. All Eyes on Me comes out in February, right? And for the year, I think part of what's kind of hard for people to conceive of also is Tupac arriving at Death Row also kind of ties into the end of Dr. Dre's time at Death Row, right? Like, the biggest thing at Death Row was not Snoop, it was Dre, because Dre was sort of the engine of this. Now, Tupac comes and everything else, you know, Death Row, a weird situation anyway. But that first single, California Love, with the two of them, it's kind of last straw, right? Dre thinks he's got something for his album. It winds up on Tupac's album. But it was a meeting of two of the biggest things going in rap at this one time. It's like, wait a minute, Tupac's out of jail? Wait a minute, Tupac's on Death Row? Wait a minute, Tupac got a single and a million-dollar video with Dre that looks like Mad Max? Wait a minute, Tupac got all of that with Dre? and it bangs, like, that was where we started. Yeah. It's fascinating because very few people have been such an eclipser, right? Like, it's almost impossible to imagine in that year someone coming to Death Row Records that has Snoop, Daz and Corrupt to a lesser extent, Suge Knight and Dr. Dre, and eclipsing them immediately. And there are all these stories over the years where it's like dudes begrudgingly acknowledging, hey, man, when Pac came into the room, he owned the room. When Pac came to a conference, I wanted to hate him at the conference, and he came down the steps and nobody could stop watching. And everybody liked him. And that kind of energy and charisma is just, you know, it's hard to explain. You can only observe it. And I was shocked by him coming out of jail, having just gone to war in his own way with two serious gangsters in New York City and joining one of the biggest gangsters on the West Coast. And he's still the story at all times. Right. the story, right? Because that's the thing about it. Because part of it, if we're being honest with all these years, the dude was also just a little bit exhausted. Like it wasn't enough that you the dude that everybody got to look at and you were try hard? Like, why are you both? This is a shout out to Dream Hampton, who when I wrote a piece about American fiction, promoted it quite a bit and was very complimentary. I haven't heard from her in a while, but I'm sure life is life and she's very busy. But she recounted some stories about Tupac when I went to a talk she gave at the New Museum. And it sounded like mostly she viewed him as a ham who never, ever turned it off and that he had totally exhausted her at some point. And you get the feeling when you read about the profiles of Tupac and him hanging out with people and setting quarters on fire and putting them on their foreheads when they're sleeping. Like he was just someone who was equal parts, um, irresistible charismatic in terms of his charisma and insufferable in terms of the energy that never turned off, man. Yeah. Like on the back end of this, he is, I feel like we talk about him in the ways that people now talk about Kobe Bryant. Like, Oh, now everybody cool with Kobe, huh? Like, no, no, no. You can't be a polarizing figure without polarizing people. You know, like that, that's how it works. Like you, you, you can't not, people who are universally beloved truly aren't that interesting. And Tupac, if nothing else, was interesting. And now that I think about this, I'm talking about getting to All Eyes on Me, but the climb to All Eyes on Me is interesting because he was a dude, and I guess in a way that you could build a buzz around somebody back in the day that doesn't quite work the same as he does now. He's in the same song video with Digital Underground, whose big album was their first one, but he's on the second one. He has this huge show where he comes in the video. He puts out his first album. It's got a couple of jams on it, but it doesn't set the world on fire. Next album, Strictly For My Niggas comes out. It's got I Get Around on it, which if you watch that Puffy documentary, it is very interesting. And I had not noticed that I Get Around was what Puff was trying to emulate to get Biggie off. And the Juicy video is their version of that video. But that's the all-time jam right there. That's the party song. and then from there as it's building he goes to jail which somehow makes him bigger although if we look back on it making a bigger star of someone accused of sexual assault was not our finest hour um as fans as men as people as anything else but me against the world had that energy to it that i personally could not relate to because my life was a little bit better than that right but it is a raw unvarnished there's an anger but also like can you get away is on there so there are these kind of moments of tenderness and vulnerability dear mama's on there also but the defining emotion there though is that energy and that anger that comes from it that the world the world not even that the world has wronged me but the world has not done anything for me yeah um it's tortured i related to that album a lot and that was introspective tortured angry tupac and then you get the sort of puffed out chest, misogynist, violent, like, um, illogical, angry Tupac on, on all eyes on me. What I will do is give him some grace though. And this is what, when people talk about Tupac, something that frustrates me is they talk about him only as an artist. And we're talking about 1996, where you're getting sort of the end of a golden era, the beginning of a transition to a different sort of era out of boom bap and skills to hyper-realism and hyper-pop music and rap. What Pac did was he gave us his whole life. I wish he would have kept some of himself for himself. But when a man is shot several times and sent to jail and whether or not you believe him, believes he was framed for a sexual assault charge and thinks his friends have turned on him, At that point, when you get him in the studio, you are going to get some lunacy. You know, if he had made a regular album with 12 tracks and one was about black consciousness and one was a party song, I mean, that would have been strange given the circumstances. Right. He's in his mind fighting for his life. And there is something about that that is so fascinating and raw to listen to. And on the other hand, sometimes that sort of trauma needs to be private and processed. He had no time to process. We're seeing him process in real time. And I think that's where it