By shelz.

When 2Pacalypse Now was released in 1991, it immediately became the scapegoat for plenty of the hood’s ills.  Activist and devout Hip-Hip hater, Delores C. Tucker blasted Pac for his misogyny.  Dan Quayle used it as a campaign tool, citing the abrasive violence.  Suspiciously missing however, was any discussion on the topics he covered: police brutality, teenage pregnancy, the chasm between rich and poor. No one mentioning the album on the national stage considered the catalyst of his dissolute urban manifesto.  That side of the coin simply wasn’t that important.

Tupac, outside of his work with Digital Underground, was an unknown commodity.  Word of mouth worked in his favor, but it was a slow roll.  However, the hoopla engendered by Tucker, Quayle and everyone else attempting to spread their message on the back of the untested emcee pushed the album into the rap world’s consciousness and plenty of folks listened.  Not for the beats; they weren’t that great. For some, not even for the emceeing. Pac’s style was still admittedly in the development stages. K-CI and Jojo garnered more attention than Pac did, in some circles, for making “Brenda’s Got A Baby” the go to song of the album to drum up some attention. But in between the crooning brothers we found a heart-wrenching story that endeared plenty of us to Afeni’s baby.

“Soulja’s Story” chronicles a child’s evolution into a criminal and is rife with all of the negative repercussions of that decision. “Words of Wisdom” starts as a spoken word piece about genocide and morphs into an uplifting song about self preservation in a hostile environment. “Violent” tackles rebellion, but focuses in on a losing battle with the crooked boys in blue.

The 20-year-old packed the album full of angry defiance and lament for his community, as if this album was his only chance to be heard. Three years later, the barreling, youthful voices of Nas, Biggie, Jeru The Damaja, Big Boi and Andre 3000 would join one of the most recognized movements of analytical thought in rap’s history.  Some of these emcees would then point back to Tuapc as their muse and 2Pacalypse Now as their guide.

This is a sentiment that ribbons through the spirit of some of today’s young emcees as well.  Kendrick Lamar, Thurz and Torae, among others, mirror the dark side of their worlds in a way that is both stunning and poignant, head-nodding and head-scratching. In that beautifully bleak dichotomy, 2pacalypse Now lives on.

Is Tupac one of the most over hyped emcees of all time?  You are entitled to believe that.  Is 2Pacalypse Now viewed as a classic because of Hip-Hop’s odd fascination with deceased artists?  That could possibly be the case.  But the influence of this album, perfect or not, is immeasurable.  With these 13 songs, Pac established himself as the voice of the forgotten in the concrete jungle and put our issues on the national stage for all to debate. Rough edges aside, the album accomplished more in 53 minutes than some popular artists accomplish in their careers and for that Planet Ill says thank you.

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