The Right Time with Bomani Jones - How Tupac's All Eyez on Me launched the greatest year in rap | 02.10

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Bomani Jones is joined by Jason England to kick off his series on 1996, one of the greatest years in the history of rap. On this episode, he discusses how 1996 was the year of Tupac. Together, they discuss Tupac's explosive musical output following his release from jail, his rivalry with Biggie Smalls, and the cultural significance of his work. They also reflect on Tupac's personal struggles, his charisma, and the lasting legacy he left on hip hop and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening where have you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is Time Machine Tuesday.

And what we are doing, we're kicking off the series. This is the first episode of six on the year 1996 in rap. So we're not just doing just like a top 10 or something like that. the plan is to really go through six different aspects of that year and then kind of bring them together. So it's actually six, but it could be more depending upon what Mahmood happens to be. So I got two guests that are going to be joining us later on for half the episodes.

We're going to have my man DJ Wally Sparks out of Atlanta. Shout out to Atlanta and Chattanooga. But right now I got my man, Jason Anglin. Check him out with his work at the Defector, a few other places. Talking about rap and really the world in general. and can we tell them about the other one yet? Are we holding off on that?

Which, oh, the forthcoming piece? Yeah. We can hit toward it, but, you know, it hasn't come out yet, so, you know, I'll let it be a pleasant surprise mostly. Yeah, yeah, it's on the way. Be sure to check that out. But the first thing I wanted to talk about with the year of rap 1996, that for me.

And I admit that I'm trying to do a little bit less of treating rap or music like sports, right? and getting a little bit too caught up in milestones and top this and everything else, right? Like I feel like in a lot of ways when we do that, we, it's almost technocratic, right? Like, it's like we're trying to code it into something we can put into a computer instead of kind of letting it live as it was. However, I do think that if we were to do in 1996 power rankings, even if this was not the year that had, to me, like, the best quality of albums from top to bottom

and regional, like maybe the first year of true full-on regional diversity at the upper echelons where there's depth from every region at the top of what was going on, right? Like, that's what 96 was. However, the biggest thing about 96, to me, was it's the year of Tupon, right? He only lives for nine months out of this year, just to be clear, he's dead on September 13th. But even after death and before this, from the very beginning, for he gets out of jail, I want to say at the end of 95, he gets out of jail. He puts out an album in March of 95

from when he is in jail, right? That is an erudifying piece of work, even if it isn't necessarily my favorite. I get what it is. He gets out of jail and apparently lives in a studio. That is the only thing that could have happened because he puts out three discs worth of music in 1996. And without question, I think,

becomes the defining figure of the year. Yeah. I hate to make this comparison. and I don't mean it in any spiritual way. All right. I was sitting there looking over to Epstein files, as one has wanted to do lately. Yeah, you got to soften it before you start.

You got to. You got to. And I'm a Tupac fan, so I know Tupac's fan base, and they'll come and kill me. But I was sitting there and someone made a common, they said, you might want to look at Cormac McCarthy's screenplay the counselor that was made into a movie by Ridley Scott because it's possible that the Cameron Diaz character is based on Jelaine Maxwell.

And I said, there's no way. Epstein is touching Cornwall McCarthy too? Who is he not touching? And did he ever sleep? He was all around the globe. And this was how I felt about Tupac. He said he lived in the studio. He never lived anywhere except on the road.

He didn't have a home so much as he had places just to stay temporarily. But he was the most alive person that I ever experienced in hip hop. He was 25 when he passed. And like you said, that non-month run that you mentioned is an impossible run to conceive of for most artists in terms of its cultural impact

and just his productivity coming out of jail. But at 25, he had six albums and six movies in the can. That is an insane thing to say at 25 for a man who also lost part of his life to jail and was such a nomad wandering around this country. It was as if Tupac, and my therapist said this to me, time she said you're too sensitive to the world sometimes you turn the volume down on it for your own good because total awareness is actually psychosis and he had too much awareness and had seen too

many things and had too much energy it seemed like he was destined to burn out early as he did and look those six and six is really the stuff he put out right like we're not even talking about these this endless reservoir of reserves right in the music end of it but when you think about it he gets out of jail on bail in October of 95, September 13th of 96, he died. So what we're really talking about here is 12 months, more or less. It is from the second the should night, bailes him out of jail till the end is, I think it's a point, you know, not to steal your thunder on this, but a point that you made earlier when we were talking, getting ready for this, was that you knew how this was going to end, even if you didn't know necessarily when it was going

to end. Like there are various points and markers after he gets out, just. looking around and even I'm 15 when this happens. I don't have like I'm not world weary at this point, but I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a, this is a short-term bargain that we are looking at, right? But if we just talk about the music to start, he gets out and it's goes straight to the studio. All eyes on me comes out in February, right? And for the year, I think part of what's hard, kind of hard people to conceive of also is Tupac arriving at death row also kind of ties into the end of Dr. Dre's time at Death Row, right? Like the biggest thing at Death Row was not Snoop, it was Drake, because Dre was sort of the engine of this. Now, Tupac comes and everything else,

you know, Death Row, a weird situation anyway. But that first single, California Love with the two of them is kind of last straw, right? Dre thinks he's got something for his album. It winds up on Tupac's album, but it was a meeting of two of the biggest things going in rap at this one time. It's like, wait a minute, Tupac's out of jail. Wait a minute. Tupac's on death. bro, wait a minute, Tupac got a single and a million dollar video with Drey and looks like Mad Max. Wait a minute. Tupac got all of that with Drey and it bangs. Like, that was where we started. Yeah. It's, it's fascinating because very few people have been such an eclipser, right? Like, it's almost impossible to imagine in that year someone coming to death row records

that has Snoop, dazzling, does and corrupt to a lesser extent, Shug Knight and Dr. Drake in eclipsing them immediately. And there are all these stories over the years where it's like, dudes begrudgingly acknowledging, hey, man, when Pock came into the room, he owned the room. When Pock came to a conference, I wanted to hate him at the conference, and he came down to steps and nobody could stop watching. And everybody liked him. And that kind of energy and charisma is just, you know, it's hard to explain. You can only observe it. And I was shocked by him coming out of jail, having just gone to war in his own way with two serious

gangsters in New York City and joining one of the biggest gangsters on the West Coast, and he's still the story at all times. Right. The story, right? Because that's the thing about it, because part of it, if we're being honest with all these years,

the dude was also just a little bit exhausted. Like, it wasn't enough that you to do that everybody got to look at, and you would try hard? Like, why, like, why, Why are you both? This is a shout out to Dream Hampton, who when I wrote a piece about American fiction, promoted it quite a bit and was very complimentary.