is both appealing and incredibly awkward. And you start having your values kind of used against you and in conflict because you want you want to like this guy is incredibly likable. You want to hear the story and you start feeling a little bit icky about it at some points if you're a human. well you you raised some interesting points there because i hadn't thought about it in this way until now so and you know thank you for stopping me from skipping over a very important data point on this timeline the whole getting shot thing right like that gets us to the biggie smalls points that obviously we will get to a little bit later but he puts out me against the world before he goes in all right then he gets shot and he's in jail deals with that you come out you get all eyes on me. And to me, the brilliance of all eyes on me is just take it for what it is. Tupac just got out of jail. It sounds just like somebody who just got out of jail, right? The hedonism of the fact that I've been locked down. Now we about to go have a good time, right? I imagine there's a certain emboldenedness that you have to have. The fact that you survived jail at all to get out that reinforces your belief in your ability to survive the introspection that you have from being in jail like there's some great funeral dirge type tracks that are on here that you get from him having come out of jail just the relentless energy from the fact that he's free and then add to that the fact that he came out of jail even though he wasn't in that long I feel like he came back to a world that was not the one that he left in one very important sense which is he was way more famous when he got out of jail than when he went in. And he was associated with a crew for the first time that was also super famous in that way, right? He was the story, but they were the story before he got out of jail. Now he's there and he's with all of them and he can't stay still. And Suge seems to love every minute of it because he knows I am the most important man in music right now. And I just went and got, I just went and got a dude that was such a big star that he was out here kicking it with Madonna and nobody even knew it before he was even that famous. Right? Like, like this was the world that he's trafficking in. He gets shot and he pulls up on Jasmine Guy because this dude just went gold, I think, for the first time. But he can pull up on Jasmine Guy after having been shot because he needs somewhere to hang the hole up. and now he's with us and now he's on the streets as a literal bulletproof figure for the first time that's what that record sounds like i mean he's on the tracks talking shit to the fbi and da and this and the co's who were who were in there with him locking him up it was um the defiance um it was a little bit addictive to listen to that was that was for me early morning music and I mean, nah, not anymore. Jazz is really more than me. Nah, you know, but back then, you know, I don't, I was like 18, 19 years old or whatever it was. That was like, that got me going. You listen to a couple of tracks off All Eyes On Me, you know, you might run seven full courts. What's stopping me, man? I mean, I mean, he starts the record with, you know, my attitude is fuck it because motherfuckers love it. And it yeah you onto something here buddy Absolutely Like I find so many people and it interesting to me because you live the life that makes Tupac relatable and the people who love Tupac it like arguing with them about Allen Iverson if you want to. This ain't just about what we're talking about here, right? Like, you're not, if you're going to try to talk them out of it, there's a chance that you guys are going to be talking straight past each other because you're talking about two completely different things. But one of the things that is a little worrisome when we talk about, like, why is it that, And it's points that people started connecting in the last few years. I've seen in a couple of documentaries, but what it wound up being was a certain, certain hyper masculinity, right? That was often toxic, but very real. And that's what white boys related to was that part of it was, this is, but which is kind of the precursor to these angry men that are the problem right now. But that, that brimming emotion, it's, it's not the same as in me against the world. Cause the circumstances were different, but it's coming from the same flame. Yeah, absolutely. And just to be clear, the life I lived did help me access his music differently, but I don't want anybody watching this to think I lived any life like Tupac. Oh, yeah, my bad, my bad, my bad. I grew up in East Harlem, and my uncles and cousins absolutely could be described as gangsters, some of them. And I was at Jason. I saw Tupac with my own two eyes in East Harlem, and people have to understand, East Harlem has a special love for Tupac. Little Ra Ra was two blocks away from me, who's on Me Against the World, at the beginning of, I can't even remember the name of the song now. Probably, I think, Outlaw at the end of the album. And Keisha, the woman he married when he was in jail, lived one block from me. He was a real presence in New York. And I found him relatable in that way. And similar to him, my uncle was so similar. My cousin G is so similar. They can work every room. they like you know they're scoundrels right and you still find yourself hanging on every word and wanting to pass them a bottle of liquor and understanding first and foremost that no matter how hurtful they can be in some moments that they are suffering that they are tortured souls and you feel this great uh empathy for them and you talk about jasmine guy and madonna like mickey roar Tony Danza. I saw Dennis Quaid on the actor's studio talking about how much Tupac touched him. And I said, this has become impossible to believe. Meaningful Tupac story. And some of these were when he was not as big a star. And he's still, stars are not made, right? They are born. And I feel like I knew this when I saw as a child, Billy Dee Williams. I knew this when I saw Magic Johnson. And I knew it from the moment I saw in same song I saw Tupac. Sometimes people just have that thing, man. And it's a burden to have, I think. Right. And he has that energy and it comes on all eyes on me. And as we talk about the big things around it, let us not ignore a very important thing about it. It bangs. That joint's got jams. Like ambitions as a rider, as the first track is, oh, okay. So this is what we're going to do into all about you and into scandalous and in like you go through that this one and you're like man it's a long time before you get to a song that like i don't this one i don't think has a skipper and i think that is saying a lot about something with 14 tracks like maybe to what's your phone number joy and i could kind of do it out that one everything else man this thing just goes that first track i think i'm pretty sure dad's produced that he took the The Jowski love, the Pee Wee Hermit drums. I mean, I ran that back over and over and over again, right? And then the next couple songs make me feel like a bad human being how much I like them. When he's telling me, hey, I can talk about some scandals. And it's like, I'm enjoying this too much. And it's a little harder to enjoy now when you're 18, 19. You can give yourself the grace of being stupid enough to enjoy that. But I'm going to push back, man. I liked that Prince sample. I know most people don't like it because I've got a lot of friends who don't like it, but I like what's your phone number. I think it's hilarious the way they redid the chorus from 777-9311. Yeah. It had Danny Boy, if you really want to fuck with me, I'm with you. Yeah, you know, like, you know, Prince Samples, sensitive place for me. You know, like, I hear you. Here's what I'll say about all about you, though. The hook, every other city we go, every other video no matter where i go i see the saying as i got farther along in this industry i have a much different understanding of the point that they are making and they are absolutely correct it's a whole lot of old johnny on the spot motherfuckers they're just like yo why are you at every event that i go to right like wherever and wherever the stars are you look up you'll be like oh that's that person like the nba is a world that is full of those yes right he's like snoops like man next thing i know i'm at the million man march and i see old girl from the homie nate dog video i'm sorry that's one of the funniest things i've ever heard in my life i swear i was about to say the same thing snoop invokes the million man march twice on this album first of all calling it a video as if it's a music video i've seen it in the million man march video and then second of all what was he said i'm gonna get smart and get defensive and shit and put together a million marches of games and shit. I said, oh, he's just going to put together a million. Not even a million man march, million march. Yes, million march. Hey, man, the bar is the bar. You know what I mean? Daz was ready, though. Because, you know, there's always the discussion about how much Daz did on Doggy Style. And the truth is, you can listen to the tracks that were like old Daz that Dre got a hold of. Dr. Dre produced that record, right? Like, this was a much more fully formed version of Daz. I think this was a more fully formed version of Daz, even in the Dog Food record, right? And I know how people feel about that one. But even over the years, Two of America's Most Wanted, I did not like it when it came out. I came back around on it. Like after time, I was like, oh, okay. And part of it is, I know there are a lot of people who try to act like Tupac was not an excellent rapper when he was an excellent rapper, right? He rolled the beat as well as anybody did. He had a certain level of repetition and he's not, he wasn't going to wow you with the bars, but that wasn't the point. Once he went, you were there. Once he started, you were in and he is floating over all of these tracks. And I contend the first person to truly like Scarface does this. There are other people that do, but the first true master, I think of using emotion as a device, as a rapper, where it was not simply about how, how well you could rap, but I'm going to make you feel me. He was the one that really, to me, like fully advanced that with others also at the same time, but he was the one. Hearts of Men, the DJ Quick song is one of my go-tos, man. I threw that on at a dive bar in Iowa City and a white dude named Daniel started rapping every line next to me. It was one of the greatest experiences I ever had, man. I mean, 9-1-1, it's an emergency. Cowboys tried to murder me from hoods of the birds every one of you niggas heard of me and he left out the n-word when he was yes to see him hype off that i said listen man pop pop had reach and energy on this and you're right he the thing he mastered and i think this is like i feel this way about literature the way we talk about rap sometimes is so silly in terms of what whether it's like a punchline thing that makes you a lyricist or intricate phrasing or multi-syllables that sometimes on some Hemingway shit, scaling it down and keeping it simple makes it hit harder. And he understood that. And he had what I actually, I would say Scarface has it. I would also say in a very strange way, it's different, but most deaf has it. His background in acting allows him to put a spirit, use the spirit into tracks that touches you. And Pac had that a hundred percent. Like, I mean, he's got you charged up. He's got you deep into his mix. Like the way that he says certain things lets you know how much he means them. You stand up and you take notice and you can wrap 7000 bars if you want and do 15 clever metaphors and dad jokes. Ain't nobody trying to hear that. Right. So like I remember my sister is an author and she talked about having studied under a poet made her more intentional about every word. Right. Like even if it's a different thing than she does, like that's the thing that you pick up. I worked with an acting coach when I did game theory. I wanted somebody to help me with the teleprompter. And it turned out to be an acting coach. Right. But what I learned in that was the intentionality of your expression at every point. And and also like a certain confidence that you have to have the willingness to lean all the way in on the words that you were saying at that point. right and that's something you hear in most and in Tupac they absolutely sell every syllable every line that they have because that is you know what you're going for right like so what is the feeling that you wish to invoke not just I am expressing myself no what do I wish to say how do I how do I want people to feel when they hear this part and that's you know I feel like that part of it like life goes on is the one for me because look we're