It also means that Me Against the World’s brighter, more optimistic shifts in tone feel well earned, as a paranoid 2Pac finally starts to let some light back into his life. Thankfully, these darker moments are delivered with so much heart that they stretch beyond mere self-pity. This morbid fatalism reaches a crescendo with the bluesy So Many Tears, a late-night confessional where 2Pac sounds like he’s quite literally being stalked by the spectral figure of death – arguably, these songs were precursors to the emo rap sound of the 2010s, with 2Pac one of the first major rap artists to show his peers that there was no shame in crying or making songs from a position of weakness. On the mournful Lord Knows, he’s on his knees reaching out in pure desperation, powerfully rapping: “I smoke a blunt to take the pain out / And if I wasn’t high, I’d probably try to blow my brains out / I’m hopeless, they should’ve killed me as a baby.” His throaty vocals show the wear and tear of chain-smoking Newports, true, but the delivery of his bars from the very back of his throat sounds gigantic like a God, clearing both his throat and his conscience. He switches between grappling with suicidal thoughts to leading black America on to a path of enlightenment on his third solo album, but its raw introspection makes the rapper sound less like a thug superhero and more like a fragile 23-year-old, struggling to hold it all together. He resonated not only with the gangsters, but also the people looking to escape from that lifestyle and find inner peace. There wasn’t a week that went by without the controversial rapper appearing in court or in the gossip pages with rumours about romances with Madonna and Whitney Houston, but he balanced this notoriety with being a fervent defender of black America’s most poor and vulnerable citizens. Less than four years into his solo career, 2Pac already felt like an icon by the time he dropped Me Against the World.
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