I haven't heard from her in a while, but I'm sure life is life, but she's very busy. But she recounted some stories about Tupac when I went to a talk she gave at the new museum. And it sounded like mostly she viewed him as a ham who never ever turned it off and that he had totally exhausted her at some point. And you get the feeling when you read about the profiles of Tupac and him hanging out with people and setting quarters on fire and putting them on their foreheads when they're sleeping. Like he was just someone who was equal parts, irresistible charismatic in terms of his charisma and insufferable in terms of the energy that never turned off, man. Yeah, like on the back end of this, he is, I feel like we talk about him in the ways that people now talk about Kobe Bryant. Like, oh, now everybody cool with Kobe, huh?

Like, no, no, no, no. you can't be a polarizing figure without polarizing people. You know, like that's how it works. Like you can't not it people who are universally beloved truly aren't that interesting. And Tupac, if nothing else, was interesting. And it's not that I think about this, like I'm talking about getting to all eyes on me, but the climb to all eyes on me is interesting because he was a dude. And I guess in a way that you could build a buzz around somebody back in the day that wasn't

quite the same that doesn't quite work the same as he does now. Like he's in the same song video with Digital Underground, right? Whose big album was their first one, but he's on the second one. He has this huge show and where he comes in the video. He puts out his first album. It's got a couple jams on it, but it doesn't set the world on fire. Next album, strictly for my niggas, comes out. It's got I get around on it, which if you watch that Puffy documentary, it is very interesting. And I had not noticed that I get around was what Puff was trying to emulate to get Biggie off. And the just the, the, just the, Juicy Video is their version of that video. But that's, that's the all-time jam right there. That's the

party song. And then from there, as it's building, he goes to jail, which somehow makes him bigger, although if we look back on it, making a bigger star of someone accused the sexual assault was not our finest hour as fans, as men, as people, as anything else. But me against the world had that energy to it that I personally could not relate to because my life was a little bit better than that, right, but it is a raw unvarnished. There's an anger, but also like, can you get away is on there? So there are these kind of moments of tenderness and vulnerability. Dear Mama's on there also.

But the defining emotion there, though, is that energy and that anger that comes from it. That the world, the world, not even that the world has wronged me, but the world has not done anything for me. Yeah. It's tortured. I related to that album a lot, and that was introspective, tortured, angry to. And then you get the sort of puffed-out chest, misogynist, violent, like, illogical, angry Tupac on all eyes on me. What I will do is give him some grace, though.

And this is what, when people talk about Tupac, something that frustrates me is they talk about him only as an artist. And we're talking about 1996, where you're getting sort of the end of a golden era, the beginning of a transition to a different sort of era, out of boom bap and skills to hyper-realism and hyper-pop music and rap. What Pock did was he gave us his whole life. I wish he would have kept some of himself for himself.

But when a man is shot several times and sent to jail and whether or not you believe him believes he was framed for a sexual assault charge and thinks his friends have turned on him, at that point, when you get him in the studio, you are going to get some lunacy. You know, if he had made a regular album with 12 tracks and one was about black consciousness

and one was a party song, I mean, that would have been strange, given the circumstances, right? He's in his mind fighting for his life. And there is something about that that is so fascinating and raw to listen to. And on the other hand, sometimes that sort of trauma needs to be private and processed. He had no time to process.

We're seeing him process in real time. And I think that's where it, is both appealing and incredibly awkward. And you start having your values kind of used against you and in conflict. Because you want to like this guy. He's incredibly likable. You want to hear the story. And you start feeling a little bit icky about it at some points if you're a human.

Well, you raise some interesting points there because I hadn't thought about it in this way until now. So, and, you know, thank you for stopping me from skipping over a very important data point on this timeline. The whole getting shot thing, right? Like that gets us to the Biggie Smalls points that obviously we will get to a little bit later. But he puts out me against the world before he goes in, all right? Then he gets shot and he's in jail, deals with that. You come out, you get all eyes on me. And to me, the brilliance of all eyes on me is just take it for what it is.

Tupac just got out of jail. It sounds just like somebody who. just got out of jail, right? The hedonism of the fact that I've been locked down, now we're about to go have a good time, right? I imagine there's a certain emboldenedness that you have to have the fact that you survive jail at all to get out that reinforces your belief and your ability to survive, the introspection that you have from being in jail. Like, there's some great funeral dirge type tracks that are on here that you get from him having come out of jail, just the relentless energy from the fact that he's free and then add to that

the fact that he came out of jail, even though he wasn't in that long. I feel like he came back to a world that was not the one that he left in one very important sense, which is he was way more famous when he got out of jail than when he went in. And he was associated with a crew for the first time that was also super famous in that way. Right. He was the story, but they were the story before he got out of jail. Now, he's there. and he's with all of them and he can't stay still and Shug seems to love every minute of it because he

knows I am the most important man in music right now and I just went and got I just went and got a dude that was such a big star that he was out here kicking it with Madonna and nobody even knew it before he was even that famous right like this was the world that he's trafficking in he gets shot and he pulls up on Jasmine Guy because this dude just went gold I think for the first time but He can pull up on Jasmine guy after having been shot because he needs somewhere to hang the hole up. And now he's with us. And now he's on the streets as a literal bulletproof figure