gonna talk more about this as this goes on and talk about the singles and stuff but the 90s had a lot of funeral dirges man and it was because a lot of people were out here getting killed like that was relatable content in a way that's almost shameful to say out loud but you go back and you listen to the music of that time man people were burying a lot of their friends right even people that you wouldn't think like i had a couple people that i guess like i remember when that person got killed i remember when that person got killed and life goes on is like Tupac, interestingly talking about it, like he's talking about his own death in this one. At this time, we're on this record. As you say, he feels very alive at every turn. Yeah. Well, they kind of always went together, life and death with him. And I think about that again, when he first came on the scene in the same song video, he's being carried on a chariot. And looking back on it, the dudes carrying them almost look like pallbearers. It was like he was always winking at death and he was resolute that he was going to die young. You know, this wasn't somebody playing around and waxing morbid. And you got the sense that he was planning for that and he was letting you know how to feel about him, that he knew he was going to burn out and burn bright. Right. But the funeral dirges was just like that was his thing, man. Like, how long will they mourn me? It was already out. Right. I can't. I'm just a shoulder. Damn. Why did you take another soldier? Like he nailed that aspect. If I die tonight. If I die tonight. Oh my God. So many tears. Yeah. I mean, and look, I Ain't Mad At You isn't far away from being one of those, right? Like I Ain't Mad At You is, oh, okay, you're deciding to do better with your life. Yeah. Let me know how that goes. I wish you the best. Yeah. And you know, mixed in with The Morning too, you take a song like So Many Tears, is so much real-time regret for the decisions that he's making. The feeling of paranoia, the feeling of not being able to trust the people around you, the desire to want to do better. I remember reading a short story I related to very strongly by some corny white author, and it was about the suburbs. But it was about how these people would get together at the end of every month and have this one party where everyone would play Jenga and karaoke and everything else, and it was just miserable to him. And he got outside the house to go back home. He saw a deer run across the yard. It stopped him in his tracks. And in that moment, a woman grabbed him back in, gave him a tequila and kissed him. And he was right back in the party. He said, I had done the best I could. I'd gotten to the door, but I got pulled right back in. And that's how Tupac feels to me. Like, man, I am trying to get out of this, but I think this is who I am and where I'm going to stay. And boom, I'm right back in it, right? And that's a feeling I think a lot of us can relate to on a small scale, maybe not in the same context, same circumstances. But, you know, we get stuck in our routines, and we do think that a single path sometimes becomes a singular path, and we really wish that it hadn't, and that we could transcend our circumstances, right? And that's something beyond the depth that I think we all can relate to. What is also interesting, because I feel like this, too, is a lot of him projecting that idea of doing better with your circumstances, right? Shorty want to be a thug, wonder why they call you bitch. now it's he doing he doing this right here i don't know i think he i think he think he was trying to be helpful right hey i love you like a sister but you died too quick and that's why they called you bitch yes it's a very lamentable line that's one of those songs when i run the album every once in a while very quickly skip yeah like he's like hey hey it's another thing about this too though that's interesting is that it starts with can't see me which is i think the last dr dre beat on there other than the other california love and i can't see me bangs but it is very interesting how dre is such a as much as that them having that single was a big deal the idea of him being on death row bang dre is such a secondary figure on here he's got his couple of tracks but none of them even california love no matter how many commercials they put it in it's not the song you think about when you think about the rest of no no and it's also it's generic Dre to me. It's not like in the club or something where you're like, oh, he reinvented his sound again. This is like, didn't I hear EPMD flip this sample? That's that kind of Dre that we're hearing on this. Now, it sounds great because the beats are so well mastered. It's like he's a master in the studio, and these are great samples to flip, and Pac's energy is on them, but it felt like this was like, we got a couple throwaway Dre tracks. Yeah. He skated. Yeah. Yeah. This too got some cruising joints too, right? The passion, picture me rolling, even all eyes on me. The joint with Richie Rich. It's just like, you know, again, it's another low hanging fruit sample situation with the Bootsy Collins. But with all the energy and everything else, there are still like your required West Coast cool out jams on here. Mm-hmm. Check out time, too. They took it a little too far when they flipped Piece of My Love on the chorus for me. You can run the streets with your thugs, Moose. Yes. That was goofy. But you know what I loved about Bach? There were a couple things. One was he didn't cheat you on a feature. If he showed up on a soundtrack or on a random single with the Mexicans or something like that, which was their group, I'm not saying a group of people, he was gonna give you a Tupac verse and the other thing on the flip side is if he was doing a major project he was gonna be a legend in the homeboy hall of fame drew down come over here I love a big psych you on one of the biggest songs here and you're hearing these verses like man this does not sound up to par what come over here whoa man he's got everybody on this album he's like hey it doesn matter it gonna bang like that Michael Jordan confidence just get in the corner Bill Wendingson I got you He Jimmy Butler I playing with them The third string Yeah. Like, Hey, I'm a Willis. I'm going to take this flat ass jump shot. I'm a Willis into the basket at every first moment. And then he wraps it up with heaven ain't hard to find. 