Eminem pays tribute to Tupac in an essay for Paper magazine

Eminem was a young adult when he first heard Tupac on Digital Underground’s “I Get Around”. He went looking for Tupac’s first album, 2Pacalypse Now, and became a lifelong fan. He describes this in a personal essay that ran in the October 2015 issue of Paper magazine.

Songs with meaning

Tupac went further than many rappers of his time, Eminem writes: he put feeling into words and music. The way he placed words on particular points of the beat was genius. “Whatever he was rapping about, it was urgent,” the essay continues.

A sad song would make you cry, and there were many other sides: angry, militant, having a good time. On Me Against the World especially, you felt every aspect of his pain. Tupac was the first rapper who taught him how to write songs with meaning.

The issue hit newsstands on October 20. Eminem’s piece ran alongside other tributes: Kendrick Lamar wrote about Eazy-E, Swizz Beatz about the Notorious B.I.G.