The parting project took on greater significance after his untimely death in September of 1996 because, when broken down to its basics, the 12 songs end up creating the most complete version of who he was. It would also serve as the third and final release of his Death Row contract, signed while in prison. The album was recorded in three days, then mixed and mastered in four, according to the folklore surrounding the audio version of Pac’s last will and testament. That album turns twenty years old this Saturday, November 5. But no project better encapsulated who Tupac was than his first posthumous project, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. In his career, those who were around to witness it saw him morph from the militant, aspiring MC on 2pacalypse Now to the bad boy of All Eyez on Me in both his personal life and his music. He could be a passionate man of the people in one instance, then turn into the resented villain the next. His career went through so many phases and shifts. Reconciling who Tupac was is never easy given how complex his character was. Recent listening caused me to dig it up and republish. But you don’t have to travel far to witness his impact: Even two decades after his untimely demise, 2Pac’s influence can be heard in everyone from Lil Wayne to Kendrick Lamar to Future.This article originally published in November 2016 on the twentieth anniversary of the album’s release.
Originally branding himself MC New York, 2Pac incorporated influences from the East and West Coasts, not to mention the South, to create a universalist message and sound that explains why murals of him can be found all the way to Sub-Saharan Africa. And as Death Row Records’ strain of gangsta rap defined the middle years of the decade, he became the label’s avatar. But there was also the funkadelic player (“I Get Around”), the insular loner (“Me Against the World”), the savage warlord (“Hit ’Em Up”), and the sensitive poet (“Brenda’s Got a Baby”). For much of his career, he embodied this revolutionary, fight-the-power ethos on songs like “Trapped” and “Keep Ya Head Up,” befitting the Afrocentric, conscious-minded milieu of the early ’90s.
He was born Lesane Parish Crooks in 1971, but his mother (a Black Panther leader) swiftly changed his name to Tupac Amaru Shakur in honor of the last Incan emperor to perish while resisting Spanish rule. Even if his legend has become a tall tale, his music remains an indelible testament to the multitudes he contained. In fact, his closest analog may not be late rival The Notorious B.I.G., but rather dorm-room icons of the mythologized past: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, and James Dean.
2Pac is arguably the most influential rapper of all-time.
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