for the first time. That's what that record sounds like. I mean, he's on the tracks talking shit to the FBI and DA in the COs who were in there with him, locking them up. It was the defiance. It was a little bit addictive. to listen to. That was, that was for me, early morning music. And I mean, not, not anymore. Jazz is early morning. Now, you know, but back then, you know, I don't, so I was like 18, 19 years

old or whatever it was. That was like, that got me going. You listen to a couple tracks off all eyes on me. You know, you might run seven full courts. Like, what's stopping me, man? But yeah, I mean, I mean, he starts the record with, you know, my attitude is fuck it because motherfuckers love it. And it's, yeah, you're on to something here. buddy? Absolutely. Like I find so many people that it's interesting to me because you live the life that makes Tupac relatable. And the people who love Tupac is like arguing with them about Alan Iverson if you want to. This ain't just about what we're talking about here, right? Like, like you're not, if you're going to try to talk them out of it, there's a chance that you guys are going to be

talking straight past each other because you're talking about two completely different things. But one of the things that is a little worse when we talk about like, why is it that, and it's points that people started connected in the last few years I've seen in a couple of documentaries. But what it wound up being was a certain hypermasculinity, right? That was often toxic, but very real, and that's what white boys related to, was that part of it, was this is, which is kind of the precursor to these angry men that are the problem right now. But that, that brimming emotion, it's, it's not the same as it be against the world because the circumstances were different, but it's coming from the same flame. Yeah, absolutely. And just

To be clear, you know, the life I lived did help me access his music differently, but I don't want anybody watching this to think I lived any life like Tupac. Oh, yeah, my bad. My bad. My bad. I grew up in East Harlem and my uncles and cousins absolutely could be described as gangsters, some of them. And I was adjacent.

I saw Tupac with my own two eyes in East Harlem. And people have to understand, East Harlem has a special love for Tupac. Little Rah-Rah was two blocks away from me who's on me against the world at the beginning of, I can't even remember the name of the song now, probably, I think, Outlaw at the end of the album. And Keisha, the woman he married when he was in jail, lived one block from me. Like, he was a real presence in New York, and I found him relatable in that way. And similar to him, my uncle was so similar. My cousin G is so similar. They can work every room. Like, you know they're scoundrels, right? And you still find yourself hanging on every

word and wanting to pass them a bottle of liquor and understanding first and foremost that no matter how hurtful they can be in some moments that they are suffering, that they are tortured souls, and you feel this great empathy for them. And you talk about Jasmine Guy and Madonna like, Mickey Roart, Tony Danza. I saw Dennis Quaid on the actor's studio talking about how much Tupac touched him. And I said, this has become impossible to believe. meaningful Tupac story. And some of these were when he was not as big a star. And he's still, you, stars are not made, right?

They are born. And I feel like I knew this when I saw as a child, Billy D. Williams. I knew this when I saw Magic Johnson. And I knew it from the moment I saw in the same song, I saw Tupac. Sometimes people just have that thing, man. And it's a burden to have, I think. Right. And he has that energy.

And it comes on all eyes on me. And as we talk about the big things. around it, let us not ignore a very important thing about it. It bangs. That joints got jams. Like ambitions as a rider as the first track is, oh, okay, so this is what we're going to do. Into all about you and into scandalous and into, like, you go through that dis one and you're like, man, it's a long time before you get to a song that, like, I don't, this one I don't think has a skipper. And I think that is saying a lot about something with 14 tracks. Like maybe to what's your phone number, Joy,

and I can kind of do it out that one. Everything else, man, this thing just gold. That first track, I think I'm pretty sure Dad's produced that. He took the Joski love, the Pee-Herman drums. I mean, I ran that back over and over and over again, right? And then the next couple songs make me feel like a bad human being, how much I like. When he's telling me, though, hey, I can talk.

about some scandals, and it's like, I'm enjoying this too much. And it's a little harder to enjoy now when you're 18, 19, you can give yourself the grace of being stupid enough to enjoy that. But I'm going to push back, man. I liked that print sample. I know most people don't like it, because I've got a lot of friends who don't like it, but I like what's your phone number? I think it's hilarious the way they redid the chorus from 7777.7.93. Yeah. And had Danny boy, if you really want to fuck with me

Yeah, you know, like, you know, print samples, sensitive place for me, you know, like I hear you. Here's I'll say about all about you though. The hook, every other city we go, every other video, no matter where I go, I see the saying,

as I got farther along in this industry, I have a much different understanding of the point that they are making. They are absolutely correct. It's a whole lot of all, daddy on the spot motherfuckers. They're just like, yo, why are you at every event that I go to? Right?

Like, wherever the stars are, you look up, you be like, oh, that's that person. Like the NBA is a world that is full of those. Right? He's like, Snoop's like, man, next thing I know, I'm at the Million Man March and I see old girl from the homie Nate dog video. I'm sorry, that's one of the funniest things I've never heard about. I like.

I swear, I was about to say the same thing. Snoop invokes the Million Man March twice. on this album and both probably for all his contest. First of all, calling it in a video as if it's a music video. I've seen it in a million-man March video. And then second of all, what was the... He said, I'm going to get smart and get defensive and shit and put

together a million marches of games and shit. I said, well, he's just going to put together a million. Not even a million-man March. Million March. Yes, million March. Hey, man, the bar is the bar. You know what I mean? Daz was ready, though. Because, you know, there's always the discussion about

how much Daz did on Doggy Stuy. and the truth is you can listen to the tracks that were like old dads that Dre got a hold of. Dr. Dre produced that record, right? Like this was a much more fully formed version of dads. I think this was a more fully formed version of dads even than the dog food record, right? And I know how people feel about that one. But even over the years, two of America's Most Wanted, I did not like it when it came out. I came back around on it.

