Archers of Loaf -- Hipster Music

Me Against the World

Is it just me or does every 2Pac song sound exactly the same? Something about the step-slide-step beat, that exact same tempo, and his trademark cadence makes his tunes about drug dealin', shootin' and niggas blend together like milk in a pot of cream. I mean, how many times can you use the word "cemetery" in a song? (And why would you want to, what with it not rhyming with practically anything?) Between the contradictions--I love women/I hate bitches, guns and drugs are bad/people who use guns and sell drugs are good--and some seriously candy-ass tracks, I'm not sure what the hype is about. Wasn't this the goofy, smiling dude from the Digital Underground video?

2Pacalypse Now

I guess in retrospect it's nice to hear rap that isn't about bling and rims. Granted, 2Pac is still kind of a one note guy. His music is about being hard. At best this one tries to ride the anti-America, pro-black gangster style of Ice Cube. This is an album filled with Tupac trying to find his own voice. The lyrics are less mature, but somehow the songs seem better constructed than those on some of his later albums. Maybe I just love sampling. There is still a trace of youthful enthusiasm and humor here that's missing from his later work. Despite this, the blueprint for the violent, paranoid walking contradiction was well laid out here. At least there's less crappy r&b singing all over the place, and the predictions of his death are more subdued. He is not yet larger than life, but merely a hungry rapper looking to make a name for himself.