'Dear Mama' Lyrics Sold for $75,000: The Enduring Legacy of 2Pac's 'Me Against the World'

Handwritten lyric pages for 2Pac's "Dear Mama" sold at auction for $75,000 in 2017. One song, three decades on, still commands that price. It anchors "Me Against the World," the third studio album by 2Pac, released March 14, 1995 through Interscope and Out da Gutta Records, with distribution by Atlantic.

The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, selling 240,000 copies in its first week and holding the top spot for four straight weeks. It also topped the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, giving 2Pac his first #1 on both. Released while he served a prison sentence, it made him the first artist to top the chart in those circumstances, and it passed Bruce Springsteen's "Greatest Hits" as the best-selling album in the U.S. — a feat 2Pac took real pride in.

The numbers have kept climbing. The album has sold more than 3,500,000 copies in the U.S. and reached #20 in Canada. The Source called it "his best work by far," Select hailed it as perhaps the first hip hop blues album, RapReviews gave it a perfect 10, and Mojo counted it among the five best rap albums ever. It earned Grammy nominations for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Solo Performance for "Dear Mama," and won Best Rap Album at the 1996 Soul Train Music Awards. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and NARM ranked it #170 on their Definitive 200; Complex placed it #23 among the best rap albums of the '90s. Even 2Pac's virtual appearance at Coachella in 2012 lifted weekly sales by 53%.

Recorded between September 1993 and November 1994 across 10 studios in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Burbank and New York City, the record featured production from mentor Shock G, Easy Mo Bee, Tony Pizarro, Johnny "J" and the Danish duo Soulshock & Karlin, with guest spots from Dramacydal and Richie Rich.

Where did "Temptations" come from?

The idea took shape in late 1993, when Easy Mo Bee met 2Pac on the set of "Above the Rim" at New York's Rucker Park. 2Pac chose Zapp's "Computer Love," asking Mo Bee to speed it up and filter out the bassline. Mo Bee added beats and synths, a "Hey" chant from Redman and Erick Sermon's "Watch Yo Nuggets," and pieces of Sly & the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song." Sermon and Mo Bee sang background vocals themselves.

With 2Pac unavailable, director David Nelson filled the "Temptations" video at the Hotel Alexandria with friends: Coolio as a bellboy, plus Isaac Hayes, Warren G, B-Real, Treach, Salt-N-Pepa, Shock G, Jada Pinkett Smith, Adina Howard, Taye Diggs, Kenya Moore and more. Ice-T took the concierge role after a comedian cancelled at the last minute. Nelson called it a "strange blessing." Executive producer Yvette Lang described the shoot as one big party.

What makes "Dear Mama" historic?

2Pac wrote it for his mother, Afeni Shakur, a former Black Panther, honoring mothers who hold families together through hard times. Tony Pizarro built the beat from Joe Sample's "In All My Wildest Dreams," with an interpolation of the Spinners' "Sadie." 2Pac said he wanted it to touch listeners the way Don McLean's "Vincent" touched him; the first person he called on finishing it was Jada Pinkett Smith. The song hit #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 — his first Top 10 — spent five weeks at #1 on Hot Rap Singles, reached #4 in New Zealand and went triple Platinum.

In 2009, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry, the first hip hop recording by a solo artist to earn that honor. Eminem, Common and Kendrick Lamar have all cited it as a major influence.

Shock G produced "So Many Tears" around Stevie Wonder's "That Girl," slowing Wonder's harmonica solo beneath the chorus, with background vocals from Digital Underground, Thug Life and Stretch. Recorded September 22, 1994 at Soundcastle Studios in Los Angeles, it reached #6 on Hot Rap Singles. 2Pac performed it on "Saturday Night Live" on February 17, 1996.

The title track, produced by Soulshock & Karlin with Dramacydal, sampled Minnie Riperton's "Inside My Love" and Isaac Hayes' version of Bacharach and David's "Walk On By," and appeared in "Bad Boys" in April 1995. Amaru Entertainment, the label owned by Afeni Shakur, later reissued the album twice.

With auction prices, Library of Congress recognition and a catalog of imitators-influencers from Eminem to Lamar, "Me Against the World" remains the measure of 2Pac at his most open — and the standard later rap albums still answer to.