Death Row Sale May Mean Another Posthumous Tupac Album

Following the bankruptcy of Death Row Records' Suge Knight, the famed label hit the auction block Wednesday. Ultimately, Nashville-based Global Music Group won the rights to Death Row's catalogue for $24 million and taking ownership of albums like Dr. Dre's The Chronic, Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle and, perhaps most lucratively, twenty unreleased tracks by Tupac Shakur. Odds are that a new, posthumous Tupac album could hit shelves by the end of the year, though one obstacle is that new Tupac releases must be approved by Evergreen Copyrights and Shakur's heir. Evergreen and Warner Music Group were both in the running to buy Death Row, but the label's deep pool of unpaid debts scared away both companies from offering more money. Suge Knight was forced to sell off Death Row Records after falling into bankruptcy following a $107 million judgment leveled against Knight by a former partner.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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