Juxtapoz Magazineさんのインスタグラム写真 - (Juxtapoz MagazineInstagram)「It’s tough to dissociate All Eyez on Me from the pre-streaming era, when an album felt like a friend you could unravel an afternoon with—or in the case of 2Pac’s 1996 magnum opus, an accomplice who’d help you steal your parents’ car in the middle of the night when you were 14. If you were patient, a record left you with a story that made you feel something. The story of All Eyez on Me began on October 12, 1995. 2Pac, at the peak of his fame, had spent the better part of that year in prison for a sexual abuse conviction before selling his soul to Suge Knight, who, in exchange for a three-album, $3.5M deal with Death Row, posted 2Pac’s $1.4M bail. 2Pac created the entire double-disc album during a frantic 14-day period that began the same night he walked out of prison. The result? A 132-minute war cry directed at Biggie and Bad Boy; and an urgent portrait of a brilliant artist approaching the end of his short life. The album dropped in early 1996 and 2Pac was murdered that fall. It’s hard to think of an image that better represents that man at that moment than that cover. Shot by Death Row photographer Ken Nahoum, 2Pac is shirtless except for the black leather strap of a Jean Paul Gaultier vest. His tattoos and jewelry on full display, he reps West Coast as he offers up his Death Row pendant to the camera like a cat delivering a hummingbird to its owner’s doorstep. He stares into the camera with defiance. All eyes are on him—and he knows it. But beneath the swagger lies a soulfulness that reminds you of his complexity as an artist, and a human: He was a Black Panther’s son who beefed with C. Dolores Tucker; a poet who penned the most vitriolic dis track of all time; an author of feminist anthems who was convicted of sexual abuse. That the face of one of the most defining moments in West Coast rap history was an art school kid from Harlem is particularly ironic, but fitting. 2pac remains a contradictory, polarizing and mesmerizing figure—the kind of artist who makes the kind of music, that, 23 years later, inspires rappers and soundtracks joyrides in the burbs. — @elizabethsuman #juxtapozsoundandvision」8月5日 7時44分