The legendary rapper who wished he worked with D’Angelo
There has been a massive outpouring of love for D’Angelo since his death last week. The mood is sombre, but there is celebration, too, as his passing has encouraged lots of people to delve back into his remarkable career. He made some wonderful music in his time, both as a solo performer and in collaboration with others. But there’s one particular collaboration that, while it had been planned to happen, never actually did, and we’re now left to wonder about how good it would have been.
In 1995, Tupac Shakur was preparing to put out his fourth album, All Eyez On Me, which, ultimately, would prove to be his last record released during his own lifetime. It came out on February 13, 1996—which was only seven months before his murder. He had been planning for great things, but, as we know now, he would die in his prime.
Before All Eyez On Me was released, Pac started to tease it to the public, and, at one stage, he shot a clip to promote it while he was on a boat. The way he spoke in the resulting video, which can be found online today, bore an almost philosophical quality, with the rapper expressing his desire to “move forward” as an artist and to become a man who would make people proud. He also mentioned a fellow artist he was planning to work with to help him along the way.
“I’m trying to do this song with D’Angelo right now,” he said from the boat. “I just want to move forward y’all. For real. I’m tired of the same old same old. I just wanna take us to the next level.”
Both 2Pac and D’Angelo are legendary figures in their own right, with Pac obviously being a pioneer of hip-hop and D’Angelo of neo-soul and R&B. They both left their imprint on their respective scenes, meaning it is difficult to imagine what these styles of music would have evolved into with them. But back in the mid-’90s, things were still in motion. These two were experimenting and breaking new ground, which Tupac himself seemed to recognize in real time. It sounds like he believed they could do something genuinely novel together.
But Pac wasn’t solely focused on becoming a better artist. “I just wanna be somebody that my moms could be proud of,” he said, “somebody that another Black person my age could be proud of, somebody that if I have kids my kids can be proud of. You know what I mean? I ain’t trying to kill the world, I just wanna be in the world and make a little money in this world.” It’s a sad statement, really, given that we know his death will occur not very long after he said these words.
The collaboration between 2Pac and D’Angelo never happened—or, if it did, their work was never released to the public. We’re left, instead, to imagine what it might have sounded like, with the sneaking suspicion that their styles would have melded together quite beautifully. The closest confirmation we’re ever likely to get about that comes in the form of an unreleased 2Pac song variously called ‘Fade Me’ or ‘U Can’t Fade Me,’ which sampled D’Angelo’s track ‘Lady.’ It sounds great, but it merely hints at what they might have come up with together in the studio.