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Tupac Shakur could do it all. While on one side, his songs contained violent lyrics (see: “Now I’m ’bout to set the record straight/ With my AK, I’m still the thug that you love to hate/ Motherfucker, I hit ’em up”), other tracks told the opposite end of that brutality. ‘Life Goes On’ is a prime example of that, paying tribute to his late friends and reflecting on death.

Produced by Johnny J, the song appeared on his 1996 album, All Eyez on Me, released just seven months before he was shot and ultimately killed in Las Vegas. From the very start of the record, 2Pac spotlights senseless violence as the source of losing his friends and how being in that environment affected his mindset towards mortality.

In the opening chorus, Pac raps, “How many brothers fell victim to the streets? Rest in peace, young n*gga, there’s a heaven for a G/ Be a lie/ If I told you that I never thought of death/ My n*ggas, we the last ones left, but life goes on.”

While the lyrics mourn his friends, Tupac also expresses the importance of carrying on and continuing to live life to the fullest. At the time, Makaveli was dealing with the losses of Big Kato and Mental Illness, and made sure to put the murders down to being a product of where he and his people grew up, rather than being a fault of their own.

Oakland rapper Dru Down was in the studio when Tupac recorded ‘Life Goes On’ and opened up about the hip-hop legend being at his most vulnerable on the track. When songs like that were being recorded, Pac would keep the studio close to empty, using marijuana to help fuel his thoughts.

“That was more on the serious tip,” he told XXL. “When they got serious about something, there wasn’t too many people up in the studio. When a n*gga wanna really be serious, ‘Pac just dumped out all the weed on the mixing board — about four ounces of smoke — and was writing. And n*ggas had to be quiet. It was on the real low, quiet tip. That was a serious time.”

Johnny J even claimed that gang members in the studio were crying over 2Pac’s lyrics – a sign of how real and important his lyrics were to people. “We had people in sessions you want to call them street guys or hardcore, they were deep into their thing and they broke down in tears,” he said. “I can’t believe I saw that. [That record] just had so many people emotional.”

Pac met Big Kato and Mental Illness through Big Syke, who once revealed Kato was killed in Detroit for his car rims that were worth $2,500. A life gone too soon for something very little in the grand scheme of things. Tupac used the lyrics to address people he’s met throughout his life and the advice given to him along the way.

Closing out the final verse, he rhymed, “To my n*ggas from old blocks, from old crews/ N*ggas that guided me through back in the old school/ Pour out some liquor, have a toast for the homies/ See, we both gotta die, but you chose to go before me/ And brothers miss you while you gone/ You left your n*gga on his own; how long we mourn? Life goes on.” At the end of the day, there’s no choice but to push through the pain.