Songoftheday 7/3/24 - Check it, I grew up a fuckin' screw-up Got introduced to the game, got a ounce and fuckin' blew up...

 

 

"Runnin' (Dying To Live)" - 2Pac featuring Notorious B.I.G.

from the album Tupac: Resurrection (Soundtrack) (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song featured two hip-hop music icons that had passed in the previous decade, Tupac (2Pac) Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., who were gunned down in 1996 and 1997 respectively.  While Biggie, who was on Sean "P Diddy" Combs' Bad Boy label, hadn't really been in the spotlight, with his last hit as a lead artist, "Going Back To Cali" reaching the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the beginning of 1998, though Diddy slipped a snippet of him into his own top-20 single "Victory" later that spring. Meanwhile Tupac, whose Makaveli album Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, was released at the time of his death, saw Interscope Records and his estate mine his jettisoned material for four posthumous album releases as well as a Greatest Hits set through 2002, when a single from Better Dayz, "Thug Mansion", reached the top-20 on the Hot 100. 

At the end of 2003, a documentary that was being put together about the rapper finally saw its release as Tupac: Resurrection. With interviews with Shakur about life, his family, and the business being used as narration, the film eventually was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, losing to Born Into Brothels, a missive about children raised through members of the sex trade. Resurrection featured music throughout, which was distilled into a fourteen song soundtrack culled from rarities throughout his career both before and after fame. One of those tracks was a reworked effort from 1995 that paired then-future adversaries Pac and Biggie, which originally was released as a single "Runnin' From The Police". The dark single, which also featured rappers Dramacydal and Stretch from 2Pac's posse as well as reggae toaster Buju Banton and produced by Easy Mo Bee, went to #81 on the Hot 100 and #57 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart...

For the soundtrack, "Runnin'" was redone as "Runnin' (Dying To Live)", produced by Eminem with Biggie's vocals from the original and a Thug Life rework from Pac. The new track featured an interpolation of the Edgar Winter Group album track "Dying To Live", giving its name as the subtitle and giving Winter writing credit along side Eminem, Easy Mo Be, and the two deceased rappers. Winter's ballad contributes the sombre backdrop to the track as well as the chorus, which introduces the "chipmunked" tweaking of vocals that would pervade the genre in the near-distant future. Biggie's verse at the start is crime-ridden braggadocio including the hilarious line "Run from the police, picture that
Nigga, I'm too fat, I fuck around and catch a asthma attack". On verse two, 2Pac tries to tone it down with some pleas for help. The final stanza is an interview with Biggie after 2Pac's death claiming he didn't wish death on anybody (hmmmm). The result was constructed to be poignant reflection of the pair's strength, though it only somewhat did that...

"Runnin' (Dying To Live)" reached the top-20 on Billboard's Hot 100 in December of 2003, while peaking at #11 on their R&B Singles chart and #5 on the Rap Singles list. On the radio, the song rose to #11 on both the Mainstream R&B airplay chart and the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format list. Internationally, the single hit the top ten in Belgium (#2 Wallonia/#30 Flanders), New Zealand (#8), and Switzerland (#9), while reaching the top 40 in Germany (#12), Australia (#12), the Netherlands (#13), Ireland (#15), the United Kingdom (#17), Austria (#19), France (#28), and Sweden (#37). The Tupac: Resurrection soundtrack, released in November of that year, spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and hit #3 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies.

The second single pulled from the soundtrack was another rehash from 1996, "One Day At A Time", with Eminem remixing and adding his own verse as well as Pac's side-group Outlawz. The rework, subtitled "Em's Version", climbed to #80 on the Hot 100, #51 on the R&B Singles chart, and #22 on the Rap Songs list.

 

In 2004, a live album came out from Pac's old label Death Row, which hit #54 on the Billboard 200 and #16 on the R&B Albums list. That was followed later that year by yet another digging up bones album release on Interscope/Amaru, Loyal To The Game, which went to #1 on both those charts and sold over a million copies. But in America, the single pulled from the set, "Thugs Get Lonely Too" featuring Nate Dogg, only went to #55 on the R&B Singles chart and slipped on to the Hot 100 at #98. But overseas, it was a different story, where the left-field pairing of the late rapper with Elton John on "Ghetto Gospel", courtesy of producer Eminem sampling John's "Indian Sunset", ended up topping the singles charts in the UK, Ireland, and Australia.

2Pac's last (so-far) posthumous studio release as an album, Pac's Life, came out in 2006, and came in at #9 on the Billboard 200 and #3 on the R&B Albums list. Two songs from the set made Billboard's R&B Singles chart, "Untouchable" with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony at #91 and "Pac's Life" with rapper T.I. and singer Ashanti at #81, with the pair "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #111 and #119 respectively.

 

At the beginning of this year, another film about the late rapper, Dear Mama, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Music Film, losing to the excellent piece about David Bowie, Moonage Daydream. 

(5/10)

Up tomorrow: Another singer from the Christian music world slips into the mainstream with a rhetorical question.