Like after time, I was like, oh, okay. And part of it is I know there are a lot of people who try to act like Tupac was not an excellent rapper. when he was an excellent rapper, right? He rolled the beat as well as anybody did. He had a certain level of repetition, and he's not, he wasn't going to wow you with the bars, but that wasn't the point. Once he went, you were there.

Once he started, you were in, and he is floating over all of these tracks. And I contend the first person to truly, like Scarface does this, there are other people that do, but the first true master, I think, of using emotion as a device as a rapper, where it was not simply about how well you could rap, but I'm going to make you feel me.

He was the one that really, to me, like fully advanced that with others also at the same time, but he was the one. Hearts of Men, the DJ Quick song, is one of my go-toes. I threw that on at a dive bar in Iowa City, and a white dude named Daniel started rapping every line next to me. It was one of the greatest experiences I ever had. man.

9-1-1, it's an emergency. Cow was tried to murder me from hoods of the birds. Every one of you niggas heard of me. And he left out the N-word. Yes. To see him hype off that? I said, listen, man, Pop had reach and energy on this.

And you're right, the thing he mastered, and I think this is like, I feel this way about literature. The way we talk about a rap sometimes is so silly in terms of whether it's like a punchline thing that makes you a lyricist or intricate phrasing or multi-syllibles. Sometimes on some hymn away shit, scaling it down and keeping it simple makes it hit harder.

And he understood that. And he had what I actually, I would say Scarface has it. I would also say in a very strange way, it's different. But most deaf has it. His background in acting allows him to put a spirit. Use the spirit into tracks that touches you. And Pop had that 100%. Like, I mean, he's got you charged up.

He's got you deep into his mix. the way that he says certain things lets you know how much he means them. You stand up and you take notice and you can wrap 7,000 bars if you want and do 15 clever metaphors and dad jokes. Ain't nobody trying to hear that. Right. So like I remember my sister is an author

and she talked about having studied under a poet made her more intentional about every word, right? Like even if it's a different thing that she does, like that's the thing that you're, you pick up. I worked with an acting coach when I did game theory. I wanted somebody to help me with the teleprompter and it turned out to be an acting coach, right? But what I learned in that was the intentionality of your expression at every point. And also like a certain confidence that you have to have, the willingness to lean all the way in

on the words that you were saying at that point, right? And that's something you hear in most and in Tupac. They absolutely sell every syllable, every line that they have, because because that is you know what you're going for, right? Like, so what is the feeling that you wish to invoke? Not just I am expressing myself. No, what do I wish to say? How do I want people to feel when they hear this part? And that's, you know, I feel like that part of it.

Like, life goes on is the one for me. Because look, we're going to talk more about this as this goes on and talk about the singles and stuff. But the 90s had a lot of funeral dirges, man. And it was because a lot of people were out here getting killed. Like, that was relatable. content in a way that's almost shameful to say out loud. But you go back and you listen to the music of that time, man.

People were burying a lot of their friends, right? Even people that you wouldn't think. Like, I had a couple people that I can say, I remember when that person got killed. I remember when that person got killed. And life goes on is like Tupac, interestingly, talking about, like he's talking about his own death in this one. At this time, we're on this record.

As you say, he feels very alive at every turn. Yeah. Well, they kind of always went together, life and death with him. And I think about that again when he first came on the scene in the same song video. He's being carried on a chariot. And looking back on it, the dudes carrying him almost looked like pallbearers. It was like he was always winking at death. And he was resolute that he was going to die young.

You know, this wasn't somebody playing around and waxing more of it. And you got the sense that he was planning for that. and he was letting you know how to feel about him. That he knew he was going to burn out and burn bright, right? But the funeral dirges was just like, that was his thing, man. Like, how long will they mourn me? It was already out, right? I can't.

I'm just a shoulder damn. Why did he take another soldier? Like, he nailed that aspect. If I died tonight. If I died tonight, oh my God. So many tears. Yeah. I mean, and look, I ain't mad at you isn't far away.

No. From being one of those, right? Like, I am mad at you is, oh, okay, you're deciding to do better with your life. Yeah. Let me know how that goes. How is you the best? Yeah. And, you know, mixed in with the morning, too, you take a song like so many tears,

it's so much real-time regret for the decisions that he's making. The feeling of paranoia, the feeling of not being able to trust the people around you, the desire to want to do better. I remember reading the short story I related to very strongly by some corny white author, and it was about the suburbs. But it was about how these people would get together at the end of every month and have this one party

where everyone would play Jenga and karaoke and everything else. And it was just miserable to him and he got outside the house to go back home. He saw a deer run across the yard. It stopped him in his tracks. And in that moment a woman grabbed them back in,

gave him a tequila and kissed him. And he was right back in the party. He said, I had done the best I could. I'd gotten to the door, but I got pulled right back in. And that's how Tupac feels to me. Like, man, I am trying to get out of the this, but I think this is who I am and where I'm going to stay, and boom, I'm right back in it,

right? And that's a feeling I think a lot of us can relate to on a small scale, maybe not in the same context, same circumstances. But, you know, we get stuck in our routines and we do think that a single path sometimes becomes a singular path, and we really wish that it hadn't, and that we could transcend our circumstances, right? And that's something beyond the depth that I think we all can relate to. What is also interesting because I feel like this, too, is a lot of him projecting that idea

of doing better with your circumstances, right? Shorty want to be a thug, wonder why they call you, bitch. Now it's, he doing this right here. I don't know. I think he, I think he was trying to be helpful, right? Hey, I love you like a sister, but you died too quick, and that's why they called you bitch. Yes.

It's a very lamentable line. That's one of those songs when I run the album every once in a while, very quickly skip. Yeah, like he's like, hey, hey. It's another thing about this, too, though, that's interesting, is that it starts with Can't See Me, which is I think the last Dr. Dre beat on there other than the other California love.

