Yo Mo Bee mayneeeee drop that s***! You know what time it is...

welcome back to the 90s threads, my fellow KTTers. This one will be focusing on another big name, arguably the biggest: Tupac.

Now while Pac was in jail in 94 and 95 he was deep in thought about everything in his life. He was thinking about how black people get treated, why things are the way they are and where these feelings towards blacks came from, what society as a whole can do to change these things etc... He also talked about jail life and what it does to black men, how he has no real friends because he doesn't trust anybody and how he's trying to escape the "Thug life". You can hear more in this interview, while he was in prison:

Watching this interview and knowing what he became when he came out of jail is wild tbh. Nothing like the Thug Life persona that came out when he signed with Death Row. It's like there are 2 sides of Pac: the conscious side and the thug side. The Thug side is well documented, and got him killed. But what happened to the conscious side? Pac put that side of him on the back burner, other than a handful of songs, to focus on the Thug Life style Death Row was living. But what would Pac had done after his Death Row contract was up? He rushed through a double album and Makaveli to complete his 3 album obligation with Death Row. So what was next?

In 1996, Pac was quietly working on an album called "One Nation". This album was going to be a group project, lead by Pac, that would unite the coasts. East, West, South and North all on one project; making music together. Peacefully. There have always been rumors about this project, but there was never much evidence that it was ever coming out. The evidence we do have? Some brief snippets, studio footage, interviews by Pac associates where they talk about the project, and a hand written letter by Pac:

In this letter Pac talks about how he's tearing Biggie a new ass(lol), how much records he sold and....that he's working on a new project called "One Nation". As he describes it, its a "...group album with me, Greg Nice, Buckshot, Smiff & Wesson, Outkast, The Outlawz, Scarface & E-40. It'll be out in the late summer."

The idea started when Pac and the Outlawz wanted to make it clear that he still had love for NY and the East Coast. At the time, the beef with Bad Boy was huge and he was public enemy #1 on that side. So he wanted to smooth things out and work with NY rappers. No NY rapper wanted to work with him, in fear of upsetting the Bad Boy crew. So Pac and his crew went after unsigned NY artist: Book Camp Clik. Since they were unsigned, they wouldn't offend Bad Boy--this was the thinking of Pac and his crew:

"Whoever we reached out about One Nation felt conflicted because they didn’t want to disrespect Biggie and Bad Boy. They had to be independent and self-sufficient in their own where they didn’t have to worry about offending nobody," E.D.I. recalls. "On top of that, we were fans of Boot Camp. We was bumping that at the time so it was like, let’s reach out to Buckshot and the whole Boot Camp, and specifically Smif-N-Wessun. 'Pac was like, 'Oh hell yeah. That’s a great idea. I f--k with them too.'"

Pac sent plane tickets for the crew and they came to LA to begin recording the album. According to Boot Camp Clik member, Buckshot, Pac and Snoop Dogg greeted them when they touched down in LA. And the aura/feeling in the studio when they began to work was magical. Pac had huge visions for this project:

"He was going to have volumes of One Nation," Dru Ha says. "The first one was going to be on Makaveli, which was his imprint. He was like, 'Yo, I’m going to have my label, Makaveli, do volume one,' and then he said, 'We’re going to put volume two on Duckdown.’”

Pac recruited Outkast, E-40 and others. He also was excited to include Nas; after Nas and him had made their peace right before Makaveli was to drop. According to Buckshot, the Boot Camp crew never worked with Pac after those initial sessions. Buckshot said that they ran into Pac in NY at an award show a few months later. And that Pac handed them a cassette tape with more songs from the album that they hadn't heard before. Tupac, of course, died that very year. Nobody really knows how much of the album was completed. Some say just 4 or 5 songs, some say up to 70% of the album was done. There was studio footage that has since been erased from the web. Tupac's family and the Outlawz are still cool and in contact with the Boot Camp Clik to this day. Either way, this project was probably going to be special. Buckshot sums it up well:

“It hurt me to know that eventually that whole thing with Biggie was going to die out. 'Pac was a real motherfucker man. Real n---as don’t hold grudges," says Buckshot. "I know we would’ve all moved on. It wouldn’t have been One Nation except for New York, One Nation except for Brooklyn, One Nation except for Biggie. It would’ve been One Nation, and it would’ve been all of us."

Articles talking about the project and one article that used to show videos of Pac recording for the album(notice how the videos have been deleted):

-billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7503695/tupac-shakur-one-nation-unreleased-album-story
-djbooth.net/features/2016-05-19-tupac-one-nation-album
-complex.com/music/2013/02/watch-tupac-record-bars-for-unreleased-one-nation-album?page=10

Buckshot VLAD interview where he talks about the project:

That's all for this edition. Check out the previous editions if you haven't yet.

1995 Source Awards-- ktt2.com/the-1995-source-awardsthe-most-electrifying-night-in-rap-history-119187
Dr. Dre Vaulted 90s Albums-- ktt2.com/lost-classicsvaulted-dre-projects-of-the-90s-119644
Underrated 90s Rap Beefs-- ktt2.com/beefunderrated-forgotten-rap-feuds-of-the-90s-120606
The Legendary Forgotten MC: The D.O.C-- ktt2.com/the-forgotten-legendary-mcthe-doc-121339
The Short Lived Prime of Snoop Doggy Dogg-- ktt2.com/dog-yearsthe-short-lived-prime-of-snoop-doggy-dogg-125294

Enjoy!

Bonus video of Big and Pac performing together in 93 and Big yelling "Thug life!"

Interesting stuff man, I’d always heard the rumors about the potential album trying to unite everyone but didn’t realize they were actually true.

Jeez that's some forward thinking s***

wish they finished lets fight that had a chance to be one of the hardest pac songs ever. the bounce was on some no limit s*** plus pacs verse in insane.

NATION.

Tldr pls @op

DAMN.

Pac on Organized Noize (especially in like 97-99) beats would have been crazy

Depressing to think it didn’t happen bc of dumb s***

Simply off the strength of having S&W collab with E40 and Outkast this would’ve been absolutely insane. This would’ve been an incredibly interesting mess at worst. And Nas involved too?? Jesus

I like to think this Scarface track off his album My Homies was originally planned for that One Nation album

Yo mo beee maynneeeee

Pac wanted to make an unifying hip hop album called One Nation with Outkast, E-40, Nas, Outlawz and many more from all over the country. Would've been the first in a series of albums.

Outkast and Pac

Bump for the night crowd

:​

RIP

Real hip hop historian hours

I feel like Pac could’ve been president one day lmao. So much charisma

If Pac were alive today he'd have collaborated with Carti

He would've been doing some big things, for sure

he doing what to Big

Jokes aside dope thread, very interesting