Every 2Pac Album, Ranked

Tupac Shakur was born in Harlem in 1971 to two members of the Black Panther Party. Taking the name MC New York when he first began rapping, Shakur spent a few of his formative years in Baltimore, and then moved to California as a teenager. The Oakland rap group Digital Underground hired Shakur as a roadie and backup dancer, eventually featuring the rapper now known as 2Pac on their 1991 single “Same Song.” 

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In a recording career that spanned barely five years, 2Pac released four solo albums that made him an icon of the burgeoning West Coast rap scene, topping the charts in a blur of controversies, court cases, and hit singles like “California Love” and “Dear Mama.” 

After Shakur was shot and killed in September 1996 at only 25, his legend only grew. And it quickly became apparent that he’d been far more prolific than anyone had realized, recording dozens of unreleased songs that would fill a series of posthumous albums over the next decade. 

2Pac’s classic third album Me Against the World was released on March 14, 1995. Where does it rank in the catalog of one of the most beloved and influential catalogs in hip-hop? 

17. Loyal to the Game (2004)

Much of 2Pac’s posthumous discography contains beats that were remixed or re-recorded after his death, sometimes out of necessity because the tracks weren’t finished when Pac put down his vocals. Many producers tried their hand at polishing and modernizing songs from 2Pac’s voluminous vault of unreleased songs. 

In 2004, one of the most-famous MCs in the world got his chance to produce a 2Pac album. On Loyal to the Game, Eminem and frequent collaborator Luis Resto put together drab new beats for 13 rare or unreleased 2Pac songs. Em catches a good groove on “Out on Bail,” but almost every other beat drains all the fire and vitality from Pac’s vocals, and “Don’t You Trust Me” is a laughable attempt at remaking “Stan” with yet another Dido sample. The bonus tracks, four songs remixed by gifted producers like DJ Quik and Raphael Saadiq, are all at a higher standard than the proper album.

16. 2Pac: Resurrection (2003)

Eminem’s first chance to work on Shakur’s posthumous music was the soundtrack to Lauren Lazin’s Oscar-nominated documentary 2Pac: Resurrection. On the whole, Em’s three productions on Resurrection are a little better than his tracks on Loyal to the Game, although the single “Runnin’ (Dying to Live)” is a lousy remix of one of 2Pac’s only collaborations with the Notorious B.I.G., the unreleased “Runnin’ From the Police.” Most of the soundtrack comprises previously released songs, but instead of another repackaging of 2Pac’s biggest hits, Resurrection presents a revealing selection of deep cuts and non-album tracks like “Starin’ Through My Rear View,” and his on-record debut on Digital Underground’s “Same Song.”

15. Pac’s Life (2006)

For a long time, it seemed like the steady schedule of posthumous 2Pac albums would never end. And then, just a little over a decade after the rapper’s death, his final album Pac’s Life was released. You can tell that the vault was nearly empty at this point; most of the tracks are patched together from unfinished 2Pac songs for which he had just one verse and no hook. Or perhaps the supply had finally exceeded demand, as Pac’s Life failed to go gold after years of multiplatinum posthumous albums. The title track, which appears in two different versions, recycles a verse that already appeared on Better Dayz along with an insipid chorus riffing on Prince’s “Pop Life.” A new generation of rappers, including rising West Coast stars Nipsey Hussle and Jay Rock, strike the right tone on Pac’s Life, but it mostly sounds like a generic 2006 major label rap album that just happens to have some 2Pac verses on it. “Tupac contained multitudes, and he gleefully contradicted himself at every turn. But Pac’s Life presents an image of Tupac as nothing more than a grim-faced thug, and that’s not really much of a tribute,” Tom Breihan wrote in the Pitchfork review of the album.

14. Better Dayz (2002)

In the enormously prolific final months of his life, 2Pac continued to record vicious Biggie disses like “Fuck ‘em All.” The only pre-1996 song on Better Dayz, the empathetic character sketch “My Block,” stands out for not sharing the negativity and anger of the other tracks. 2Pac’s influence loomed large over Southern hip-hop in the early 2000s, and disciples like Trick Daddy and T.I. have guest appearances on Better Dayz that make a convincing case that they deserve to be there as much as any guest that never actually worked with 2Pac when he was alive. The same can’t be said of producers like Jazze Pha and 7 Aurelius, who provided lightweight beats for the remixed tracks.

