2Pac Friday
29 December 2023
As we approach the next year of 2024, which will be ushered in this Monday, on this long 2Pac Friday Weekend, it is only appropriate that we choose a 2Pac track with a kind of time stamp in its title, with the year 1996, 2Pac’s last year on this earth.
We clearly see how time has passed since 2Pac’s death while also clearly seeing how timeless and relevant his music still is. Much time has passed since 1996, but 2Pac’s music is still great—as it will always be.
This track was not only timeless now, but also timeless upon its release. While it was recorded in 1996, it was not released until 1998 on his first Greatest Hits album. This track opened up the second CD—and did it well.
This is really one of the top posthumous 2Pac releases, of which there are many great ones. But the posthumous releases on Greatest Hits, of which there were 4, were all incredible—”God Bless the Dead,” “Unconditional Love,” “Changes,” and yours 2Pac Friday truly “Troublesome ‘96.” All these tracks—except kind of cryptic “God Bless the Dead” when taken in posthumous context and features Stretch—are 3 verses of straight 2Pac wrapping, something that becomes less prevalent with his posthumous releases as time moves on and the 2Pac recordings available become thinner.
“Troublesome ‘96” is a great opening track for a CD. It contains both a hardness and clarity that are both very indicative of 2Pac’s style throughout his career, but especially at the time. It is also inherently prophetic in the straightforward way of stating that 1996 will be troublesome, and it in fact was in the worst possible way of 2Pac’s murder.
It always features solid rapping and hard lines that can be especially prophetic when taken in the context of his death. The first verse ends:
[They] talk a lot of shit, but that's after I'm gone
'Cause they fear me in physical form
For those who believe 2Pac was still alive based on such lyrics, there are also lyrics in the same song that service as a similar “evidence” to the contrary:
Say my name three times like Candyman
Bet I roll on yo' ass like an avalanche
Even in 1996, this was kind of an older reference to the popular slasher film Candyman that came out in 1992. I remember watching this film as a little kid. We were watching it in the dark and my youngest sister kept on handing me raisins which I was ate. It turned out they were (or had been rather) chocolate-covered raisins which she was sucking all of the chocolate off of and handing me just the raisin. Smart move. The chocolate is really the best part. So the Candyman from Candyman never got me, but I was gotten by the “candy” of chocolate-less chocolate-covered raisins.
Of course 2Pac new none of this at the time.
And I honestly must admit that I did not know much about 2Pac until this Greatest Hits album—and it was some of these previously unreleased tracks like “Troublesome ‘96” that first attracted me to his music.
This song not only contains the clarity and hardness mentioned earlier, but concludes in the 3rd verse with sympathy for others mixed with eerily prophetic lyrics that allude to 2Pac’s own demise—in terms of death in this physical world.
But 2Pac, in a spiritual sense along with his music, will never truly die.
He lives on at the beginning of this 2Pac Friday Weekend here in 2023, and will similarly live on as this long, holiday 2Pac Friday Weekend wraps up in 2024. The year on the calendar is immaterial to 2Pac’s material—it is, and will always be, relevant.
Happy 2Pac Friday everyone.
Happy New Year’s.