Shortly after
2Pac
died, there were rumors that hundreds of unreleased songs remained in the vaults; a mere two months after his death, the first posthumous record,
The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory
, appeared.
Death Row
released the record, and shortly afterward,
's mother,
Afeni Shakur
, gained the rights to all of his unreleased recordings from both the
Interscope
and
labels. She founded the
Amaru
label and released the double-disc
R U Still Down? (Remember Me)
in late 1997. Culled from
's unreleased
recordings between 1992 and 1994, including several tracks that have had backing musical tracks "reconstructed,"
R U Still Down?
doesn't have the aura of exploitation that haunts the
Makaveli
album, but it isn't much better, either. For the most part,
Shakur
sounds good, spinning out rhymes that are alternately clever or startling, but he eventually begins repeating himself and running out of ideas. That's much better than the music itself, which is pretty much standard-issue
gangsta rap
that never deviates from the course. There are enough hidden gems to make it worthwhile for hardcore
fans, but it doesn't necessarily bode well for the
label's series of unreleased recordings. If this mediocre mess is the top of the heap, they'll truly be hurting for strong material once they reach the bottom of the allegedly hundreds of unreleased
recordings. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine