Songs like “Secretz of War” and “Teardrops and Closed Caskets” on the other hand are decent beats with bad execution. These songs could have actually passed for Shakur’s own vision. Songs like “Letter to the President” and “Baby Don’t Cry” have just enough Tupac Shakur and few enough miscues by these rap novices to work as an overall package. This album does manage to work at times despite the failings of the Outlawz. The best of their crew, Fatal Hussein, left a long time ago. Even if they really were his peeps (we’ve been led to believe that) they just aren’t that good. This album is the product of label politickin and industry rule #4,080. One can surmise that Death Row wanted to launch their careers off his own and his untimely death interfered. This album really should have been called “Outlawz + 2Pac” because you are mostly left with the impression this was THEIR album and he was playing a cameo role. They did appear on “All Eyez On Me” and “Don Killuminati” but then never to this degree. If Shakur was really still around, do you think he’d endorse some of the weak raps the Outlawz present on these tracks and put it out under his own name? Well, maybe. This album can at least dispel one of these theories. Some diehard believers even delude themselves into thinking he MUST be making new songs as they happen and dipping low enough to avoid public scrutiny - yes, it’s the old “he faked his death” bullshit. Others speculate the volume of material is a direct result of his trying to quickly fulfill a bad contract with Death Row in an “The Artist Formerly Known As” fashion which could also justify his Makaveli alias. Some say that Shakur’s own paranoia about his demise led him to record songs at a prolific rate that any rap artist would be hard-pressed to match. Some interesting theories apply to why the stock of new material has yet to be exhausted.

All these years after his untimely demise yet another (official) new album lands in the collective hip-hop conscience.

2pac outlawz