i think you hit the nail on the head. here are my thoughts....
amaru staff. i am not one to judge people on the basis of superficial characteristics, but the staff at amaru don't "look" like 2pac fans. to me, the person who needs to be in a decision making position is that person who followed pac's career from start to end and who is an old schooler who lived through the birth and evolution of hip hop. i love my brothers and sisters in hip hop, but unless you bought kings of rock when it dropped you won't have a full appreciation of the history. maybe i'm a snob, but buying albums from years back and tracing the path isn't the same experience as living the timeline. that all being said, it seems to me that the staff are on-board because of 2pac's (contrived) image and not as followers of his music and personal agendas.
the message. 2pac was a man of many faces. i am turned off with the prospect of dilluting his venom in favor of the social commentator, thug angel image. 2pac had a short fuse and blew up on those who he felt either crossed him or were being fake. maybe in 10 years he'd have chilled a bit, but the idea of offering collaboration to his former enemies in hip hop is disgusting. maybe i'm too much of a 2pac purist, but the prospect of amaru even offering jay-z a spot on a 2pac record makes me gag. at the very minimum i am thankful that the rumored 2pac, left eye, aaliyah, biggie song did not make the cut. just because people are dead doesn't make them all cool with each other. if 2pac wanted me to hear him say fuck wendy williams, i as a fan should hear it. vocal gaps and the trashing of diss tracks is like looking at pac's tremendous volume of work through tunnel vision.
the songs. i'm not one to boast and brag, but if i can make an album of unheards in less than 15 minutes, i fail to see why amaru cannot do the same. previously they had been very attentive to what had been leaked and every album treated us to some new material in the midst of leaked songs. that was a great way to keep things new and fresh (and was the redeeming quality of lttg). the prospect of an album of vocals that we have all heard before is troubling. consider that if an artist who IS ALIVE makes two flop albums in a row they're usually considered out of the game, shouldn't amaru have tried to bless us with a hit album instead of one that will sell, but won't fly off the shelves and certainly won't compete with jay-z's album?
the acapella leaks. this leads me to discuss my thoughts of the track selections for the new album. maybe i'm looking too deeply into the situation, but it seems to me that this album is a mass cleanup job. what i mean by that is that most of the recently leaked acapellas came from makaveli branded, who had been given them to promote the clothing line. after these acapellas leaked - which they were explicitly supposed to NOT leak - then suddenly it's like 1997 all over again. i won't name names, but amaru has tried to shut down some dj's over these acapellas. coincidentally, why is it that these same acapellas serve as the spine for many pac's life songs? knowing what little we know, and having a list of at least 50 songs that we all have and probably the same if not more that are unleaked, the rationale for these same acapellas that have been mixed 100000 times already being on the album tends to make me lean more toward the mentality of, "these leaked so let's use them quick before they leak to everyone in the world. after we use them then so what if stuff leaks further - we already used them for our project." this is just my thought, but i could see some reality in it.
the choices. i won't even address the fact that no other artist would ever put out an album of 13 tracks, 6 of which being the same track mixed twice. remixes are for singles and promos - not to pad an album. i also won't mention the laughable corny ass choice of having pac telling me to go to sleep and then two songs later telling me not to. what i will mention, however, is that the choices in production are poor. why is swizz or someone shouting west coast out in untouchable when he's as new york as you can get? the idea that each song has to have its own identity as a banger that stands out among the others is a huge mistake musically. a well thought album has different songs that play different roles - and 2pac was the same in the writing of his lyrics. cali love is empty of meaning, but it's meant to juice people up and is still one of the biggest hip hop club songs of all time. each song on an album (especially a 2pac one) plays its role... give us a couple venom diss tracks, a couple party can't c me tracks, one or two social tracks like brenda's or baby don't cry, a few posse cuts with the lawz, a chill track, and a couple pac and friends tracks. that's how a 2pac album is made.
all i can say is that rap phenom was better than ths album in terms of quantity and the integrity of pac's vocals as he recorded them, which is a sad thing to say considering that most net dj mixtapes beat that one hands down.
people at amaru - if you need help i will give it to you. i'd send them everything i had tomorrow if it would help the end-products to be more aligned with the presence and themes under which they were recorded. in the meantime, fine, i'll buy your product, but i'm starting to ask myself why with every album...
:thumb: