Tupac Shakur
Recorded his first verse 45 minutes after landing from prison — and finished a double album in two weeks.
The episode
On the evening of October 13, 1995, Tupac Shakur touched down in Los Angeles, freed from New York's Clinton Correctional Facility on a $1.4 million bond posted by Death Row's Suge Knight. He had gone in with a single song sketched for his next album; he came out starved to work. From the airport he went directly to Can-Am studios — within forty-five minutes of arriving he had laid down the first verse of "Ambitionz Az a Ridah." For the next two weeks he recorded at a sprint, finishing dozens of tracks by October 27. The result, "All Eyez on Me," arrived that February as rap's first double album and debuted at number one. Deprivation had been converted directly into output.
The move — copy this today
Your turn
Whose life would you trade for — and why?
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