Artist: Tupac Amaru Shakur
Best Album: Me Against the World
Best Song: Thugz Mansion
This Letter Could Have Been About: A Tribe Called Quest, Talib Kweli

Why I’m Writing About This Artist: Goddamn, where do I even start?

I mean that literally.  It usually takes me no more than 10 minutes to write one of these.  I’ve been staring at a blank screen for at least that long.

Let’s just do this:

Dear Mama, don’t cry, your baby boy’s doin good
Tell the homies I’m in heaven and they ain’t got hoods
Seen a show with Marvin Gaye last night, it had me shook
Drinkin peppermint schnapps with Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke
Then some lady named Billie Holliday sang
Sittin and kickin it with Malcolm till the day came
Little LaTasha sho’ grown
Tell the lady in the liquor store she’s forgiven, so come home
Maybe in time you’ll understand only God can save us
When Miles Davis cutting loose with the band
Just picture all the people that you knew in the past
That passed on, they in heaven, found peace at last
Picture a place that they exist
Together
There has to be a place better than this in heaven
So right before I sleep, dear God, what I’m askin
Remember this face
Save me a place
In Thugz Mansion

The first time I heard this song, it brought me to tears, and I still have to struggle every time I listen to it.  Some context may be necessary: Thugz Mansion was on the album Better Dayz, released in 2002.  Tupac was assassinated in 1996.  In other words, he’d already been gone for six years when this song came out.

It was as if he was talking to us from the afterlife, telling us everything was going to be okay.

I am not a religious man, to put it lightly.  But this song– a description of Heaven literally from the mouth of a dead man– touches me in a way few songs ever have.  Pac could have been a one-hit wonder and this song alone would justify his immortality as an artist.  Instead, he was so prolific that the idea of choosing a “best song” becomes completely ludicrous and he has had more albums released since he died than he did when he was alive.  Almost all modern hiphop owes him a debt.  He is the greatest rapper who ever lived, one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, up there with Marley and Hendrix and Joplin and Cobain and who knows how many others lost far too early.  And even if you don’t count yourself a fan of rap music, you should know his work.

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