13. Nu-Mixx Klazzics (2003)

In 2003, Death Row released Nu-Mixx Klazzics, featuring remixes of songs from All Eyez on Me and The Don Killuminati with limp new backing tracks by Carl “Butch” Small and an assortment of other musicians. Green Lantern, DJ Vlad, and Dirty Harry released a far more acclaimed mixtape in 2003 that blended 2Pac’s vocals with other artists’ hits, Rap Phenomenon II, that amply demonstrated how Nu-Mixx Klazzics fell short.

12. Tupac: Live at the House of Blues (2005)

2Pac’s final concert in July 1996, two months before his death, was captured on tape and on camera, eventually released on CD and DVD. 2Pac co-headlined the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip with Snoop Dogg, and the live album is touted as a 2Pac release with appearances by Snoop, but it’s closer to the other way around. Pac performs nine songs, followed by 14 songs by Snoop and the Dogg Pound, before the two superstars close the show out with their hit “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted.” The only really disappointing part of the brief but electrifying 2Pac set is that he performs “All About U” without Nate Dogg, who’d take the stage later in the night for several songs in Snoop’s set. “Even though it’s not near as much as a hardcore Shakur fan might hope for, it’s hard to ignore the historical value or the well-recorded quality of this album,” Steve ‘Flash’ Juon wrote on RapReviews.com.

11. The Rose That Grew from Concrete (2000)

Shakur studied poetry at the Baltimore School for the Arts as a teenager in the late-’80s, and when he died he left behind notebooks full of poems he’d written before his music career took off. In 1999, Simon & Schuster published The Rose That Grew from Concrete, a bestselling book of the poetry that Shakur wrote between 1989 and 1991. A year later, Interscope released a companion album of the same name, featuring dozens of musicians, actors, and poets offering their own performances and interpretations of Shakur’s poems. Some performers recite his words a cappella or over unobtrusive musical backing, while Mos Def and Dead Prez turn poems into full-scale rap songs, Red Rat makes one into a reggae track, and Dan Rockett performs another as a bluesy acoustic song. Not every interpretation entirely works, but The Rose That Grew from Concrete has more heart and more variety than most posthumous 2Pac projects.

10. Beginnings: The Lost Tapes 1988-1991 (2007)

During the same time that Shakur was a prolific poet, he moved to California and formed the Strictly Dope crew with Chopmaster J of Digital Underground. Chopmaster J compiled the first version of The Lost Tapes in 2000, and Afeni Shakur initially sued over the unauthorized collection before settling the suit and approving the official 2007 release. Beginnings: The Lost Tapes 1988-1991 is a fascinating look at 2Pac’s tentative early songwriting, but he was already taking big swings at political themes (“Panther Power”) and romantic songs (“My Burnin’ Heart”).

9. Still I Rise with the Outlawz (1999)

2Pac first took the alias Makaveli in the mid-’90s as a member of the group Outlawz, alongside several other rappers provocatively named after historical figures and dictators: Napoleon, Mussolini, Kastro, E.D.I. Mean, Yaki Kadafi, Hussein Fatal, and Komani. A large amount of 2Pac’s posthumously released late-period music features members of Outlawz, and many fans regard the verses by other members of the group as unpleasant filler from anonymous sidekicks. But E.D.I. Mean and Yaki Kadafi were solid writers with distinctive voices, and the posse cuts come across better here, where they’re framed as a group effort, than on Pac’s solo albums. It’s still undeniable who’s the group’s leader and breakout star on Still I Rise, though, and 2Pac carries standout tracks like “Secretz of War” and “Tattoo Tears.”

8. R U Still Down? (Remember Me) (1997)

R U Still Down? (Remember Me) was the first true posthumous 2Pac album assembled without his direct involvement, the debut release from Afeni Shakur’s Interscope imprint, Amaru. The double disc is culled from recordings from 1992 to 1994, when his pop instincts were quickly sharpening, but “Ready 4 Whatever” is an exhilarating early example of his turn towards a more aggressive gangsta rap sensibility. The smooth, Bobby Caldwell-sampling “Do for Love” is one of 2Pac’s most popular posthumous songs, second only to “Changes” from 1998’s Greatest Hits. “R U Still Down? doesn’t offer a coherent testament. But at least it offers some good early Tupac material,” Rob Sheffield wrote in the Rolling Stone review of the album.

7. Until the End of Time (2001)

Like 2002’s Better Dayz, Until the End of Time is a sprawling double CD of songs from 2Pac’s chaotic final days, but a larger share of it features the original beats he rapped over in 1996. Songs like “All Out” and “Why U Turn on Me” are 2Pac at his most raw and reckless, and it may be an even more paranoid and aggrieved album than The Don Killuminati. On “Fuck Friendz,” he calls out Dr. Dre and Jay-Z, and months after Until the End of Time’s release, Nas sampled 2Pac saying “fuck Jay-Z” on his classic diss track “Ether.” 

