Tupac's aggressive records are my favorite. "Hail Mary" is just perfect: "Picture paragraphs unloaded/Wise words being quoted." Most artists now just aren't smart enough to write that, or honest enough to write a line like, "I ain't a killer but don't push me." These days rappers will just tell you, "I'll kill you."
Tupac was like a camera. It's incredible how much he wrote -- how much he documented. To me, 'Pac was more of a poet than a rapper. You can always tell when you're hearing Tupac verse. He wrote those lyrics without any music. Notorious B.I.G. was more melody-driven -- I'm sure he wrote his shit without a pen, and over the music -- but 'Pac was just hashing out his life. The thing was, he was doing that when the public eye was on him, and everything he was hashing out just expanded, and that's when things got out of control.
All of us on the East Coast loved Tupac. The music was all that mattered. That East Coast/West Coast feud was just personal beef. I didn't even believe he was really dead when he died, because he had been shot before. I thought, "He just got shot again, he'll be all right."
But now that he's not here, he's bigger than ever. I can still listen to two or three Tupac CDs straight -- just throw them in the changer. Sometimes I build one CD with Tupac's best songs, and one with Biggie's best songs. Then I listen and get ready to go into my next project.