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That's Z-A-P-I-E-R dot com slash bomani. all right back with jason england talking about uh the year of tupac 1996 and i think once we get out of all eyes on me that's when we really start you know we had the vibe interview when he was in jail but now we really started getting a whiff of man he really mad at them bad boy dudes like that's not a that's not something that really runs through all eyes on me in that way but now the interviews and everything and it's like oh he's really really mad at them and let me look up exactly when he decided to do this because I don't know the date. I want to say the date was in March. And no, it was released on June the 4th. And that is when Hit Em Up came out. And guys, I just don't know. Here's what's so wild about Hit Em Up coming out. And I want to know if you can relate to this part of the experience. It's not like it came out on the radio. Like you heard that it was out and then somewhere you stumbled upon it and brother, he was mad. never heard anything like it in my life. I'm not going to say it's the best diss record of all time because I don't think you can even categorize that. And there were so many, there've been so many great, that's a genre of rap that I adore when it's done. Right. It became a little ubiquitous, right? And formulaic after a while. But I had never heard anything like it. And I was in New York City and it was playing out of every third car. And I thought to myself, what must it be like to be someone, and I'm not new to Sean Combs, right? Like people in Harlem, a lot of people in Harlem did not like Sean Combs because they felt he was an outsider who was pretending to be from Harlem. Right. So I know how much he wants the adoration and approval of New York dudes and especially Harlem dudes. And to have cars driving around blasting that every day for months, celebrating this. Like, it's so mad, it's hilarious. like he comes off the top can you imagine like what it had to be like being in the booth and you and you are recording him right but you feel like he need to try to do something a little bit different like you can't you can't tell him stop right like there can't be any versions of that verse that went through with the producer being like hold on hold on do it from the top no no no just gotta gotta just let him ride just just let him ride like what is what it was like for the first person to be like yo Pac just recorded something let me hear it and they press play that's why I fucked whoa whoa whoa you know one of the things that I appreciate about him I appreciate about him too and I think his theatrical nature obviously plays into this he's one of the great interviews of all time you know they were bootlegging and actually pressing up real copies of his interviews I think it was his interviews with Sway but I used to listen to those on repeat I couldn't believe how great of a ranter he was, and I appreciate a good ranter. And his rant at the end of Hit Him Up, where he just lost himself in the rant. I don't even know what he's saying. He said, I should go triple and four quadruple. That's a new term for quadruple. My fo-fo makes sure all your kids don't grow. Bob D, don't worry, y'all got sickle cell or something. Oh, my God. You have a seizure. What are you, what are we doing right now? Yeah. I mean, woof. It was a moment. I mean, it was, and like you say, like no Vaseline. I felt like at that point was the gold standard of I'm just really mad right now. Yeah. Disc records. Yeah. Right. Like I hate these people. And that was just over some money. Yeah. Tupac had convinced himself that Biggie had him shot. Now, look, I think we all generally agree Puff did a lot of things. He may have eventually had him shot. But at that point, we got a pretty good handle on who the dudes were that had Tupac shot. It was not big. That did not matter to him. He was so mad. And I think we don't talk about this enough. I think Pac looked at himself as, hey, man, I'd be helping this big old fat motherfucker out. You know what I'm saying? Ain't I a good dude? He, he can rap, he fat, but he can rap and he's my friend. And then he's just like, Oh, okay. That's what this is. And the first thing he started with is you fat motherfucker. That was like, like we can't, Tupac was not, Tupac was not too much to be a little, they call it fat phobic, but you understand what I'm saying? When he said, remember when I used to let you sleep on the couch, and beg a bitch to let you sleep in the house. and that was all about Versace? Yes. Yeah. In one of those interviews, he said, Versace, that's me! That was the biggest surprise for him getting out of jail. Like, wait, what? Because, look, we think about Tupac like we think about other people in those circumstances, right? He out here, like, I'm the illest, right? He's still a rapper. Y'all telling me that this cat that I was rolling with, You tell me that this cat is iller than me. Yeah. Right? You can't tell ready to die was me against the world, which, eh, I see why he would think that. I think that also we are able to access an objectivity that we would not be able to were we in those circumstances. Yes. Is it clear probably that Biggie had nothing to do with that shooting whatsoever? And they don't mention this in 50 Cent's Netflix style. they really leave out the gangsters who were behind that, right? Jimmy and Haitian Jack, who allegedly were behind that. I don't want no problems with them. Either one of them is deported. Don't put me on your radar. But if you got shot around your homeboys and went to jail and nobody came to visit you and they still hang with those people and now you're out with big records mimicking my videos, dressing like I dressed yeah I don't think I would come back objective like I don't know if he's responsible for this everybody gotta get it every single month around has to get it and I don't think very many of us would be above feeling that way if we had been in those circumstances I haven't but I can imagine things might change about my perspective I just don't know I'm just so curious how many of them like that song is so wild right like imagine hey Tupac made a song off your beat oh word let me check it out yeah oh hey oh Chino XL although did Chino imply that Tupac got got in jail was that was him I think that I think that was that one of the one of the things a lot of people were saying and also that he shot a testicle off or something they they were trying real hard you know to demean his manhood but you still Chino XL rest in peace to Chino but Yeah, but out of nowhere, when Chino XL got his fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. 