YMMV / Tupac Shakur

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• Archive Panic: And how. Just look at the sheer number of his posthumous albums. And it isn't even the entire thing.
• Awesome Music: Most of his songs.
  • "Dear Mama" is in a league of its own. Tupac's usual lyrical mastery is used to show a deep appreciation for the sacrifices and struggles of his mother and mothers everywhere. Eminem and Kendrick Lamar have each stated that the raw emotion in the song influenced their own work considerably.
  • "Picture Me Rollin'" deserves special mention. No hook. Two solid guest spots. One of the best verses Pac ever dropped.
  • The guitar riffs in "Me and My Girlfriend" are simply beautiful, not to mention the dexterity with which its prime conceit (depicting guns as women) is carried in the lyrics.
  • And let's not forget "Hit 'Em Up", the diss track towards The Notorious B.I.G. and the entire East Coast Rap as a whole, which is widely considered the greatest diss song of all time.
• Broken Base: Fans often argue over what album showcases the real Tupac. The albums in question are Me Against the World VS All Eyez on Me. Proponents of the former claim that the album is better than AEOM because of its depth and dark, introspective approach, while claiming that AEOM is just a typical mainstream rap album people jumped on the bandwagon for. Conversely, fans of the latter argue that Tupac works with a much wider range of topics in AEOM than in MATW, living it up on a few songs while exploring more serious topics in others.
• Confirmation Bias: For better or for worse, this was a HUGE part of his appeal to his core audience.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • "Tupac is still alive". helped by the sheer amount of music recorded before his death.
  • His officially unsolved murder. The standard suspects are Suge Knight and Diddy.
• Fandom Rivalry: Tupac fans VS. The Notorious B.I.G. fans. Their murders less than a year apart from one another is about as far as this trope has ever gone in popular music.
• Funny Moments: His duet with Ice-T singing "You Don't Bring Me Flowers". Pac's embarrassed attempts at trying not to crack up laughing were the icing on the cake.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A lot of his songs are about him dying. Case in point: Troublesome '96.
  • It wasn't impossible to see coming; he grew up surrounded by death, and he made a good deal of enemies. Another good example is "Life Goes On", where he memorializes friends of his that were murdered and talks about how he'll see them again after death. Tupac himself was killed just seven months after the song was released.
  • "Hit 'Em Up" contained diss to Mobb Deep (who took part in taking shots on the West Coast on Capone N Noreaga's "L.A, L.A" remix, which Pac felt dissed him), mocking Prodigy for having sickle-cell anemia. Many thought that this was way below the belt, but it's even harsher as of June 20th, 2017, when Prodigy finally lost his battle with sickle-cell.
  • Marlon Wayans mentions in one interview that he and Tupac laughed at the part where the former's character killed the latter's character in Above the Rim after the scene was finally finished. This wouldn't become a laughing matter in the next eight months where Pac actually did get shot in New York and ended up attacking most of the East Coast rappers, who he felt were all out to get him after his release from prison and his affiliation to Deathrow Records. Come his trip in Vegas in 1996, he gets shot again, and subsequently passes away just six days later.
  • One of the lines from "Guess Who's Back" by Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z... goes like this: "Now I'm sure to be rich for ninety-six". His fourth studio album All Eyez on Me dropped in 1996; he was killed a few months later.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: "And though it seems heaven sent, we ain't ready to see a black president." Can also count as Life Imitates Art.
  • Nas sampled this line in the chorus of his song "Black President".
  • Can't forget about this line in No More Pain: "When I die, I wanna be a living legend".
• Heartwarming Moments: "Dear Mama". While Tupac didn't grow up in the best of backgrounds, his undying love for his mother bleeds through in the lyrics. Whether it's her supporting him through the best (and worst) of times, or vice versa, the mother-son bond never broke.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • "And though it seems heaven sent, we ain't ready to see a black president." Can also count as Life Imitates Art.
    • Nas sampled this line in the chorus of his song "Black President".
  • Combined with Harsher in Hindsight, the song "Guess Who's Back" from Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z... contains the line "Now I'm sure to be rich for ninety-six". Tupac would later drop his fourth studio album All Eyez on Me in 1996, which was his most successful record to date. He would later get killed in Las Vegas just months later.
• Magnificent Bastard: In the late rapper's Runnin' from tha Police), featured artist Biggie Smalls started out as a mere "screw-up", before becoming a successful drug dealer. Upon gaining enough money, he and his friend Stretch decided that they no longer needed to deal, just to engage other dealers to do the job for them and have a share of the ensuing profits. When the police attempted to stop them, Biggie & Stretch killed two cops, hid their corpses and grew dreads to avoid matching the physical description police would be given. When another officer found Biggie anyway, Biggie kills him with Teflon-coated bullets, before escaping. Stealing the officer's gun, Biggie celebrated his escape by selling the gun and using the money to buy even more cocaine. Self-deprecating and ruthless, Biggie achieved his dream of becoming "the black Frank White", with no consequences whatsoever for his deeds.
• Memetic Mutation
  • "Pac ain't dead. He'll be back in" (insert date)
  • "I didn't choose thug life. Thug life chose me."
  • "TUPAC ALIVE IN SERBIA, TUPAC MAKING ALBUM OF SERBIA!" ^Explanation A line from the infamous "Remove Kebab" copypasta.
• Moment of Awesome: His posthumous hologram duet with Snoop Dogg at Coachella.
  • Ladies and gentlemen, meet a 2017 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee. He's being inducted in his first year of eligibility, and he's the first solo rapper to be inducted.
  • His zig-zag appearance on To Pimp a Butterfly. Even if it was just impressive editing, it still fits so well for Tupac, as it'd be something he would do.
  • The song "Changes" was selected by the Vatican as part of their 2009 MySpace playlist due to its civil rights message (though, as indicated by the CNN article, its use of the n-word as well as references to drugs, petty theft and murder might come across as an odd choice for a religious organisation to include in their musical library).
• Nightmare Fuel: "Trapped." Tupac really doesn't gloss over how horrifying American prisons are known to be.
  • Hail Mary. The song is spooky enough on its own, but the video is pretty much a supernatural slasher flick.
  • "Brenda's Got a Baby". In addition to being heartwrenching, the situations faced by Brenda are terrifying, especially for a 12 year old girl.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: His controversy was a major contributing factor to his fame.
• Older Than They Think: His "appearance" at Coachella in 2012 was cited as the first time a dead artist was able to perform with currently living musicians via holographic projection. hide from X Japan had him beat by four years (check the 2:20 mark onward), unless you count Natalie Cole playing along to a video of her late father, in which case, Tupac and hide were both beaten out from this claim by twenty and sixteen years, respectively.
• Posthumous Popularity Potential: In a rather blatant example, Rolling Stone revisited All Eyez on Me in 2004 and gave it five stars, as opposed to the three it received in 1996.
• Tear Jerker: "Dear Mama", "Life Goes On", and especially "Brenda's Got A Baby" which is both soul crushing AND heartbreaking.
  • Speaking of "Brenda's Got A Baby", this reaction. As one comment put it, "Never thought a rapper would make a old white man cry."
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg brought a Pac hologram with them when they headlined Coachella in 2012. It just barely looked like a projection, and that was if you were sober and watching on a computer. Naturally, something so unnerving had to open with Pac's creepiest song.
• Values Resonance: One of the main reasons why Tupac is considered one of the greatest in hip-hop is that many of the issues he addresses in his songs are still quite prevalent to this day.

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