“Out on bail, fresh out of jail” will forever be the maxim to Tupac Shakur’s double-disc classic, All Eyez On Me. It’s not just a reflection of the legal situation he was in at the time, but also a glance at what ignited the relentlessness behind his fierce two-disc set and the last to be released during his lifetime.
Released less than a year after his acclaimed Me Against the World LP and four months after Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight and Interscope Co-Founder Jimmy Iovine bailed him out of prison after serving nine months for a sexual assault conviction, All Eyez on Me was hip-hop’s first double album ever released as a single, combined package.
The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death and the Wu-Tang Clan’s Wu-Tang Forever would follow soon thereafter, but All Eyez on Me unquestionably established the blueprint for the hip-hop double LP.
The album, which features “California Love (Remix),” “How Do U Want It,” “Life Goes On” and “2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” among other hits, has gone 10 times platinum 24 years after its initial release and has earned diamond certification, according to the RIAA.
All Eyez on Me was the second album by 2Pac to chart at number one on both the Billboard 200 and the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts, selling 566,000 copies in the first week. The album won the 1997 Soul Train R&B/Soul or Rap Album of the Year Award posthumously.
Listen to All Eyez On Me down below.