Read Eminem's Tribute To 2Pac
Shortly after releasing Kendrick Lamar's tribute to Eazy-E earlier this week, Paper Magazine has now shared Eminem's piece on the life and career of 2Pac. In the letter, Eminem offers glowing praise of Pac's notorious versatility, saying, "[2Pac] was taking things further than a lot of rappers at the time—pushing it to the next level as far as giving feeling to his words and his music. A lot of people say, 'You feel Pac,' and it's absolutely true. The way he chose which words to say with which beat was genius; it's like he knew what part of the bear and what chord change was the right place to hit these certain words."
Both tributes, as well as a piece from Swizz Beatz on The Notorious B.I.G., will appear in Paper Magazine's upcoming Nowstalgia issue, due out on October 20th.
Read a portion of Eminem's letter below and head over to Paper Magazine's website to read the whole thing here.
When his mother, Afeni (Shakur), let me produce one of Tupac's albums -- the Loyal to the Game album -- I wrote her a letter thanking her for letting me do it. You wouldn't be able to tell the 18/19-year-old Marshall that he would ever be able to get his hands on some Tupac vocals and have that opportunity. It was such a significant piece of history for me and so much fun. I'm like a kid in a candy store; going nuts with the fact that I'm putting beats under his rhymes. 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. I can put "If I Die 2Nite" in and want to fight somebody the second it comes on. That's the kind of emotion he sparked. I could put "Dear Mama" in and damn near be in tears. He was just so good at evoking emotions through songs and I picked up so much from that. Biggie had that as well. It was that same kind of thing... he was so good at putting the right words and music together. I would have a hard time believing that they didn't know what they were doing when they were putting certain words on certain chords of the beat. I would have a hard time believing that it was all accidental. It was true genius.
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