Ultimately quintupling the sales of its predecessor, All Eyez On Me was a watershed in hip-hop history and elevated 2Pac from an outstanding west coast rapper to a veritable hip-hop institution. Just five months after his release from prison, he released the first hip-hop double album- legally regarded as two individual releases- All Eyez On Me. Emerging from an eight-month hiatus, 2Pac had plenty of material to get him started he reportedly hit the studio within hours of his release, completing fully twenty-seven song in a mere two weeks. Speculation on just how bad the deal was for the rapper is as badly informed today as it was a decade ago, but it’s safe to say that he was at least organising his release schedule to fulfil the contract as soon as possible. In return, he required 2Pac release three albums on his Death Row label- he even offered to take a larger than usual stake in the rights. Knight, co-founder of the soon-to-be hip-hop empire Death Row Records, used his unique powers of persuasion to lobby for Shakur’s release, raising the $1.4 million bail himself. Shakur was, in late 1995, serving the first of four years in prison for an alleged sexual assault when Knight offered to engineer his release in September of that year, Shakur was essentially prepared to submit to any agreement. Indeed, this was less a thuggish alliance than the rash submission of a desperate man, and the exact details of the deal the two struck (or rather the deal Suge dictated) are still unclear.
It was an association that was fated to end in tears: ‘Sugar Bear’ Knight (commonly known by the more sexually-innocuous moniker ‘Suge’), the label head who once dangled Vanilla Ice from a twentieth-story balcony in order to secure the rights to 'Ice Ice Baby,' and international badass rapper Tupac Shakur.
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