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Video
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NotesIt brings me no pleasure to find fault with the man who didn’t create Thuglife, but rather diagnosed it.
Still, some transgressions cannot simply be glossed over for the sake of appearances.
Fact: This is a great Tupac song.I say great because it combines my favorite things about West Coast rap: stretched-out, weed-smokin’ beats and lyrics that render even the gravest situation absurd.In the intro, Tupac calls up a young lady who has captured his attentions, and offers to come “swoop” her up. She cites the fact that her man “ain’t gon let” her and, after a few fraught moments of back-and-forth, politely declines. Tupac concedes, and it SEEMS like the phone call is about to end but then, in the next breath Tupac is heard to ask “What’s wrong with your eye? Why you got on glasses?”Forget the errors of grammatical construction. They’re there. Of couse they’re there. Let us instead focus our attentions on the content of the sentence.Are Tupac’s powers of perception so well-honed that he can sense that the object of his desire is wearing sunglasses even though he’s talking to her on the phone?Please believe me, I love Tupac. I have tried and failed to give this lyrical sequence the benefit of the doubt by playing my own devil’s advocate:“Maybe they’re actually not on the phone, maybe he ran into her at the gas station or the falafel place, or the science museum.”But then why does he say “What’s up, it’s Tupac”, hm? That’s not something you say when you’re face to face with a person. Also, he says, “Lemme come swoop you up”. This is a youth-phrase meaning “Allow me to come pick you up” leaving us no recourse.It all points to a serious lack of attention to detail on the part of Tupac and the folks in the studio when the song was recorded. While I can’t exactly work up any real shock that a bunch of music producers in the 90s weren’t especially detail oriented, it still boggles the mind to learn that not a soul at Interscope records noticed this discrepancy, in time to prevent the making of another video (weird remix, not as good), which opens with Tupac making said phone call.
Come on, everybody. Everybody, come on.
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