96 was when his first album came out. Hey, and look, Chino cracked me up, too. He said, you ain't never seen drama. Fuck you when you're dope fiend mama. Oh, yeah. That's a hell of a thing to say. Yeah. But it was a little drop in a big bucket, man. It didn't matter. Yeah. Like, Bob Deep, I felt like they kind of caught it straight. like that that was i guess what their their thing was it was thug life we still live in it which yeah okay i guess we've got that um and well they want la la right yeah that feels secondary i don't think pop was riding for the honor of la in that way the thug life we still live in it yeah yeah which is you know also like those are two dudes surrounded by a lot of street dudes but I don't know how much thug life, havoc, and prodigy was living. Look, man, as someone once told me, being short is a constant fight for credibility, and those dudes were shorter than short people. You're getting all Gary Neumann on me. Short people got no reason. What's so interesting to me about people with Mobb Deep is they talk about listening to Mobb Deep and then being so surprised to find out that they were little guys. And I listen to the infamous, and maybe it's a confirmation bias that already existed, but they sound like little short dudes to me on there. Yeah. Yeah. Like they don't sound that fearsome to be on the infamous. They just sound like it's a hood ass record. Yeah. They sound like a lot of people I grew up with. They sound like people who rolled around in crews and those crews disguised the fact that one-on-one things might be a little bit different. Right? Yes. Yeah. It has the energy of de-individuation. When you part of the mob, you feel like you can stay and do anything. When the mob goes away, you wrote some checks that your ass couldn't cash. and here's Keith Murray. And the worst part about it is to think Tupac and Prodigy could have done a dance thing together. You know what I mean? Those were two guys. Tupac, who, by the way, wasn't blocking nobody, shot himself. He said, don't y'all got sickle cell or something? And you can hear it in his voice that he's making the face. Don't one of y'all got sickle cell or something? I got to tell you a quick story. I have temper issues myself, so I try to keep my temper in check. And it's really from my family. We communicated it in intense ways in my family. I recall a time when I was working in another state and I came home at night at two in the morning from having some drinks. And I thought I heard someone in my house and my dumb ass ran toward the problem. And there was a white boy climbing into my kitchen and his feet were in my sink. And I took his head and I bashed it against the cabinet. I put him up against my fridge. I pulled him through the window. And I punched him in the face. And he said, don't kill me. And I said, you're not going to make me the criminal. In this case, you are the criminal here, right? So a couple weeks later, I'm recounting this to my ex-girlfriend. And she says to me, I'm sorry to belittle the situation for you, but I'm going to need you to think about his perspective. he came into a house in Iowa City of one of the only black men that lived in the city who happens to be 6'6", 250 pounds. What do you think was going through his head when he saw you come in the house? And that's what I want to know about the people who got dissed on him. What was the experience like for you to sit down and hear that for the first, second, third, and 10th time the way he was going at you? Because I don't think anybody's ever talked to any of these people that way on a record, in person or otherwise. Well, also, imagine being the outlaws where Pac is like, all right, now y'all go. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I ain't really got no problems with these. All right, give me the pin. And they jumped on like they was in it. Yeah yeah The poor outlaws man So many of them have died i mean that like and imagine going from rolling with an almost like moses and jesus figure of hip right and every moment you live is charged with with a momentous uh important energy and then suddenly you just some cats who tell stories on a video blog and that's yo it was a hell of a six months yeah it's it's a crazy run yeah like it was a crazy intense relationship it was a hell of a six months um so we get hit him up and that leads us to like i say in this series we'll talk about biggie who is the most interesting thing about biggie we'll get to this later is that he's the one guy that didn't put out an album this year everybody else did like he is an omnipresent figure all over the year and he's on some verses but he didn't put anything out right but we didn't get the macaveli record until after tupac died i don't know exactly how you feel about the macaveli record i like it more now than i did when it came out when i came out i just found it to be just so all over the place and mad and in some ways a touch silly and i don't love the beats necessarily but when people talk about dmx in 1998 and they're like he had two number one albums yeah but that was a little bit of a contrivance right? Their second number one albums, because Def Jam wanted to hurry up, they recorded it in a month, just wanted to hurry up and put something out, but Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood is not an impactful album in the history of rap to me, right? Like, he just, they just both went number one on the charts. Machiavelli mattered. Like, those were two records that year that are two of the most important records that anybody ever put out. Yeah. How I feel about the record is, I loved it from day one, and a big part of it is, again, he was the guy who transitioned us and rap to this sort of hyper realism look at my life. And I was addicted to the show. And my best friend at that time had been shot and killed execution style. I mean, right before that album came out and my cousin, who was like my brother, was in jail. And I felt that I had lost people. I felt a rage. I did not know how or where to direct. And man, that anger on that record was electric. It felt revolutionary to me. I'm not saying I was right that is how it felt when he was just coming right out the gate being so reckless