2Pac: Pac's Life : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

As the story goes, Tupac Shakur spent untold hours in the studio recording rhymes for no particular reason other than to express his vast creativity. But after ten posthumous albums, we must finally be getting to the bottom of 'Pac's barrel, right? Several of his verses on this eleventh post-death disc -- released ten years after his demise -- are undercooked snippets looped and padded out with verses from a new generation of acolytes like Chamillionaire and T.I. The surprise is that, after digging so deep, producers like Swizz Beatz and Sha Money XL discovered some genuine gems, on which 2Pac's electric voice and poetic lyrics still resonate. On the melancholic, resigned "Dumpin'," 'Pac trades hard-hitting staccato rhymes with two of his most deft disciples, Papoose and Hussein Fatal, who demonstrate, a decade later, just how much of an impact 2Pac has had on today's hip-hop.