"So Much Pain": Ja Rule Re-Records Tupac's Song with His Original Vocals

On October 2, 2001, Murder Inc. and Def Jam released Ja Rule’s third album, Pain Is Love. The title itself references Tupac, and he can be heard on the penultimate track: So Much Pain is a remake of his song Pain, in which Ja Rule duets with Tupac’s original vocals.

A Song Hardly Anyone Knew

Billboard quoted Ja Rule a few days before the release. He said he had made the recording “right after Pac died.” Many had never heard the original because on the soundtrack to Above the Rim, it was only included on the cassette version. For him, it was one of Tupac’s best tracks.

No. 1 and Mixed Reviews

The album sold 361,000 copies in its first week according to SoundScan and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, as Billboard reported on October 11. Critics saw Tupac’s influence all over the record. Nathan Rabin wrote in The A.V. Club that Tupac’s ghost hovered over every element, but that his appearance itself was rather routine. Yet precisely this demonstrated the distance between the original and the imitator. Billboard, by contrast, counted So Much Pain among the tracks with a message for life.