Songoftheday 8/7/21 - First ship 'em dope and let 'em deal the brothers, give 'em guns step back watch 'em kill each other...
"Changes" - 2Pac
from the album Greatest Hits (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #32 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song comes from the late rapper Tupac Shakur, or 2Pac, who was gunned down in 1996, but then was resurrected on tape a year later for the posthumous top-40 pop hit "Do For Love" in the spring of 1998 from the album R U Still Down?. Later that year, Interscope Records (in correlation with Death Row Records his last label) and mother Afeni's imprint Amaru released a double-disc Greatest Hits album that would compile his biggest from his 1991 debut to his posthumous 1997 Makaveli release. There were four unreleased tracks on the set of which two that were promoted as singles to radio. The first, "Unconditional Love", was his own demo of a song he gave to labelmate MC Hammer. That track popped on to Billboard magazine's R&B Airplay chart at #73 in November of 1998, right before the music industry trade bible changed their rules to allow album cuts on the main R&B and pop charts. That changed with the follow-up, "Changes". Written by the rapper and produced by Deon Evans from way back in 1992, the track rides on an interpolation of Bruce Hornsby's #1 pop hit from 1986 "The Way It Is". Featuring R&B vocal group Talent (uncredited on the label) singing backup, 2Pac rehashing lines from previous track about racism, police brutality, and even foreshadowing his own death...
"Changes" returned 2Pac to the pop top-40 in January of 1999. The song also climbed to #12 on Billboard's R&B chart. Internationally, the single was even bigger, going to #1 in the Netherlands and Norway, and reaching the top ten in Germany (#2), Switzerland (#2), Belgium (#2F/#11W), the UK (#3), Sweden (#3), New Zealand (#3), Ireland (#5), Austria (#6), Australia (#7), and went to #19 in Canada. The Greatest Hits album, released in November of 1998, went on being one of the biggest selling compilations of all time, selling over five million records in the U.S. (counting double to be diamond status). At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "Changes" was nominated for Best Male Rap Solo Performance, losing out to Eminem's debut hit "My Name Is". Talent would go on to have a minor R&B hit in 2001 with their own single "Celebrity" at #90. 2Pac will be back to the series.
Up tomorrow: A country singer starts to be affected.
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