When I was 10 years old my brother did the smartest thing he has ever done, without question. He purchased All Eyez on Me. All Eyez on Me is Tupac Shakur’s debut album with Death Row Records, which was created after Suge Knight, the CEO of Death Row, bailed Tupac out of jail. Since the age of 10, this has been my favorite album of all time. Technically, this album belonged to my brother, but if you ever wanted to find it, the best place to check would have been my CD player. I absolutely wore that CD out; in fact, it’s about 15 feet from where I sit right now. The outside of ‘Book 1’ (the first CD) is cracked and I can’t hear the songs at the end of the CD (I aint mad at cha, trading war stories, and what’s your phone #). Book 2 is scratched to shit, but the songs are mostly audible. So, if anyone wants to get me a cheap birthday present, that will be one of my favorite gifts of all time...
I remember riding with my friend, J Boke, to a high school football game in Piqua, OH (Brandon Saine) in his full-conversion van, with RJ at the helm. Whatever radio station we were listening to took a music break to deliver some of the days news. I remember hearing the lady say Tupac Shakur had died. I remember being shocked and somewhat disturbed by the news, but I don’t think I was extremely devastated. I thought I had maybe misunderstood the lady, but I checked with J Boke, and he said that he had heard it too. I wasn’t quite the business mogul back then that I am today, so I couldn’t check my Blackberry, but I was pretty confident that I had just heard the bad news accurately. I think this news came shortly after my brother had purchased All Eyez on Me, so I wasn’t quite the fan, at that point, that I eventually became a few years later. However, it obviously had some sort of affect on me since after all, I was only 10 and I remember it today, fourteen years later. Sorry I said the word “news” twelve times that paragraph, there just aren’t many good synonyms for news. News.
No more than 2 weeks later, I was in my living room with my brother and Roy Rooster. At this time, MTV actually still played a few music videos and I remember “I ain’t mad at cha” came on. Like much of Tupac’s future catalogue, it was eerily prophetic. The video was set in heaven. Watching that video was the first time I realized that this ordeal was going to wind up being kind of a big deal in my life.
It became difficult for me to expand my Tupac collection shortly thereafter. This was when they began putting the “explicit content” warning on CD’s and I was forced to tell my mom it didn’t matter, because I had heard all the bad words before anyway. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn’t. Even though, I was usually shut down, I was persistent and ended up with nearly every album I wanted anyway. All Eyez on Me, The Don Killuminati (The Seven Day Theory), R U Still Down (Remember Me), Strictly for my N.*.G.G.A.Z; Greatest Hits, Until the End of Time, Better Dayz, Resurrection, and Pac’s Life. The great thing is that most of his albums were double CD’s (which is why I call them albums), so it was so much music for me to indulge in. And even though I had heard all of the bad words before, it all became pretty shocking when I grew up and could decipher what Tupac was actually talking about in his songs.
I developed an amazing idea last night, while I was sitting on the couch, thinking about how little I care about Virginia Tech, or Boise State. I saw a commercial for "One Night in Vegas" which will air tonight on ESPN and I wondered to myself, Why don’t I celebrate Tupac week? It’s genius. I’ll start celebrating this year, just by listening to large quantities of his music. The reason to celebrate Tupac week is because he was fatally wounded by gunshots on September 7th, but didn’t pass away until a week later on the 13th, which was a Friday in September of 1996, by the way. I guess the reason I had never celebrated a “Tupac Week” is probably because I had always celebrated “Tupac Year” from the ages of roughly, 10-18. I’ve briefly written about this before, in a silly facebook note with 25 random facts about me. I have an addictive personality and it’s the reason I’ve watched the same movie 3 times in one day on multiple occasions, and why from the (rough) ages of 10-18 I basically listened to Tupac exclusively. Every school year, my mom would cover my books and I'd fill all the covers with various Tupac lyrics, and it helped pass the time in school. It’s hilarious to think what I must have looked like; bumping Tupac in this breathtakingly stunning, 1988 Chrysler New Yorker Landau for the first 5 months I had my license.
I laugh reminiscing on the day Zoid and I were playing Nintendo in his basement, when his mom walked downstairs in time to hear the last minute and a half of “Hit ‘em up.” The album version, which we were listening to, continues to drop F-bombs for about an extra minute. Wow, that was uncomfortable. It’s weird; this blog isn’t as funny as I expected, but I also didn’t expect to make myself legitimately sad from writing this.
If you’re planning on listening to this last link on a fancy laptop, don’t even bother. The bass is what makes this song, and bass doesn’t come through on laptops. It's a remake of the classic, "Broken Wings," I suggest hooking it up to the best sound system in your house and blaring it as loud as legally possible.
Cya later, I'll be listening to Tupac for a week straight, and then maybe a year straight.
RIP Tupac.
