A year after releasing his greatest hits compilation, 2Pac continues to release records with the notable obstacle of being dead. The ironic title "Still I Rise" is a nice touch. This is his fourth release since he was killed in that infamous Las Vegas street shooting, the first collaborative with his friends Outlawz.
You'd expect the artist's mother to be behind this release with her Amaru Entertainment or Suge Knight with his revived Death Row Records that left the shovels stuck in 2Pac's grave and is ready to dig up any time to suck more money from the pockets of the most diehard fans, but this time it's exclusively Interscope Records. It's not even clear where he got this stuff from, perhaps from a secret vault that executives didn't give Afeni Shakur the rights to. Interscope lines up fifteen tracks, creating a collaborative album between 2Pac and his group Outlawz, from which Hussein Fatal is excluded, who leaves the group after refusing to sign to Death Row Records.
The production is signed by QDIII, Tony Pizarro, Johnny "J", 2Pac, Soulshock and Karlin, Darryl "Big D" Harper, L Rock Ya, Mr. Lee, Daz Dillinger, Damon Thomas, Kurupt, EDI Mean, Quimmy Quim & Reef. The guests on the project are Syke, Qierra Davis-Martin, Ta'He, H.E.A.T., Darryl "Big D" Harper, J. Valentine, Nate Dogg and Val Young.
After a solid introductory piece, later included in "Training Day" (2001), in which the Outlawz drop bars with Shakur and the first guest of the album Syke on the g-funk synths inserted by QDIII, comes the title track. This second choice is one of the few tracks here in which the Outlawz are truly noteworthy, after the opening verse by Makaveli. Johnny "J"'s production is slick, soulful, pleasant, the cut flows unlike the next one, in which the rhythm sounds simple, bouncy and quite cheap, despite the fact that the same producer is credited behind the keyboards and there are practically the same performers. "Baby Don't Cry" is a sequel to "Keep Ya Head Up": on a beat made by Soulshock & Karlin together with 2Pac, the Outlawz drop socio-conscious bars with their mentor, carving out the promotional single of their album.
Darryl "Big D" Harper creates a tight West Coast beat for the next track, the Bobby Glenn soul sample in the hook should sound better than it does, the overall musical background sounds more suited to the dirty style of the Outlawz than the more polished and precise one of Shakur. L Rock Ya and Tupac himself are credited with the beat of "Black Jesuz", a tune as forgettable as the next, over a simplistic and bouncy funk rhythm created by Daz Dillinger. In the notes from about ten years ago, I wrote that Damon Thomas's beat is poorly done, annoying and ridiculous. And I added some other pretty heavy things, but I just couldn't remember what this stuff sounded like. So I went back and listened to it, as well as the whole record. Without a doubt, this is one of the worst productions ever on a 2Pac album. It's embarrassing. The guy who did this should be ashamed.
Big D produces the next two tracks, "High Speed" has a minimal rhythm that is little better than the previous one and that definitely shouldn't go on for six minutes, while the tenth choice leans a little more towards the sunny melodies of the bay, with a rhythm inspired by the mobb sounds that surround 2Pac's slow rap. Tony Pizarro has given us great tracks, but "Killuminati" doesn't remain in history with its skeletal and simple solution, functional to the rap of the interpreters, nothing memorable. There are Nate Dogg and 2Pac in the next piece on a beat of QDIII: you would be led to think it's the best cut of the album, a hit at least, all the ingredients are there, but no. Something comes out that I can't quite figure out what it is, the boys aren't doing anything bad with Val Young, but neither Pac nor Nate can take this to the next level, and I don't care what the others are doing over a late summer ballad beat that is just decent in its mild cheerfulness and youthful carefreeness. The next choice credits Kurupt behind the keys, his beat is enjoyable, 2Pac sounds better than usual here, the Outlawz as always don't surprise. Johnny "J" is the mastermind of the simple, bouncy, minimal boom bap of a pop rap track that precedes the final solo cut by the Outlawz, who forgo their mentor to go off with some of their tightest flows over a dark, detached beat crafted by Quimmy Quim and Reef.
The album is made with session tracks discarded from 2Pac and the group's recording sessions while they were at Death Row Records, some of which come directly from the album released under the Makaveli moniker ("Black Jesuz", "Killuminati", and "The Good Die Young"), which is why the production sounds pretty minimal and sparse, there's tight, somewhat stiff, hardcore rapping, and gangsta and violent lyrics all quite similar to each other. As a fan of "Tradin' War Stories", this is an interesting effort, but there are no notable moments. Despite the small amount of tracks, fifteen, and the correct choice to not include unnecessary skits, no track goes under two hundred seconds and the product swells to contain seventy-five minutes of material, too much. The album's main performers are 2Pac, who appears on all tracks except the last, followed by Outlawz members Young Noble (11), EDI Mean (10), Yaki Kadafi (9; credited as Outlawz on the hook of "Hell 4 a Hustler"), Kastro (6), Napoleon (6) and Storm, who appears on only one track on the album.
Released by Interscope, distributed by Universal, the album shows all the commercial power that Tupac Shakur still has years after his violent death and grinds out over 400,000 physical copies in the first seven days. Not two months later, the RIAA certifies it platinum, certified gold in Canada the following week, where it reaches the top ten. The CD, driven by a good successful single such as "Baby Don't Cry", reaches the sixth place on the Billboard 200, the second among rap releases and is one of the best-selling albums of 2000. The Outlawz actually debut with their album here and to sell more they market it as a 2Pac album in collaboration with them, instead of being exactly the opposite, taking the tracks discarded by the mentor in his previous albums in which also appeared the members of the group. Listening is recommended for fans of the Outlawz, for 2Pac fans there is little non-essential irons on the fire. 6/10.
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