Shortly after Kendrick Lamar’s tribute was released in honor of Tupac Shakur on the 19th anniversary of his death, another hip-hop artist, Eminem, has penned his own letter remembering the West Coast legend.
In the letter, featured in Paper Magazines “Nowstalgia” issue, Eminem said, “[Tupac] 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.”
The “Lose Yourself” rapper continued to write that he was around 18 or 19 when he first heard Tupac rapping on Digital Underground’s “I Get Around.” And when the late rapper’s mother, Afeni Shakur, granted Eminem permission to produce Pac’s fifth posthumous album, Loyal to the Game, he said that he was “like a kid in a candy store.”
“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,” Eminem said.
“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… It was true genius.”
Both tributes, as well as a piece from Swizz Beatz on The Notorious B.I.G., will appear in Paper Magazine’s upcoming issue, set to release on October 20th.
Head over to Paper Magazine’s website to read the letter in full.
