Tupac Shakur – The Complete Live Performances
Eagle Rock Entertainment (release date: 10/31/2006)
Rap
As the tenth anniversary of Tupac Shakur’s death came and went, there was surprisingly little fanfare. Either the rap industry has moved on or the usual posthumous suspectsâ€â€such as Afeni Shakur and Suge Knightâ€â€are all tuckered out from a decade of plundering the man’s memory and material.
Eagle Rock Entertainment has put together a two-disc DVD featuring what’s believed to be Tupac Shakur’s first live performance as a Death Row Records artist, as well as his last live concert before his death in September 1996. The latter show was previously released last year as the single set, Live at the House of Blues and is easily the better of the two events.
Eagle Rock gives this nearly decade-old live show (from July 4, 1996) a new spit shine, with sound that’s almost album quality. The bass line from “Ambitionz Az a Ridah” still thumps your walls. Tupac’s set opens things up and his Outlawz posse go into nine of their cuts with gusto. “Hit ‘Em Up” will never lose its poisonous shock value and everyone takes time to go after their enemies at the time (Bad Boy Records, Nas, etc.) Snoop and Tha Dogg Pound are out next, and just kill their set with a raucous crowd and over a dozen classics “Gin & Juice”, “Murder Was the Case”, “Tha Shiznit” mixed in.
The other performance is from Suge Knight’s infamous and short-lived Club 662 in Las Vegas. While the picture and sound are decent, the actual Tupac set is actually just a “sneak peak” at a few tracks of his seminal All Eyez on Me album. Pac drops a few verses, hands the mic over The Outlawz (or a horribly flat n’ unsweetened Nate Dogg) and that’s it. At times, there are so many dudes on the mic that it might remind the listener of Steve Harvey’s famous “40 rappers, 40 mics” riff.
Buyer beware”¦on both discs, Tupac is essentially the opening act, while Tha Dogg Pound (Daz & Kurupt) are the main event on disc one, while Snoop Dogg is the real show on disc two. Newer fans of Tupac might be surprised to know that it was Snoop, not Pac, who ruled the West Coast at the time.
There are a few production hiccups during breaks in the show where the right music isn’t cued up and the camera stays on to capture every elongated lull. And, under the “unintentional comedy” banner is the crowd reaction to the new material Pac and Snoop tried to debut. Everyone sits on their hands during “Doggfather” and “Tattoo Tears” just waiting to hear something they once again recognize.
“Bonus Features” include five of Tupac’s music videos from the Death Row days. There’s also an odd freestyle from Kurupt and Jayo Felony in which a chunk of the audio isn’t even captured. The “bonus” highlight is the guest commentary from Treach of Naughty by Nature, uh”¦”fame”. He only sticks around for the Tupac set on the first disc and drops gems like “This is what hunger is”¦ (long, long pause) “¦ All Eyez on Me changed the face of rap.” Think Tim McCarver, but with a better grasp of the obvious.
Still, this DVD is better than it has any right to be. This is, quite simply, a slice of time when everything seemed right on the west coast and the eventual, almost immediate end seemed like it would never arrive.
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