News of September 22, 1997
"Static": An Early Oakland Recording Set for Release
Recorded in Oakland in 1991 with Digital Underground's Chopmaster J: in September 1997, MTV announced an early, political Tupac bonus track.
Along with the major posthumous releases, recordings from Tupac’s early days also surfaced in 1997. On September 22, MTV News reported that the song Static was scheduled for release in October. Tupac had recorded it in 1991 with Chopmaster J, a co-founder of Digital Underground, while he was still living in Oakland.
Political Like Public Enemy
The song was considered political, in the style of the influential group Public Enemy. Chopmaster J planned to release it in early October as a bonus track on his new project, the album Soul Network Project 2, which was set to appear under the name Now Force One Network.
How Tupac’s mother transferred her son’s archive into her own label a few weeks later is detailed in the report on the founding of Amaru.