The album found Tupac in a traumatic state in which he had come as close to dying as humanly possible and he saw nothing but the worst in life and those around him. Me Against the World serves as a kind of moment of pure being for the artist. A prolonged, frustrated “fuck it” over 15 harrowing tracks. This is the Hip Hop album as a blunt instrument, a desperate assault, a hate fuck and an intimate confession. It’s a claustrophobic, dark, haunting piece of music, a nearly perfectly crafted effort which, on an almost track by track basis you can chart his fatal descent from Idealistic community mouthpiece to nihilistic gangster caricature. The majority of Tupac’s third album Me Against the World was recorded between Shakur’s shooting and his sentencing, it was released March 14, 1995. He began serving his sentence at Clinton Hill Correctional Facility in upstate New York on February 14th. At the sentencing he stared down his accuser, charged the judge and court system of racism, and was promptly sentenced to between 18 months and 4 ½ years. He was acquitted of the lesser charges of sodomy and weapon possession, but found guilty of sexual abuse. The next day Pac showed up in court, being wheeled in by the Fruit of Islam with a wool Yankees hat pulled over his bandaged head, proudly displaying the diamond encrusted Rolex the men who robbed him didn’t get. Tupac would claim to suffer from vicious recurring headaches and troubled sleep as a result of the shooting for the rest of his life.

He was out of surgery by 4:00, and by 6:45 he checked himself out of the hospital, moving to Metropolitan in fear that along with Bad Boy, people in his own circle had facilitated what he believed to be an assassination attempt. After being shot Tupac was rushed to Bellevue hospital where he bled through the night until around 1:30 in the afternoon the next day, when doctors were finally able to operate on him, repairing a damaged blood vessel in his right leg.

Bad Boy luminaries Lil Cease, Sean Combs and Christopher Wallace were upstairs on the eighth floor during the shooting. These are the things we know: On November 30th, 1994 on the eve of the verdict in his sexual abuse trial, 23 year old Tupac Shakur was on his way into Quad studios in Manhattan to do a track with rapper Little Shawn when he was shot twice in the head, twice in the groin and once in the arm.

2pac me against the world album cover