Better Dayz Appreciation + Question about Song Selection

[adi760]

Thugz Mansion charted 19 on Hot200 so they did well job makin it a single.

[Hack Wilson - real]

I agree with pretty much everything.

Late Night and Who Do U Believe In were easy to release in OG form, since they had already appeared on Chronic 2000.

I think it was the booklet for UTEOT where Afeni's "note" said it was the first of two albums from Pac's Makaveli era (with BD obviously being the second) that they were putting out.

BD could've been big, but at that point, Amaru wasn't really trying very hard with marketing, and they pretty much only put out one single, and it was a poor choice at that. There were plenty of songs that could've been street singles.

Interesting about that note in the UTEOT booklet. I forgot about that.

To me, UTEOT seems like more of a mixture of AEOM songs with Makaveli songs, whereas Better Dayz is more of a pure Makaveli album.

On UTEOT, there are a bunch of songs I associate with AEOM sessions: Letter 2 My Unborn, Happy Home, Good Life, UTEOT, M.O.B., and When I Get Free. Maybe I'm wrong for thinking of these as belonging to Pac's earlier period on DR. At least half of the tracks on UTEOT, though, are definitely from the Makaveli era (Niggaz Nature, Friendz, When Thugz Cry, etc.)

Better Day had some AEOM songs too


Late night, changed man, still ballin, and probably a few others

[DeeezNuuuts83]

I think Changed Man and Still Ballin may have been from after the AEOM sessions.

[MOBNigga06]

I think Changed Man and Still Ballin may have been from after the AEOM sessions.

Yeah I think Still Ballin was recorded for One Nation, or was at least included in some One Nation trackless.

Pac was working with Kurupt throughout his time at Death Row, so it's hard to tell.

As for Changed Man, the constant reference to M.O.B. life suggests post-AEOM, while the presence of Syke suggests pre-Makaveli. Probably it's from the period between them. 

[MOBNigga06]

Yeah the marketing of Amaru has been really stupid.

When you have the biggest artist in the history of rap, it's not difficult to make a commercially successful single out of his work.

Take Happy Home for example: you could turn this song into a major hit. Put Jon B or some major (at the time) RnB singer on the chorus. Make a video with actors, splice in footage from Tupac's movies (like Poetic Justice), and it would have been impossible to for it to fail.

Still Ballin and Late Night could also have been major singles.

Doing a video for the shitty version of Thugz Mansion was a terrible move and a perfect reflection of the priorities of Amaru. Pick the most angelic song as the single for an album full of songs about riding on your enemies and fucking bitches.

The funny thing is, Jon B did that, but on his own:

I had that song in mind, actually. It's a pretty nice song and it illustrates how easily Amaru could have done more with the Pac material.

Give Jon B's "Part 2" a nice narrative video with the actor from I Aint Mad At Cha and some sexy girl, splice in footage of Pac, etc., it would have been huge.

The real shame about Amaru's mismanagement is that Pac could be even bigger today if more had been done with a few of his songs. Pac would have even more fans today if they had played their cards right.