The album Eminem produced for Tupac Shakur: “I was given some Tupac acapellas and just went crazy with them”
All Eyez On Me emcee Tupac Shakur is widely considered one of the best hip-hop artists ever. Despite his early demise, the Oakland legend is still revered. That said, Eminem had a chance to contribute to the late rapper’s legacy by taking on the role of executive producer for a posthumous Tupac album.
Shakur was a rapper of the early 1990s and, at the height of the East Coast versus West Coast, was one of the most well-known MCs in the world. That said, although Eminem and Skahur never crossed paths in person, the Detroit icon was a massive fan of Shakur’s music. At the turn of the millennium, Em was asked to curate a posthumous album, and he wanted to pay tribute to Tupac in a big way.
After the 2Pacalypse Now creator was shot and murdered in 1996, his mother, Afeni Shakur, was keen to get her son’s catalogue in order and, as the administrator of his estate, had the star’s money, old recordings, unreleased material and more.
That said, in 2004, after the release of five posthumous projects, Eminem wanted to pay homage to the rapper with another posthumous project, executively produced by himself. That said, in an interview with MTV News, the Detroit explained how he began the process, unveiling, “I wrote to Afeni and said, ‘Please consider letting me produce this album.’ I just feel, as a longtime fan of Tupac, his music, his persona, his everything.”
He continued, “To be able to produce one or two tracks is a dream. So I just basically dropped a little note to her letting her know what her son meant to me as well as a lot of other people in the industry.”
2Pac’s mother was more than happy to allow Eminem to curate a posthumous album, and in 2004, Em gifted fans Loyal To The Game. Eminem has previously recalled how he began receiving all kinds of unreleased material from Afeni Skaur.
Recounting the material that made the album, Eminem told MTV News, “I was given some Tupac acapellas and just went crazy with them. It’s been a longtime dream for me to be able to get to a level of being able to produce not only other artists but somebody that I looked up to in general.”
During an interview with Paper magazine in 2015, the ‘Stan’ artist told the publication that although he was highly honoured to make Loyal To The Game, he knew that if he screwed up the project, he would be tarnishing Tupac’s legacy.
However, one thing that Em admitted in his interview was that 2Pac had an unparalleled ability to make music with longevity and, as such, none of the songs on Loyal To The Game sound dated, concluding, “Regardless of how good a rapper someone is, it’s easy for things to eventually get dated. But when you make songs like Tupac did, songs that feel like something, that feeling never goes away. He was just so good at evoking emotions through songs, and I picked up so much from that.”