Songoftheday 10/25/23 - Tired of getting shot at tired of getting chased by the police and arrested, n****s need a spot where we can kick it a spot where we belong that's just for us...

 

 

"Thugz Mansion" - 2Pac

from the album Better Dayz (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (five weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from 2Pac, aka Tupac Shakur, who was tragically gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996 at the age of 25. After a pair of posthumous albums, a Greatest Hits set was released in 1998, which spun off a top-40 crossover hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the beginning of the following year with the Bruce Hornsby-sampling "Changes".  Later in 1999, another album, Still I Rise, which used 2Pac recordings on Death Row Records with his posse the Outlawz, went to #6 on the Billboard 200 and sold over a million copies, and "Baby Don't Cry (Keep Ya Head Up II)", an obvious sympathy grab, went to #72 on the Hot 100 and #36 on the R&B Singles chart. That was followed in 2001 with a double-disc set, Until The End Of Time, which featured more unreleased music specially remixed with new production. The album spent a week at #1 on the Billboard 200 and sold over four million copies. While the title track "Until The End Of Time" featuring R.L. of the vocal group Next only reached #52 on the Hot 100, it peaked at #21 on the R&B Singles chart and in the United Kingdom, went all the way to #4. A second single from the record, "Letter 2 My Unborn", scored a second top-40 hit in the UK at #21. 

In the late autumn of 2002, Interscope Records (under the Amaru/Death Row label) released another two-disc Frankenstein of cobbled-together unreleased recordings of 2Pac from the mid-1990s with newer production from 2001-2002, Better Dayz. The set included a track, "Who Do You Believe In?", which was on a Death Row multi-artist compilation already and went to #53 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, lingering there for 20 weeks. 

The featured single on Better Dayz was his "Thugz Mansion". The lyrics have the rapper pondering the afterlife, full of notable figures in entertainment and history, coming together for a party at said mansion. One of the remixes, which is what the music video is based on, features rapper Nas and vocalist J. Phoenix (Anthony Hamilton sings on the main version). Its theme certainly fits the narrative of 2Pac's troubled life, and it resonated like other assembled old material they used didn't. The production is reverently simple, focusing on acoustic guitars. So in return he returned to the top ten on the R&B chart for the first time in four years, and would be his last (though not last top-40 pop hit)...

"Thugs Mansion" became 2Pac's third posthumous top-40 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in December of 2002, while peaking at #10 on their R&B Singles chart and #4 on the Rap Singles list. On the radio, the song went to #6 on the Mainstream R&B airplay chart, and #5 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in Belgium (#7 Flanders/#18 Wallonia), New Zealand (#10), Ireland (#17), the United Kingdom (#24), and Australia (#26). The Better Dayz album, released in November of that year, crested at #5 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and topped the R&B Albums list for two weeks, going on to sell almost three million copies. 

A second single from the album, "Still Ballin'" which featured rapper Trick Daddy, rose to #31 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, #24 on the Rhythmic radio list, and #69 on the Hot 100. 

The late 2Pac will be back to the series.

 

(6/10)

 

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

 

Here's the "7 Remix" for the single from producer 7 Aurelius which featured singer Anthony Hamilton....

 

 Up tomorrow: This Canadian is by your side.