There's no way I'm buying this album. I think the music is poor quality, but I buy lots of other albums with 2Pac verses on them regardless of their quality, so that's not the reason. The reason I'm not buying it is because I'm sick of seeing all the work he did being wasted. There's many good reasons for not releasing everything completely OG. But it's at the point now where virtually nothing is left anywhere even remotely close to how he originally recorded it except (to some extent) his vocals and there's no excuse for that other than that the people releasing it either don't think they will get enough money or they don't have respect for the work he did.
Every part of his songs involved his input to some extent. Even if he didn't produce the music for a song, he obviously still had a lot of input into what type of production he wanted for the song, chose which beat he wanted to use and fit his lyrics to it. Also, the other artists on the songs would have at least received guidance about what type of song he wanted to create if not being given specific lyrics to use. There's lots of ways he was involved in the song beyond just rapping, but the point is every part of the song is part of his music and to see it being wasted after how hard he worked and how important his messages were really bothers me.
I'm not sure why Amaru's chosen to release his music like this. The argument that sales will be bad doesn't work because R U Still Down? sold fine. Now they aren't even giving his original music a chance to sell. There's no reason to make his music more modern, the released music he originally recorded is still popular today. But none of the arguments in favour of remixing justifies them completely changing everything. Why not at least keep the style of the song similar, or use parts of the original production? I'm sure some beats and samples would be a hastle to get permission to use, but not every single one. Now that they are even mixing his verses from different songs and altering his lyrics, it makes it clear that they don't even respect the words he recorded.
He knew he was facing jail or death and he worked very hard to make a lot of good music because it was obviously very important to him. So I hate to watch it being wasted like this when there is so much potential. People who don't know a lot about him probably think that these are just left-over vocals and don't realize he actually finished (or nearly finished) all these songs and albums (e.g., One Nation). Either way people should be given a chance to hear his music as it was originally made. Until I see something released that's true to his art, I'll stick to spending my money on old singles and guest appearance albums.
Every part of his songs involved his input to some extent. Even if he didn't produce the music for a song, he obviously still had a lot of input into what type of production he wanted for the song, chose which beat he wanted to use and fit his lyrics to it. Also, the other artists on the songs would have at least received guidance about what type of song he wanted to create if not being given specific lyrics to use. There's lots of ways he was involved in the song beyond just rapping, but the point is every part of the song is part of his music and to see it being wasted after how hard he worked and how important his messages were really bothers me.
I'm not sure why Amaru's chosen to release his music like this. The argument that sales will be bad doesn't work because R U Still Down? sold fine. Now they aren't even giving his original music a chance to sell. There's no reason to make his music more modern, the released music he originally recorded is still popular today. But none of the arguments in favour of remixing justifies them completely changing everything. Why not at least keep the style of the song similar, or use parts of the original production? I'm sure some beats and samples would be a hastle to get permission to use, but not every single one. Now that they are even mixing his verses from different songs and altering his lyrics, it makes it clear that they don't even respect the words he recorded.
He knew he was facing jail or death and he worked very hard to make a lot of good music because it was obviously very important to him. So I hate to watch it being wasted like this when there is so much potential. People who don't know a lot about him probably think that these are just left-over vocals and don't realize he actually finished (or nearly finished) all these songs and albums (e.g., One Nation). Either way people should be given a chance to hear his music as it was originally made. Until I see something released that's true to his art, I'll stick to spending my money on old singles and guest appearance albums.
