Tupac Shakur’s projects and songs are still some of the most cherished and played songs of all time. Earlier this year, All Eyez On Me surpassed Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt to become the first project from 1996 to reach three billion streams on Spotify. Furthermore, last summer, the emcee officially got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
2Pac has a multitude of legendary and iconic songs. However, ‘Hail Mary’ may be one of his most impactful and well-known. Released in 1996, ‘Hail Mary’ was the third single of the posthumous project, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. Recorded at Can-Am Studios in LA, the epic song featured the emcee’s crew, The Outlawz.
As insinuated by the track’s title, on ‘Hail Mary’ hears, the musician attempts to escape the negativity and violence of the inner city by having a conversation with his Spiritual Mother. The track was released after 2Pac had repeated visions of his own demise and looks on his life.
In an interview with XXL, Young Noble of The Outlawz spoke about the studio session of the song reflecting, It probably took about 15 minutes to write it and about five minutes to lay it. We laid the shit, my verse was already written … Then ‘Pac came up with the ‘Hail Mary’ shit. ‘Pac, he wrote from the heart, so it wasn’t even like writing, it was like talking.”
He continued, “I didn’t like the beat because it was more of a church beat, and, being from New York, we were used to that boom-bap head-knocking beat. That changed when I heard the mix, though.”
As well as Young Noble, the track’s producer, Hurt-M-Badd, was present at the studio session, and while speaking to XXL about the song, he revealed, “We all had a listening party for the album, and ‘Pac was loving every song, but when they played that song, he just went through a thing. He threw his hand up in the air with his Hennessy bottle. He threw his hand up in the air like he ruled a nation.”
2Pac was a highly religious artist and, to this day, is renowned for the amount of introspection he was able to incorporate into his music. With songs such as ‘Ghetto Gospel’, it is evident that Shakur had a deep relationship with god.
You can listen to the isolated vocals of ‘Hail Mary’ in the video below.