and dismissive of everybody and letting them know i'm here to stand on this yeah man i found it incredibly appealing now there's some tracks that i thought were really lamentable on that one i'd like automatic skips all right and i didn't even like i don't love the the live and die in la anthem i don't like pos la music that much like because he's not an la guy right he's a lot of things, but he went to LA late. So the anthems don't feel the same as like old school is an anthem that he devotes to New York. Anything, anytime he raps about the Bay, that feels real. That didn't hit for me. But the ones where he was just so razor sharp and intense, that rage resonated with me. I'm ashamed a bit to say, and it still does to this day. so I think live and die in LA I I I fucks with it like and I think part of why I like it is um now I agree with you the idea that um like I guess this is the difference for me it doesn't come across to me as though he is like died in the wool LA right it comes across to me as a dude and most of us who have done some LA time have felt this way brother I'm out here the sun is shining. I just rolled down with the homies and got some tacos. They're the best tacos I've ever had. Right. And like when you watch the video, it is in the midst of all this chaos. There's something to be said about the fact that there was still a moment for him to simply enjoy the fact that, man, we are here in L.A. and it's these girls and it's the sun shining. And it's like this all the time. You know, like like it was a bit of a respite in the midst of all the rest. I didn't like the Prince samples, though. Isn't that Prince? Is that a Prince sample? Isn't it Do Me Baby? It might be that they're sampling, is it Melissa Morgan who covered it? I think that's what happened. I had never peeped that until you said it. I don't know that for a fact, but I just heard it in my head, and I was like, isn't that Prince Do Me Baby? No, you are correct. Yeah. It's that bass. Okay. Well done. There we go. Here's the thing. There's a difference between taking a print sample and like, I know exactly what's going on here. Yeah. Yeah. I feel you. I'm going to give you some added context too. Like I think I'm like 19 years old and I'm about to drop out of college, man. And they cut my meal plan off. Yeah. Yeah. You ain't really, you ain't feeling this happy, go lucky shit right now. My own person against all odds was really speaking directly to me. I was like, I'm calling home. I ain't got no money. I'm like, this is the realest shit I ever wrote. I mean, he came off the rip on this joint with Bob first. Yes. Bob first is the first sound that you hear on the second song is Hail Mary. Yeah. Like Hail Mary to me was interesting because nothing had really sounded like it. I don't love Hail Mary as much as other people do, but nothing had, I remember when it came out, I don't recall anything ever sounded like Hail Mary. Yeah. Yeah. What, you know, I need to read more about the album. The album was so intense in real time to me that, and this is kind of like my close friend who got killed. I don't go back to him. It took me years to go back to really thinking about it in a way that was like technical, you know. I don't go back to this album in a technical way. But it was produced, I think, largely by the dude from Above the Law. Like it almost feels like a secret album, you know, like what was this album exactly? How did this come to fruition? It has a very clear vision. it has a consistent sound what made him sit and make this album with these producers with this dark castlevania sound that it has like yeah like it doesn't it doesn't really sound like any other album i can think of and it is not where all eyes on me has a bit of a west coast all-star runner producer so like quick's on there like i say drake quick dj pooh's on there daz is on there um qd3 you know he did live and die in la too but like it's got it's got guys whom you would expect to turn up on it even even davante is somebody that you expect especially that was that weird no more jonesy death row yeah interplay at the time but like it made sense this right here honestly i'd be forgetting the names of them of them above the law dudes but i look at the credits and i'm like yeah i don't fully know who all of you guys are on here like daz is not on here right um it's also has me and my girlfriend on it and that is pop it's not the most subtle metaphor in the world but it's also not the most obvious one either yeah um now i think it gets us into that i gave you power organized confusing straight bullet being standing there being like right here dog yeah right here yeah but being my girlfriend j that bang yeah i the only thing i couldn't deal with it was the foul mouth chick on it representing the gun you know you know she was like a sec she was the secretary in the office who had a baby with eric b yes i saw i saw her re-emerge man Look how they even found the baby who inspired Brenda's Got a Baby. Yes, my buddy Jeff Pearlman did that. That is incredible. You know, it just never stops. The stories and the history and the way that we were talking about Pock eclipsing people in real time, he continues to eclipse people as a main character. 25, 30 years after his death or whatever, I don't understand how this is possible that the stories keep giving. Yeah. Yeah, like Against All Eyes is the last track of this record, which to me is, it's the last track of his actual factual career, right? Like this is a posthumous album, but this was going to come out. Like this was the plan. We had heard about this for a while. It is a hell of a capper to what it was, because this was where he was when it ended. This was, I don't think we'd ever heard anything like this. And then we, you know, now we hear a lot like this, right? that hyper realism look at my life sort of thing i'm challenging real life gangsters on record like when he was on there listen while i take you back and lace this rap real loud tale about a snitch named haitian jack yes wait a minute you're not supposed to mention people like this on a record like you you are not gonna live long homie well here was the thing man he was a combination of i thought he after i thought on one level after he survived the other but he thought he couldn't be killed. On the other level, he wasn't afraid to die. Yeah. He was a fearless dude and something that makes me bristle because I've definitely had, you know, I'm