And I can't see me bangs, but it is very interesting how Dre is such a, as much as them having that single was a big deal with the idea of him being on Death Road Bank, Dre is such a secondary figure on here. He's got his couple of tracks, but none of them, even California Love, no matter how many commercials they put it in,

it's not the song you think about when you think about the rest of it. No. No, and it's also It's generic dray to me It's not like in the club Or something where you're like, oh, he He reinvented his sound again

This is like, didn't I hear EPMD flip this sample? That's that kind of dray that we're hearing on this. Now, it sounds great Because the beats are so well mastered. It's like he's a master in the studio And these are great samples to flip And Pox energies on him. But it felt like this was like

We got a couple throwaway dray tracks Yeah, he skated. Yeah. This too got some cruising joys too, right? The passion, picture me rolling, even all eyes on me, the joint with Richie Rich. It's just like, you know, again, it's another low-hanging fruit sample situation with the Bootsy College. But with all the energy and everything else, there are still like your required West Coast cool-out jams on here. Check out time too.

They took it a little too far. when they flipped piece of my love on the chorus for me. You can run the streets with your thugs, but yes. That was goofy. But you know what I loved about, Bob? There were a couple things.

One was he didn't cheat you on a feature. If he showed up on a soundtrack or on a random single with the Mexicans or something like that, which was their group, I'm not saying a group of people, he was going to give you a two pogverse. And the other thing on the flip side is

if he was doing a major project, he was going to be a legend in a homeboy Hall of Fame. Drew Down, come over here. I was going to a big psych, you on one of the biggest songs here. And you're hearing these verses like, man, this does not sound up to par. I'm like, what? It's all come over here. Whoa, man.

He's got everybody on this album. He's like, hey, it doesn't matter. It's going to bang. Like, that's Michael Jordan confidence. Just get in the corner, Bill Whedinton. I got you. Jimmy Butler. I'm playing with Thilp. The third

string. Yeah. Like, hey, I'm going to will us. I'm going to take this flat-ass jump shot. I'm going to will it into the basket at every first moment. And then he wraps it up with Heaven A Hard to find. And I mean, we're going to take a break in a second. And the thing about this is we just went

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slash Pomani. All right, back with Jason England talking about the year of Tupac, 1996. And I think once we get out of All Eyes on Me, that's when we really start. You know, we had the vibe interview when he was in jail. But now we really started getting a whiff of, man, he really mad at them bad boy dudes. Like, that's not something that really runs through all eyes on me in that way. But now the interviews and everything and it's like, oh, he's really, really mad at them. and let me look up exactly when he decided to do this

because I don't know the date. I want to say the date was in March. And no, it was released on June the 4th. And that is when Hit him Up came out. And guys, I just don't know. Here's so wild about Hit him up coming out. And I want to know if you can relate to this part of the experience. It's not like it came out on the radio.

Like you heard that it was out and then somewhere you stumbled upon it brother, he was bad. Never heard anything like in my life. I'm not going to say it's the best discredit of all time because I don't think you can even categorize that. And there was so many, there have been so many great. That's a genre of rap that I adore when it's done. Right. It became a little you big with this, right? In formula it got a while. But I had never heard anything like it. And I was in New York City and it was playing out

of every third car. And I thought to myself, what must it be like to be someone? And I'm not new to Sean Combs, right? Like, people in Harlem, a lot of people in Harlem did not like Sean Combs because they felt he was an outsider who was pretending to be from Harlem, right? Right. I know how much he wants the adoration and approval

of New York dudes and especially Harlem dudes. And to have cars driving around blasting that every day for months celebrating this. Like, it's so mad. hilarious. Like, he comes off the top. Can you imagine, like, what it had to be like being in the booth and you, and you are recording him, right? But you feel like he need to try to do something

a little bit different. Like, you can't tell him stop, right? Like, there can't be any versions of that verse that went through with the producer being like, hold on, hold on, hold up, do it from the top. No, no, no, no, just got to, just let him ride. Just let him ride. Like, what it was like for the first person to be like, yo, Pock just recorded something. Let me hear it. And they press play. That's why I fuck you. Whoa. Whoa.

You know, one of the things that I appreciate about him, I appreciate about him, too, and I think his theatrical nature obviously plays into this. He's one of the great interviews of all time. You know, they were bootlegging and actually pressing up real copies of his interviews. I think it was his interviews with sway. But I used to listen to those on repeat. I couldn't believe how great of a rancher he was. And I appreciate a good ranter.

and his rant at the end to hit him up where he doesn't lost himself in the rant I don't even know what he's saying. He said, I should go tripling four quadruple. I said, I don't even that's a new term for quadruple. My foe-fo makes show all your kids don't grow.

Bob Deek, don't worry y'all got sickle cell or something? Oh my God. You have a seizure, a harder time. What are we doing right now? Yeah, I mean, whoof, it was a moment. What, I mean, it was, and like you say, like, you say, like, no Vaseline, I felt like at that point was the goal standard of I'm just really mad right now, disc records, right? Like, I hate these people. And that was just over some money.

Yeah. Tupac had convinced himself that Biggie had him shot. Now, look, it was some, I think we all generally agree. Puff did a lot of things. He may have had him, he may have eventually had him shot. But at that point, we got a pretty good handle or who the dudes were that had Tupac shot. It was not big.

That did not matter to him. He was so mad. And I think we don't talk about this enough. I think Pock looked at himself as, hey, man, I'd be helping this big old fat motherfucker out. You know what I'm saying? Ain't I a good dude? He can rat.