6. 2Pacalypse Now (1991)

2Pac’s solo debut was produced by Underground Railroad, the same production team that had created the playfully funky sound of Digital Underground’s albums. But 2Pac was quickly distinguishing himself from the group with more serious, socially conscious material like “Soulja’s Story” and his first hit single, “Brenda’s Got a Baby.” A lot of 2Pacalypse Now sounds mild and tentative compared to his later albums, but it’s hard to listen to kinetic uptempo songs like “If My Homie Calls” and “Tha’ Lunatic” without wishing that 2Pac had made more music in this transitional style. 

5. Thug Life, Volume I with Thug Life (1994)

Before Outlawz became 2Pac’s crew, he led another group that released an album on Interscope at a pivotal moment in his career between Strictly and Me Against the World, one of only a handful of albums he released in his lifetime. The other members of the group, including his stepbrother Mopreme Shakur, are fairly anonymous rappers, but Thug Life, Volume I features some of the best beats 2Pac ever rapped on by producers like Warren G and Johnny J. Even before surviving a late 1994 shooting in a studio, 2Pac’s songwriting was becoming preoccupied with the subject of his own death on some of Thug Life’s best songs, “Str8 Ballin,” “How Long Will They Mourn Me?” featuring Nate Dogg, and “Bury Me a G.” “‘Pour Out a Little Liquor’ is smooth and reflective, while ‘S— Don’t Stop’ bubbles with P-Funk energy,” James Bernard wrote in the Entertainment Weekly review of Thug Life, Volume I.

4. Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z… (1993)

By the time 2Pac released his second solo album, it had been three years since Digital Underground’s only major hit “The Humpty Dance.” And while Shock G and Money-B of Digital Underground guested on his breakthrough single, the breezy summer jam “I Get Around,” the album really marks the moment where 2Pac stepped out of the shadows of his friends and influences and came into his own. With West Coast legends Ice Cube and Ice-T on “Last Wordz,” 2Pac laid out his political convictions on “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” and established himself as one of rap’s most thoughtful stars on “Keep Ya Head Up.”

3. The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory by Makaveli (1996)

One of the studio spaces at Death Row’s headquarters Can-Am Studios was derisively dubbed the “wack room” because it was where less established producers like Darryl “Big D” Harper and Hurt-M-Badd were working on tracks for the label’s newer artists. 2Pac, itching to record new material, took over the wack room in the summer of 1996 and made the intense, unfiltered album that would end up being released two months after his death. The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, released under his Outlawz alias Makaveli, was obsessively analyzed by fans who were convinced he had left behind a prophetic final message, or had even faked his death. Even stripped of its mystique and unique circumstances, though, it’s a powerfully compelling album, full of some of his most fiery and indelible songs like “Hail Mary” and “Against All Odds.”

2. Me Against the World (1995)

2Pac was in prison for under a year between 1994 and 1995. Three months into his incarceration, his third album Me Against the World was released and became his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. 2Pac was taking great strides as a writer on Me Against the World, portraying depression and paranoia on “Death Around the Corner” and “Lord Knows,” and opining lovingly about his musical influences on “Old School” and his mother on the crossover smash “Dear Mama.” Easy Mo Bee, the only producer to work on albums by both 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G., contributed standout beats for “If I Die 2Nite” and “Temptations.” “Lyrically, he was never a slouch, but this time his anger, love and ‘thug life’ philosophy are stronger,” Allen “The Ebony Cat” Gordon wrote on The Source’s review of Me Against the World.

1. All Eyez on Me (1996)

Suge Knight posted a $1.4 million bond for Shakur in October 1995, and the rapper immediately signed with Death Row Records. Just four months later, the label released All Eyez on Me, 27 songs he recorded in whirlwind sessions with Dr. Dre and other Death Row producers, hip-hop’s first significant double album. Daz of the Dogg Pound is quietly the production team’s MVP, contributing the harsh stomp of the opener “Ambitionz Az A Ridah,” the jazzy swing of “Got My Mind Made Up,” and the driving G-funk of “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted.” Brimming with inspiration, 2Pac created hip-hop’s first major double album, instantly creating a trend of sprawling 2-hour rap albums, though nobody except maybe his rival the Notorious B.I.G. came close to equaling the creative and commercial achievement of the diamond-selling All Eyez on Me.

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