436. 2Pac, "All Eyez on Me"

 

I started this project during a tumultuous time in American history.  The first post was about a week and a half before what might have been the Most Consequential Election of Our Lives, and I've dutifully more or less ignored politics, sticking to sports, as it were, as a madman threatened the foundations of our democracy and a mob stormed our capitol building.  (That day, the record was Alice Coltrane's "Journey in Satchidanada," which I will now never be able to listen to without remembering rioters bashing the windows of the capitol in with flagpoles holding American flags.)  But today was the inauguration of Joe Biden, a pleasant and thoughtful man, as anti-Trump as it gets, and so it seems fitting that today's album is the work of a singular African-American poet while another one took the stage.

Just beautiful.  Now, Tupac Shakur's language was certainly, um, more earthy than Ms. Gorman's, and his concerns were more quotidian than her lofty poetry.  But we needed both voices to complete the picture of America.

This album, Tupac's last, is an absolute classic.  Just one incredible song after another, and an incredible showcase for the man's way with words.  Here's an example; "Shorty Wanna Be a Thug," about, as the title suggests, a kid's desire to emulate the only role models he knows, and the singer's mixed emotions about that:

Was a nice middle-class nigga
But no one knew the evil he'd do when he got a little bigger
You'd often find him blazed, for puffing on a Newport
Plotting on another way to catch a case
Was only 16, yet convicted as a felon
With a bunch of old niggas, but you the only one ain't tellin'
I tell you it's a cold world, stay in school
You tell me it's a man's world, play the rules
And fade fools, break rules until we major
Blaze up, getting with hoes through my pager
Was raised up, commence to money-makin' tactics, uh
It's getting drastic, niggas got automatics
My finger's on the trigger
Tell the Lord to make way for another straight thug nigga

"California Love," the Dre-produced banger on disc 1, is probably the best-known song on the album and passed into the canon as a classic in any genre.  "Can't C Me," another song produced by Dre, is right up there, even if it doesn't get the same acclaim.  And although the rhymes are great and Tupac is rightfully acknowledged as one of the best ever, this is a deeply musical album, with intricate melodies and soaring choruses.  It's really a pleasure to listen to.

Don't get me wrong, though, this isn't a walk in the park.  At times, it's an outright celebration of violence and gang life, of machismo and misogyny.  You know that going into it.  But I don't think its importance as a document can be overstated.