6. Old School by 2Pac (1995)
One of the last tracks on the smash hit Me Against The World (1995), "Old School" is one of my favorite of many favorites from 2Pac, including many others on the album. While "Dear Mama" or "Young N****z" are probably the most blatant examples of 2Pac being purely nostalgic and discussing his past on the album, "Old School" was always special to me as it saw him dive deeply into his lifelong admiration for hip-hop.
2Pac not only shows his prowess as a vocal performer on "Old School." He also demonstrates very intricate knowledge of how to best structure his verses, skillfully using his lyrics to weave together as many artists as possible, sometimes directly naming them and sometimes not.
Like "Bust The Facts," by Ultramagnetic MCs, 2Pac fills the song to the brim with memory after memory of witnessing hip-hop in its infancy, which spans his childhood and adolescent years spent in Harlem, Baltimore, and the Bay Area.
To give one example, the song's opening line is, “I remember Mr. Magic, Flash, Grandmaster Caz." The title of “Grandmaster” applies to both the preceding name, Flash, and the succeeding name of Caz, referring to two of the most influential artists of rap's first recorded era, whose careers date back even further.
After saying Caz's name, 2Pac continues with, "LL, Raising Hell, but that didn’t last.” I always thought it was particularly clever to put "LL" and "Raising Hell" together as a way of saying LL Cool J and Run-DMC without directly naming the latter, instead saying the title of their hit album from 1986.
"Raising Hell" has the same number of syllables as the phrase "Rock the Bells," the title to Cool J's 1985 hit. Both phrases also start with the "/r/" phoneme and also rhyme, almost as if you could miss that 2Pac is referring to Run-DMC if you don't pay attention.
Similar to "Memory Lane" by Nas, "Old School" also takes advantage of samples from hip-hop's past to create a nostalgic atmosphere. Produced by Soulshock, with co-producer credits for Ezi Cut and Jay B, there is a vocal sample of Grand Puba from Brand Nubian, taken from the group's 1990 song "Dedication."
The final song on their debut album, One for All, was used to give shout outs, as was the norm. Grand Puba lists his favorite rappers, giving the lines "What more could I say? I wouldn't be here today, if the old school didn't pave the way," which were taken for the chorus on "Old School."
While 2Pac labeled every single one of the rappers in this song as "old school," in some instances implying they were no longer as relevant, it is important to note that said label does not mean the artists vanished and were forgotten.
The majority of the many artists named in the song were still very active in 1995, and many are still active now, in contrast to 2Pac, who, unbeknownst to the world, only had about a year and a half left to live when Me Against the World was released.
Continued on next slide...