2Pac Friday
3 November 2023
With Halloween on Tuesday followed by Dia de los Muertos, it is appropriate for another featured track that features some cryptic lyrics.
In the third and final verse, 2Pac says:
I died and came back, I hustle with these lyrics
As if it's a game of crack, thuggin' is in my spirit
Sure, these are not quite a cryptic as some of 2Pac’s other lyrics, but still the whole idea is coming back other death, a reoccurring theme in his work, is stated explicitly here.
There are some less-explicitly cryptic lyrics in this song, such as earlier in the third verse:
Convinced this is my year, like I’m the chosen man
This could be basically just saying that that 1996, when this song came out on the seminal double-cd album All Eyez on Me, would be a great year for 2Pac and Death Row Records. But one could also look at that more deeply with the either the prophesizing of his early death or dropping hints of the alleged faking of his death.
2Pac also conspicuously drops his enigmatic Makaveli alias in the first verse, a verse that opens with:
911, it's an emergency, cowards tried to murder me
Again, this could just be a vague statement or could refer to the 1994 shooting—or it could be prophetic or the dropping of hints of the supposed Makavelian scheme of faking his death to escape his enemies.
Yet, such lyrics from this song were not the first reason why this track crossed my mine on this 2Pac Friday. With a family member in the hospital with a heart issue this week, heart health has been heavily on my mind and so it was the title that made this track seem appropriate for this 2Pac Friday. I just want here to get better. And I’m confident she will.
She is most likely unaware of this song’s existence. But when she is healed and the time is right, I will share it with her, and give it undue credit for her healing.
Whatever the healing powers of this song may be, this is definitely a great song produced by DJ Quik, one of the greatest hip hop producers of all time.
So great is this song, in fact, that it is the final track on 2Pac’s first (and greatest) greatest hits album, which was released in 1998. That is quite an accomplishment in that the album, even with its being one of the double-disc variety, could only contain 25 songs. And we all know that 2Pac has many more than 25 great songs (citation: 2Pac Fridays).
And while this may be the last track on 2Pac’s Greatest Hits, it will certainly not be the last Featured Track of 2Pac Fridays, because 2Pac Fridays will go on forever, elevating the word posterity to the very best sense of its definition. In short, there will be no final Featured Track of 2Pac Fridays.
2Pac will always be around to visit us, like the loved ones on Dia de los Muertos, to visit on 2Pac Fridays and other times as well. On this 2Pac Friday we join him with “Heartz of Men”—and certainly other songs as well.