He's fat, but he can. rapping. He's my friend. And then he's just like, oh, okay, that's what this is. And the first thing he started with is, you fat motherfucker. That was like, like, we can't, Tupac was not, Tupac was not too much

to be a little, they call it fatphobic, but you understand what I'm saying. When he said, remember when I used to let you sleep on the couch, they beg a bitch to let you sleep in the house. And that was all about Vasachi. Yes. Yeah. One of those

interviews. He said, Vasachi, that's me. That was the biggest surprise for him getting out of jail. Like, wait, what? Because look, we think about Tupac, like we think about other people in those circumstances, right? He out here, like, I'm the illist. Right? He's still a rapper. Y'all tell him me that this cat that I was rolling

what you told him that this cat is iller than me. Yeah. Right? You can't tell ready to die was me against the world, which, I see why he would think that. I think that also we are able to access an objectivity that we would not be able to. Were we in those circumstances?

Yes. Is it clear probably that Biggie had nothing to do with that shooting whatsoever? And they don't mention this in 50 cents. Netflix stuff. They really leave out the gangsters who were behind that, right? Jimmy and Haitian Jack, who allegedly were behind that.

I don't want to problems with him. Even though one of them's deported, don't put me on your radar. But if you got shot around your home boys, they went to jail, and nobody came to visit you, and they still hang with those people. And now you're out with big records mimicking my videos, dressing like I've dressed. Yeah, I don't think I would come back objective.

Like, you know, I don't know. if he's responsible for this. Everybody got to get it. Every single month around has to get it. And I don't think very many of us would be above feeling that way if we had been in no circumstance. I just don't know. I haven't, but I can imagine things might change about my perspective.

Yeah, I just don't know. I'm just so curious how many of them like, that song is so wild, right? Like imagine, Tupac made a song off your beat. Oh, where? Let me check it out. Yeah. Oh, hey. Oh, Chino XL, although did Chino imply that got in jail?

Was that was his? I think that one of the things a lot of people were saying and also that he shot a testicle off or something. They were trying real hard, you know, to demean his manhood. But you still Chino XL, rest of the piece to Chino. Yeah, out of nowhere, when Chino Xcel got his fuck you. Yeah. Yeah.

Ninth and six was when his first album came out. Hey, and look, Cito cracked me up, too. He said, you ain't never seen drama. Fuck you when you're dope fiend mama. Oh, yeah, that's a hell of a thing to say. Yeah. But it was a little drop in a big bucket, man. It didn't matter.

Yeah. Like, Bob Deep, I felt like they kind of caught a straight. Like, that was, I guess what their thing was, it was thug life, we still live in it, which. Yeah. Okay. I guess we've got that. And, well, they were on L-A-L-L-A, right?

right? Yeah. That feels secondary. I don't think Park was riding for the honor of LA in that way. The thug life, we still living it. He's ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, also, like those are two dudes surrounded by a lot of street dudes, but I don't know how much thug life, havoc and product he was living. I look, man, as someone once told me, be as short as a constant fight for credibility, and those dudes are shorter than, we're shorter than short people. You're getting like all Gary Newman on me. Short people got no reason.

Yeah. What's so interesting to me about people with Mob Deep is they talk about listening to Mob Deep and then being so surprised to find out that they were little guys. And I listen to The Infamous and maybe it's a confirmation bias that already existed. But they sound like a little short dudes to me on there. Yeah. Yeah. Like they don't sound that fearsome to be on The Infamous.

They just sound like it's a hood-ass record. Yeah. They sound like a lot of people I grew up with. They sound like people who rolled around in cruise. and those crews disguised the fact that one-on-one, things might be a little bit different, right? Yes. Yeah.

It has the energy of de-individuation. When you part of the mob, you feel like you can say and do anything. When the pot goes away, you wrote some checks that your ass couldn't cash, and here's Keith Murray. And the worst part about it is to think, Tupac and Prodigy could have done a dance thing together. You know what I mean? Like, they, those were two guys.

Tupac, who, by the way, wasn't blocking nobody shot himself. He said, don't y'all got sickle cell or something. And you can hear it in his voice that he's making the face. Don't what are y'all got sickle cell or something? I have a, I got to tell you a quick story. I have temper issues myself. So I try to keep my temper in check. And it's really from my family.

We communicated it in intense ways in my family. I recall a time when I was working in another state. And I came home at night at two in the morning, from having some drinks, and I thought I heard someone in my house, and my dumb ass ran toward the problem, all right? And there was a white boy climbing into my kitchen, and his feet were in my sink. And I took his head, and I bashed against a cabinet.

I put him up against my fridge. I pulled him through the window, and I punched him in the face. And he said, don't kill me. And I said, you're not going to make me a criminal in this case. You are the criminal here, right? So a couple weeks later, I'm recounting this to my ex-girlfriend, and she says to me, I'm sorry to belittle the situation for you. But I'm going to need you to think about his perspective.

He came into a house in Iowa City of one of the only black men that lived in the city who happens to be 6'6, 250 pounds. What do you think was going through his head when he saw you come in the house? And that's what I want to know about the people who got dissed on his. What was the experience like for you to sit down and hear that for the first, second, third, and tenth time, the way he was going at you? Because I don't think anybody's ever talked to him. any of these people that way on a record in person or otherwise.

Well, also imagine being the outlaws where Pock is like, all right, now y'all go. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I ain't really got no problems with these. All right. Give me the pit. And they jumped on like they was in it. Yeah. Yeah.

The poor outlaws, man. So many of them have died. I mean, that's like, and imagine going from rolling with an arm. almost like Moses and Jesus figure of hip hop. Right. And every moment you live is charged with with a momentous, important energy. And then suddenly, you just some cats

would tell stories on a video blog. And that's, yo, it was a hell of a six months. Yeah. It's a crazy run. Yeah. Like, it was a crazy, intense relationship. It was a hell of a six months. So we get hit him up.

And that leads us through, like I say, in this series, we'll talk about Biggie, who is the most interesting thing about Biggie, and we'll get to this later, is that he's the one guy that didn't put out an album this year. Everybody else did. Like, he is an omnipresent figure all over the year, and he's on some verses, but he didn't put anything out, right? But we didn't get the McAvelli record until after Tupac died.

