2Pac

The Best of: Thug, Life

5/5

2Pac’s music has been forever immortalized. He is the only rapper I know of who has sold more records after his death than when he was alive. And yet today, his lore grows bigger and bigger. With 2Pac: The Best of Tupac, Afeni Shakur has released another compilation of her son 2Pac’s best hits, plus a total of two original songs and one remix, previously unreleased.

Disc 1, THUG revisits a wide array of songs chosen from different 2Pac albums, such as Me Against the World – “So Many Tears”, The 7 Day Theory – “Hail Mary” and All Eyez On Me – “I Ain’t Mad Atcha”. I find that the remix to “Dear Mama” feat. Anthony Hamilton is excellent. Although the original version was a classic by itself, this version may soon be worthy of that title. Disc 2, LIFE, (now you get it, the two discs spell out THUG LIFE) includes songs such as “Still Ballin” from Better Dayz and “Thugz Mansion” (2pac original) acoustic version, which was featured on the Until the End of Time album featuring Nas.

The most interesting song on this album, in my opinion is “Dopefiend’s Diner”. This sounds like a young 2Pac, straight from ’93-’94. The vocals are raw, and you can tell that 2Pac is quite young on the song. But the power in his voice is nonetheless just as intense as his later work, as he sings a tune of ghetto tragedy (dopefiends, crooked cops, dope dealers, and all that jazz) to the tune of the song “Tom’s Diner”. To me, this Best of 2Pac compilation is nothing special. It was surprising to see the amount of previously released work on it. New fans are better off getting his Greatest Hits album to get acquainted with the great man, musician, and tragic character of 2Pac.

+ Yuze P. Yuan
February 10, 2008