totally agree with cardella's perspective. i share a similar one, but with some slight differences.
the problem as i see it is not the quantity or quality of remaining songs. rather, it's purely in the selection and approach. rusd being the first real remixed album had the luxury of skimming the cream off the top of the barrel, while the bulk of the tracks selected for lttg were relatively weak. don't get me wrong, i like henny and the others, but in a one to one comparison with songs like hellrazor, thug style, nothing to lose, only fear of death, etc there's simply no comparison. marshall is only partially responsible for the lttg flop, because in considering the bonus four tracks and the two leaked scraps, i don't think i would have been satisfied had there been no eminem remixing present at all. what's the problem with the mixing? well it's actually very simple... when you have an album in which each song is produced by a different person, and features the vocals or collaboration of another person, all parties involved desperately want their song to be the single. while the lttg bonus remixes and scrapped tracks are good, they just try too hard and that sours them.
the real concern at hand, however, is the perceived necessity of modernizing pac's music to cater to the g-unit and jay-z trained ear drums of modern hip hop's majority purchasing sector - namely the kids. hit the record store and take a look around. i will guarantee you that (assuming you don't go dusing school hours) a minimum of half of the people making purchases will be under 25, and most likely under 21. i think that there's good argument for modernizing the music since a lot (especially death row sessions) were very elementary loops. the problem, though, is the complete discounting of the original sound. i love the og enhancements of lastoneleft, ballad, or thug nature. hellrazor sounds nothing like the og, but it still has that grit to it. same with street fame. so why do we have to settle for songs like ghetto gospel or the horrible niggaz nature remix with lil mo (which her reps pushed very hard to have it be the followup single to uteot)?
pac's been dead going on a decade now, so why try to make an album sound like it was recorded yesterday? of the music in my car, maybe 4 of 50 cd's were produced in 2004 to present. old music will sell if it's packaged right. once you slap 50 on a track, the buyer already knows going into the listening experience that it's a bastardized product that is nothing more than a kay slay tape without tags. people may like the album, but you just can't respect it on the same level as you could respect the albums pac maticulously assembled when he was living. there were no wasted tracks on his albums, and everything flowed. rusd achieved this, but lttg was like an ipod shuffle.
where do we go from here? well unknown to most people, pac had actually created the concepts for three albums following makaveli, complete with tracklists and themes - one nation being one of these. the brakes need to be engaged and a new direction selected for future projects. let's make the decade anniversary special, but not only putting a nice album out, but by patching up all the damaged relationships. humble yourself, amaru execs, and admit that this plan didn't work out very well. apologize to treach, richie rich, e-40, and the rest, and return to the rusd concept. there are plenty of good tracks left, it's not too late.
i'll close witht he hard question... if new music is going to be candy coated and packaged in a shiny commercial wrapper with the names of other artists in bolder print than pac's, am i still going to buy it? well, sadly, yes. i hope that every last verse is released in some fashion, simply to honor the ethic and artistry of pac who made tracks daily while almost every other artist works for 3 months a year and parties for 9. the problem is that the faithful collectors are less than half a percent of the overall market, and so to achieve commercial successes for pac, those in power need to drastically revise their approach.
the problem as i see it is not the quantity or quality of remaining songs. rather, it's purely in the selection and approach. rusd being the first real remixed album had the luxury of skimming the cream off the top of the barrel, while the bulk of the tracks selected for lttg were relatively weak. don't get me wrong, i like henny and the others, but in a one to one comparison with songs like hellrazor, thug style, nothing to lose, only fear of death, etc there's simply no comparison. marshall is only partially responsible for the lttg flop, because in considering the bonus four tracks and the two leaked scraps, i don't think i would have been satisfied had there been no eminem remixing present at all. what's the problem with the mixing? well it's actually very simple... when you have an album in which each song is produced by a different person, and features the vocals or collaboration of another person, all parties involved desperately want their song to be the single. while the lttg bonus remixes and scrapped tracks are good, they just try too hard and that sours them.
the real concern at hand, however, is the perceived necessity of modernizing pac's music to cater to the g-unit and jay-z trained ear drums of modern hip hop's majority purchasing sector - namely the kids. hit the record store and take a look around. i will guarantee you that (assuming you don't go dusing school hours) a minimum of half of the people making purchases will be under 25, and most likely under 21. i think that there's good argument for modernizing the music since a lot (especially death row sessions) were very elementary loops. the problem, though, is the complete discounting of the original sound. i love the og enhancements of lastoneleft, ballad, or thug nature. hellrazor sounds nothing like the og, but it still has that grit to it. same with street fame. so why do we have to settle for songs like ghetto gospel or the horrible niggaz nature remix with lil mo (which her reps pushed very hard to have it be the followup single to uteot)?
pac's been dead going on a decade now, so why try to make an album sound like it was recorded yesterday? of the music in my car, maybe 4 of 50 cd's were produced in 2004 to present. old music will sell if it's packaged right. once you slap 50 on a track, the buyer already knows going into the listening experience that it's a bastardized product that is nothing more than a kay slay tape without tags. people may like the album, but you just can't respect it on the same level as you could respect the albums pac maticulously assembled when he was living. there were no wasted tracks on his albums, and everything flowed. rusd achieved this, but lttg was like an ipod shuffle.
where do we go from here? well unknown to most people, pac had actually created the concepts for three albums following makaveli, complete with tracklists and themes - one nation being one of these. the brakes need to be engaged and a new direction selected for future projects. let's make the decade anniversary special, but not only putting a nice album out, but by patching up all the damaged relationships. humble yourself, amaru execs, and admit that this plan didn't work out very well. apologize to treach, richie rich, e-40, and the rest, and return to the rusd concept. there are plenty of good tracks left, it's not too late.
i'll close witht he hard question... if new music is going to be candy coated and packaged in a shiny commercial wrapper with the names of other artists in bolder print than pac's, am i still going to buy it? well, sadly, yes. i hope that every last verse is released in some fashion, simply to honor the ethic and artistry of pac who made tracks daily while almost every other artist works for 3 months a year and parties for 9. the problem is that the faithful collectors are less than half a percent of the overall market, and so to achieve commercial successes for pac, those in power need to drastically revise their approach.