from where I'm from. So there were plenty of people who chose sides in this. I never chose sides. This was not my battle. I was a very big fan of people. But they would say, you know, he's a method actor. He never stopped being Bishop from Juice. It's like, I don't know man I think this is real he didn't act like he shot the cops he did that's what I was about to say if he was a method actor he went so far past like if he's a method actor it's a movie it's like the next level of the deep cover movie right like I am now actually become the drug dealer he shot at the cops and got away with it yeah you are the character you're not in character you're doing the shit man you gotta give someone credit he didn't get shot He was at war with people. He was screaming on people. He was, to his demise, running up on gangsters and snuffing them in casinos. Yes, this was not a man who seemed to possess a lot of fear. Or as he said in one of those interviews, I got the heart of a motherfucking lion. That's what makes it so great to watch me being little and fearless. It was what made it so fascinating. I don't know that I could do that. When he shot the cop and he was in court, face to face with the cop he shot and stared him down. I said, something's wrong with this man. and then did a little hoppity hop on the way out. He walked out the top. Yeah. And you're right. Him being so photogenic is such a big discussion of it because the song changes that came out after he died, I don't love. The video was, to me, a top five all-time rap video because it is like, why was this a big deal? Like when the last dance came out with Jordan, I was like, okay, now you guys can understand why it's like this. Like, I get why you don't get it. In four minutes, I feel like that changes video. You run through that and you're like, oh, that's what's going on here. Yeah. A really smart friend of mine, college professor, he was telling me one day that for all of James Baldwin's intellect and insights, maybe the most significant thing is that he was the first black intellectual to really understand and embrace the power of the camera. Right? And that's part of what made his legacy live on. Pac was somebody who understood the theater of everything and it didn't help or I should say it helped a lot depending on what side you're on that he was charismatic and photogenic and it's always strange with these fans and this is where I veer away from them my fandom for him I try to keep away from the homoerotic aspect of it I think a lot of people are fans of some of these rappers when they actually are, they find them handsome. And that helped them with the women. And strangely, it helped them with the men. They were captivated by this dude. And it does, when you are photogenic and you understand the power of the camera and you lean into it, because there were a lot of intellectuals on James Baldwin's level. Maybe not with his precise insights, but plenty of smart negros back then. But understanding the camera is what makes your legacy live on the way it has for both of those people, for decades after you pass, people can always revisit you and be reinvigorated by your presence. And, Pac, sometimes you know when you're in the presence of that dude, right? Like, I remember when Odell Beckham was in his rookie of second year, and I saw something, it was him on the field, and he was, like, kicking around a football like a soccer ball. And he looked like he could have been on a World Cup soccer team. And I was like, oh, he's one of those guys, right? And I was like, what do you mean? He's good at everything, and he'll take your girl, too. right like he's sometimes you just know when you're like hey man there's something different that's going on over here with this guy and you got to respect it right like you can hate on it if you want but it's silly because you never you never have the potential to do what's going on over there because they only made a couple of these yeah that was the thing with Pac like big was a different story because it's just like wow you must be really good at rap brother you know what I'm saying like like to pull all this off the only way you could do this is by being the dopest rapper we'd ever seen. If Tupac was not one of the dopest rappers we'd ever seen, it'd have been something else. It'd have been this thing. It'd have been that thing. He might've been infamous for something terrible by the time it was over, but if it wasn't going to be this one thing, it was going to be something else. Yeah. Yeah. I will give this to Big. He was an incredibly charismatic person too. He was. Some of those don't do him justice when he's looking like a beached whale and he's like, you know what I mean? But on the day-to-day when people were hanging with Big, it was very obvious to me that he was the center of everything, you know? And the fact that, as he said, hard, thrive, never, black and ugly as ever, but he owned that and had no insecurity about that. That was visible, right? And that kind of confidence is pretty cool. Can't even lie. The big, and this ain't even, you know, we on the Tupac episode, but still, Big was helpful for me to understand that they like a lot of different things, brother. They like a lot of different things. There's no easy, Big got him fighting over him in the studio fighting over him in the street right you can't tell who he looking at but they camp say like a lot of different things on the earth this big you're worthless kid and he was so good there's a lot of territory out there you're gonna traverse man yo i may try to figure out well like i say we're gonna get into big a little bit later in this series but man he was something else but hey man this is jason england google the man check him out check out a lot of the stuff he's written at the defectors really good you can check him out the chronicle of higher education lots of other places and one big piece coming out soon i'll let you guys know when it comes out he'll be back with me for two more of these episodes dj wiley sparks is going to be with me for three of these and i'm gonna be honest man i may come up with more along the way because this one was such a good time that i feel like we got something going on here so brother i appreciate you joining always a pleasure man love to rock with you hey man appreciate it and ladies Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. 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