It’s crazy to think about Tupac accomplished in the short amount of time he had on Earth. Before he passed away at the young age of 25, Pac had already dropped multiple platinum records, starred in a handful of movies, and cemented himself as one of the greatest rappers of all time.
What’s even more crazy is that Pac’s debut album, 2Pacalypse Now, dropped November 12, 1991, and his first posthumous release, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, which came out on November 5, 1996, were almost exactly five years apart. In those five years alone, he accomplished more than what most rappers could have hoped to achieve in their entire recording career.
Pac’s work ethic and prolificness, particularly during his later years, were legendary. On the same day he was released from Clinton Correctional Facility on October 12, 1995, he went straight to the studio and recorded “Ambitionz Az a Ridah” and “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.”
And even after he dropped All Eyez on Me in early 1996, which went on to become the biggest rap album of the year, Pac never slowed down his relentless pace in the studio. Shortly afterwards, he was recording his next album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, with plans to release it under the alias Makaveli. According to people who were there during the studio sessions, Pac wrote and recorded the lyrics in three days, while the mixing & mastering took an additional four days.
Snoop Dogg: I think what I learned from Tupac was basically a different kind of work ethic. I always had a good work ethic about myself as far as being timely, being on point and being a professional. But he just showed me how to be a little more faster at it as far as getting to the meat of it all and not really just listening to it all the time, not absorbing it but more just doing it, and keep doing it and doing it. Let the engineer mix it and master it, not fall in love with it, but fall in love with the craft of being able to do it and continue to do it.
Snoop Dogg shares the most valuable lesson he learned from Tupac | NME
