On this day, Amaru Entertainment released 2Pac's sixth studio album, R U Still Down?(Remember Me), breaking silence following one year since the West Coast rap legend's tragic passing in September, 1996.
The album, officially released by Tupac's mother Afeni Shakur, featured a multitude of both unreleased and unfinished singles salvaged straight off the emcee's creative vaults, manifest in the form of a double-disk collective. Two hit-singles spawned another critically-acclaimed installment adding to Pac's legendary discography, “Do for Love” and “I Wonder If Heaven Got A Ghetto”, which garnered RIAA Gold for the album in its initial week of sales.
Resonant to the majority of his previous work, R U Still Down reflects numerous themes Tupac built his career upon, ranging from the infamous West versus East rap feud, growing up in Oakland as narrated in “Thug Life” and “Nothin' But Love”, eerie tales foreshadowing his death such as “Open Fire”, as well as songs synonymous to his very passionate “Dear Mama”.
Critics and fans alike would marvel at the fact that lines, such as the critically-acclaimed “Do For Love”, depicted the West Coast legend foreseeing his unfortunate end, all while staying true to the vehement passion he became known to display, “To packing up and leaving notes, and getting ghost tell me who knows, a peaceful place where I can go.”
“To clear my hear I'm feeling low, losing control my heart is saying leave/ Oh what a tangle web we weave when we conspire to conceive/ And now you getting calls at the house, guess you cheatin'/ That's all I need to hear cause I'm leavin, I'm out the do'/ Never no more will you see me, this is the end 'cause now I know you've been cheatin'.”
Selling well over 500,000 copies nationwide in its first week, R U Still Downattained multi-platinum status in the month that followed, with sales accumulating over four million in the U.S. The album peaked at #2 on the US Billboard 200, and topped the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart for three weeks—all testifying to the legacy and legend of the rapper Tupac, that would live on through generations to come.
By Jods Arboleda for RAPStation.com
