Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z
Following a kick ass performance in Ernest Dickerson’s ‘Juice’, some playa-hation from the then vice president Dan Quayle over ‘violent lyrics’ and catching heat for allegedly beating down his limo driver outside the set of Saturday Night Live, Pac released the sophomore strictly for my NiggAZ ('Never Ignorant Gettin' Goals Accomplished').
In a nutshell, this is nice album scattered with some serious works of genius – both lyrically and musically. ‘Holler if you hear me’ starts ‘Strictly for ‘of’ on a nice up beat tempo, and the album just flows beautifully for the next 5 tracks. After ‘Holler….’, we are hit with the powerful ‘Pac’s theme’ which serves as an interlude to the beautiful ‘Point the Finger’ and the extremely poetic and positive ‘Something to die for’.
As with all of 2pac’s album’s the contradictions and the complexities of this man’s psyche and messages are rife in Strictly for my Niggaz. ‘Something to die for’ and ‘ point the finger’ are extremely conscious songs that show Pac’s love of life and anger towards those hinder the rise of a black (wo)man., however, the socially conscious theme of the album comes to a temporary halt on the testosterone driven ‘Last Wordz’ featuring an Ice Cube in his Prime and Ice-T, as per usual, holding it down and spitting game like a true O.G.
‘Guess who’s back’ breathes life into the second part of the disc and again, Pac laces us with a string of classic (often duplicated and never imitated) concept songs. Papaz Song which speaks of 2pac’s pains of growing up in a single parent household is solid, however, the most noticeable ‘concept’ track is ‘Keep Your Head up’, a classic song which speaks for itself and exhibits one of the best pieces of poetry applied to a song - regardless of genre. Another winning song is Representing ’93 where in freestyle flow, Pac gives a shout out to almost everyone who was anyone in the hip-hop community in 1993. The one sad thing with hindsight is that almost 3 years later, some of the crews and individuals given props on 'Representin’' caught heat on some of 2Pac’s/ Makaveli’s Death Row Records.
‘On Strictly….’, 2Pac shoots and scores. He gives us, the listener a deeper insight into the goings on in his mind and one thing that will hit you from a listen is how intelligent and creative 2Pac was as an artist. Again, not out of bias, but out of an appreciation for a talented individual (Pac was 20 – 21 when he did this album) I would say pick this album up if you haven’t already. If you do have this album, isn’t it time that you placed it back in your heavy rotation list?