#95, "Hit 'Em Up," Tupac Shakur (feat. The Outlawz) (1996)

150 Favorite Songs: #95, "Hit 'Em Up," Tupac Shakur (feat. The Outlawz) (1996)

Look, I know that people actually died for "Hit 'Em Up." You can't remove that context when you write about music. Context is important. And while it might be oversimplifying things to blame "Hit 'Em Up" exclusively for what happened to Tupac and Biggie, you also can't deny that it inflamed tensions that ended with two rappers murdered.

Which makes its place in your—or, rather, my—personal mythology kind of hard to explain. Because I love "Hit 'Em Up" for reasons that have very little to do with the real-world implications that the song carried. Removed from that context, it's an astonishing five minutes that express the various forms of rage a person can experience as succinctly as anything anybody ever put on a record. 

So how do you listen to "Hit 'Em Up" knowing what happened in the aftermath (ugh, no pun intended) of its release? If you're me at twenty-two or so, when I spent the most time listening to "Hit 'Em Up," then you just kinda ignore it, which is a privilege that someone who never really felt the loss of Tupac or Biggie—or, really, anybody I loved besides some elderly and sick grandparents—gets to have. Rage has still never killed anyone I love, so it's easy to just let "Hit 'Em Up be brilliant and exhilarating, without ever thinking about the violence behind it. 

Which I've done hundreds of times. I've listened to "Hit 'Em Up" like a release valve when I've been angry. There's something incredibly cathartic and empowering about the way Tupac expresses his anger here. sometimes he balances his fury with his sense of humor ("fuck you, die slow, motherfuckers, my .44 makes sure all y'all kids don't grow"), sometimes he's casually contemptuous ("I'ma let my little homies rhyme"), sometimes he's self-aggrandizing ("We keep it real as penitentiary steel!"), sometimes he's mocking and derisive ("Don't one of y'all have sickle-cell?"), sometimes he makes an accusation ("You's a beat-biter, Pac-style taker"), and sometimes he's inarticulate with rage ("Chino XL, fuck you too!"). It's not pretty, but it's not supposed to be, and when I've needed a not-pretty release, the context slips away. It's not about what happened afterward, or even what he's saying. I've shouted along with Tupac when he says "My fo'-fo' makes a  sure all y'all kids don't grow." I've never held a .44, and that's not how I'd resolve any given conflict, but that's not the point. It's the rage you relate to here, not the words.

And when you put it like that, the appeal of "Hit 'Em Up" has always been about removing it from the context. It's not about Tupac or Biggie, even, really—that's not why I've listened to this song so many times, thinking about a girlfriend's ex-boyfriend who tried to start shit or somebody I knew who wrote a passive-aggressive blog post about how much I suck, or whatever got me mad that has nothing in common with anything "Hit 'Em Up" is about.

Which may not make much sense. It might even trivialize what happened in the ten months after it was released—context is important, as we've said. But that's the thing about making art. Once you put it out there, it belongs to everyone. They have the right to take from it the things that they relate to, and to leave behind the things they don't. They just might also have a responsibility to know the context.