No More Pain

Late 1995 at Can-Am Studios in Tarzana: Tupac is recording a double album in a few weeks, almost entirely with Death Row’s house team. For one track, though, he brings in a producer from the other side of the country, DeVante Swing, the head of the R&B group Jodeci. The hook he borrows from Method Man of New York’s Wu-Tang Clan.

No More Pain is the seventh track on All Eyez on Me, and at just over six minutes one of the longest on the record. It is a song about revenge and invulnerability, built from East Coast ingredients, on a thoroughly Californian album.

A guest from the R&B world

DeVante Swing, born in 1969 in Hampton, Virginia, was the songwriter and producer of Jodeci, the R&B group he founded with his brother Dalvin and the brothers K-Ci and JoJo Hailey. With his collective Swing Mob he had gathered young talent such as Timbaland and Missy Elliott around him. For All Eyez on Me he produced this one track.

The Jodeci connection runs through the album. K-Ci & JoJo sing on How Do U Want It, which later went to number one.

A hook from the Wu-Tang camp

The template for the hook comes from Bring the Pain, the first single from Method Man’s debut Tical. Released on October 25, 1994 and produced by RZA, it reached No. 45 on the Hot 100 and No. 4 on the rap chart. Because Tupac took the line over in his own version, interpolating rather than sampling it, Method Man and RZA are credited as co-writers.

Method Man can also be heard on the album himself: with Redman he raps on Got My Mind Made Up. In the middle of the East-West feud, that was a sign that Tupac’s hostility was aimed at Bad Boy and not at New York as a whole (Method Man, East vs. West).

Threats, fame and mortality

In substance, the song is a declaration of war. Tupac mocks rivals, threatens retaliation and presents himself as someone who survives every blow. Fame, money and a legacy that outlasts him blend with thoughts of his own death. Death Row, Thug Life and the Westside appear as reference points; he shouts out DeVante at the beginning and the end.

The hook promises pain and at the same time an escape into another sphere. That is how an analysis on the lyrics portal Lyreka describes it. In the verses, the narrator finds no peace.

No single, but not forgotten

No More Pain was never released as a single, and there is no RIAA certification. Death Row put the track on the 2005 compilation The Prophet Returns; more under Archive albums. On the four-LP 30th anniversary set in 2026 it opens side C, in the same running order as on the 1996 CD (30th Anniversary Edition).

On streaming it has earned a firm place. By October 21, 2026, kworb.net counted around 43.1 million Spotify plays.

A producer from the R&B world, a hook from New York, a rapper from California: on paper, little fit together. On the record, it sounds of a piece.