I don't know exactly how you feel about the McAvelli record. I like it more now than I did when it came out. When I came out, I just found it to be just so all over the place and mad and, and, you in some ways, a touch silly, and I don't love the beats necessarily. But when people talk about DMX in 1998, and they're like, he had two number one albums, yeah, but that was a little bit of a contrivance, right? That second number one albums, because Def Jam wanted to hurry up, they recorded it in a month, just wanted to hurry up and put something out.

But Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood is not an impactful album in the history of rap to me, right? Like, they just both went number one on the charts. McAvelli mattered. Yeah. Like, those were two records that year that are two of the most important. important records that anybody ever put out. Yeah.

How I feel about the record is I loved it from day one. And the big part of it is, again, he was the guy who transitioned us and rap to this sort of hyper-realism, look at my life. And I was addicted to the show. And my best friend at that time had been shot and killed execution style. I mean, right before that album came out. And my cousin, who was like my brother, was in jail. And I felt that I had lost people.

I felt a rage. I did not know how or where to direct. And, man, that anger on that record was electric. It felt revolutionary to me. I'm not saying I was right. That is how it felt. When he was just coming right out the gate, being so reckless and dismissive of everybody

and letting them know, I'm here to stand on this. Yeah, man, I found it incredibly appealing. Now, there's some tracks that I thought were really lamentable on that. The automatic skips, all right? And I didn't even like, I don't love the live and die in L.A. anthem. I don't like POS LA music that much because he's not an L.A. guy. He's a lot of things, but he went to L.A. late. So the anthems don't feel the same as like old school is an anthem that he devotes to New York.

Anything, anytime he raps about the Bay, that feels real. That didn't hit for me. But the ones where he was just so razor sharp and intense, that raise. resonated with me. I'm ashamed a bit to say, and it still does to this day. So I think live and die in L.A. I fucks with it.

And I think part of why I like it is, now I agree with you, the idea that like, I guess this is the difference for me. It doesn't come across to me as though he is like died in the wool, L.A., right?

It comes across to me as a dude and most of us who have done some LA time and felt this way, brother, I'm out here, the sun is shining, I just rolled down with the holidays and got some tacos. They're the best tacos I've ever had, right? And like when you watch the video, it is in the midst of all this chaos.

There's something to be said about the fact that there was still a moment for him to simply enjoy the fact that, man, we out here in LA and it's these girls and it's this sun shining and it's like this all the time. You know, like, like, it was a bit of a respite in the midst of all the rest. I thought you didn't like the print samples, though.

Isn't that prints? Is that a print sample? Isn't it do me, baby? It might be that they're sampling, is it Melissa Morgan who covered it? I think, I think that's what happened. I had never peeped that until you said it. I don't know that for a fact, but I just heard it in my head and I was like, isn't that Prince do me, babe?

No, you are correct. Yeah. It's that base. Okay. Well done. There we go. Here's the thing. There's a difference between taking a print sample and like I know exactly what's going on here.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel you, I'm going to give you some added context too. Like, I think I'm like 19 years old. I'm about to drop out of college, man. And they cut my meal plan off. Yeah, yeah. You ain't really, you're feeling this happy-go-working shit right now.

The boss person against all lives was really speaking directly than me. I was like, I mean, look, I'm calling home. I ain't got no money. I'm like, this is the realest shit I ever wrote. I mean, he came off the rip on this joint with Bob first. Yes. Bob first is the first sound that you hear on. The second song is Hail Mary.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, Hail Mary to me was interesting because nothing had really sounded like it. I don't love Hail Mary as much as other people do. But nothing had, I remember when it came out, I don't recall anything ever sounded like Hill Mary. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean,

to read more about the album. The album was so intense in real time to me that, and this is kind of like my close friend who got killed, I don't go back to him. It took me years to go back to really thinking about it in a way that was like technical, you know. I don't go back to this album in a technical way, but it was produced, I think, largely by the dude from above the law. Like, it almost feels like a secret album, you know, like what was this album exactly? How did this come to fruition. It has a very clear vision. It has a consistent sound. What made him sit and make this album with these producers with this dark Castlevania sound that it has? Like, yeah, like it doesn't it doesn't really sound like any other album I can think of. And it is not where all eyes on me has a bit

of a West Coast All Star runner producer. So like quick's on there, like I say, Drake Quick, DJ Poo's on there. D.J. Poo's on there. D.3. You know, he didn't live and die in LA, too. But like it's got, it's got guys whom you would expect to turn up on it. Even Devonte is somebody that you expect, especially because that was their weird, no more, Joicy Death Roe interplay at the time. But like it made sense. This right here, honestly, I'd be forgetting the names

of them above the law dudes, but I look at the credits and I'm like, yeah, I don't fully know who all of you guys are on here. Like, Daz is not on here. Right? It's also as me and my girlfriend on it. And that is, Pop, it's not the most subtle. metaphor in the world, but it's also not the most obvious one either.

Yeah. Now, I think it gets us into that. I gave you power, organized, confusing, straight bullet, being standing there, being like, right here, dog, right here. But being my girlfriend, Jay, that bang. Yeah. The only thing I couldn't deal with it was the foul mouth chick on it, representing the gun. You know, she was like a secretary in the office who had a baby with Eric B.

Yes, I saw her reemerge, man. How they even found a baby who inspired Brenda's got a baby. Yes, my buddy Jeff Perlman did that. That is incredible. You know, it just never stops. The stories and the history and the way that we were talking about pocky, eclipsing people in real time, he continues to eclipse people as a main character.

25, 30 years after his death or whatever. I don't understand how this is possible that the stories keep giving. Yeah. Like, against all eyes is the last track. of this record, which to me is, it's the last track of his actual factual career, right? Like, this is a posthumous album, but this was going to come out. Like, this was the plan we had heard about this for a while.

It is a hell of a capper to what it was, because this was where he was when it ended. This was, I don't think we'd ever heard anything like this. And then we, you know, now we hear a lot like this, right? That hyper-realism, look at my life sort of thing. I'm challenging real-life gangsters on record. Like when he was on there, listen while I take you back

and lace this rap, a real loud tale about a snitch name Haitian Jack. Yes. I was like, you're not supposed to mention people like this on a record. Like you, you are not going to live long, homie. Well, here was the thing, man.

He was a combination of, I thought he, after, I thought on one level, after he survived the other, but he thought he couldn't be killed. On the other level, he wasn't afraid to die. Yeah.

He was a fearless dude and something that makes me bristle because I've definitely had, you know, I'm from where I'm from. So there were plenty of people who chose sides in this. I never chose sides. This was not my battle. I was a very big fan of me. But they would say, you know, he's a method actor. He never stopped being Bishop from Jews. It's like, I don't know, man.

I think this is real. He didn't act like he shot the cops. He did. That's not about to say if he was a method actor, he went so far past. Like, if he's a method actor, it's a movie. It's like the next level of the deep cover movie, right? Yeah. Like, I am now actually become the drug dealer.

He shot at the cops and got away with it. Yeah, you are the character. You're not in character. You're doing the shit, man. You got to give someone credit. He didn't get shot. He was at war with people. He was screaming on people.

He was, to his demise, running up on gangsters and snuffing them in casino. This was not a man who seemed to possess a lot of fear. Or as he said in one of those interviews, I got the heart of a motherfucking lion. That's what makes it so great to watch me, being little and fearless. It was what made it so fascinating. I don't know that I could do that.

When he shot the cop and he was in court, face to face with the cop, he shot and stared him down. I said, something's wrong with this man. And then did a little hoppity hop on the way out. The door was going to walk out. Yeah. And you're right. Him being so photogenic is such a big discussion of it because the song changes that came out after he died I don't love. The video was to me a top five all time rap video because it is like why why was this a big deal?

Like when the last dance came out with Jordan, I was like, oh, okay, now you guys can understand why it's like this. Like I get why you don't get it. In four minutes, I feel like that changes video. You run through that and you're like, oh. That's what's going on here. Yeah. A really smart friend of mine, college professor, he was telling me one day that for all of James Baldwin's intellect and insights,

maybe the most significant thing is that he was the first black intellectual to really understand and embrace the power of the camera. Right. And that's part of what made his legacy live on. Pock was somebody who understood the theater of everything. and it didn't help, or I should say it helped a lot, depending on what side of him, that he was charismatic and photogenic.

And it's always strange with these fans, and this is where I veer away from them. My fandom for him, I try to keep away from the homoerotic aspect of it. I think a lot of people are fans of some of these rappers when they actually are, they find them handsome. And that helped them with the women, and strangely, it helped them with the men

they were captivated by this dude. And it does, when you are photogenic and you understand the power of the camera and you lean into it, because there were a lot of intellectuals on James Baldwin's level, maybe not with his precise insights. There were plenty of smart necrows back then. But understanding the camera is what makes your legacy live on the way it has for both of those people, for decades after you pass. People can always revisit you and be reinvigorated by your presence. And Pock, sometimes, sometimes you know when you win the presence of that dude, right?

Like, I remember when O'Dell Beckham was in his rookie second year and I saw something that was him on the field and he was like kicking around a football like a soccer ball. And he looked like he could have been on a World Cup soccer team. And I was like, oh, he's one of those guys, right? And it was like, what do you mean? He's good at everything and he'll take your girl too, right? Like he's sometimes you just know when you're like, hey, man, there's something different that's going on over here. year with this guy and you got to respect it, right? Like, you can hate on it if you want, but it's silly because you never, you never

has the potential to do what's going on over there because they only made a couple of these. Yeah. That was the thing with Pock. Like, Big was a different story because it's just like, wow, you must be really good at rap, brother. You know what I'm saying? Like to pull all this off, the only way you could do this is by being the dopest rapper we'd

ever seen. If Tupac was not one of the dopest rappers we'd ever seen, it'd have been something else. Yeah. It had been this thing. It had been that thing. He might have been infamous for something terrible by the time it was over. But if it wasn't going to be this one thing, it was going to be something else. Yeah.

Yeah. I will give this to Big. He was an incredibly charismatic person, too. He was. Some of those things don't do him justice when he's looking like a beached whale and he's looking at him. You know what I mean? But on the day to day when people were hanging with Big, it was very obvious to me that he was the center of everything. You know?

And the fact that, as he said, hard throb never black and ugly as ever but he owned that and had no insecurity about that that was visible right you know and that kind of confidence is pretty cool can't even a lot the big and this ain't even you know we on the two pocket episode but still big was helpful for me to understand that they like a lot of different things brother they like a lot of different things there's no easy big got him fighting over him in the studio fighting over him in the street right you can't tell who he looking at but They like a lot of different things. You can't get a thing on the earth this big, you're worthless kid.

And I feel it was so good. There's a lot of territory out there. You're going to traverse, man. Yeah, I may try to figure, oh, well, like I say, we're going to get into Big a little bit later in this series. But, man, he was something else. But hey, man, this is Jason England. Google the man.

Check him out. Check out a lot of stuff he's written at the Defector's really good. You can check him out of the Chronicle of Higher Education, lots of other places. And one big piece coming out soon. I'll let you guys know when it comes out. He'll be back with me for two more of these episodes. DJ Wiley Sparks is going to be with me for three of these.

And I'm going to be honest, man. I may come up with more along the way because this one was such a good time that I feel like we got something going on here. So, brother, I appreciate you joining us. Always a pleasure, man. Love the Rock with you. Hey, man, appreciate it. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time.

We do this three, four, excuse me, four times a week. Ryan Brumbley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line. 323-96-7-67-67. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars.

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