"He (Tupac) was so smart and insightful," said Nina Hartley in 2012. “He contacted me and he wanted me to be in his video,” Hunter would recall years later. The explicit version of the video featured famed adult actresses like Nina Harley, Heather Hunter and Angel Kelly. Well, depending on which version you happen to be discussing at any given moment. And the video would also become one of Pac's most infamous.
Tapping Jodeci's lead singers K-Ci and Jo-Jo just before that group's dissolution and their subsequent solo success, producer Johnny J gives Pac one of his slickest tracks. Paired as a double-A side with "California Love," the songs would top the charts in early 1996. "How Do U Want It" would become one of Pac's most successful singles. And evidence that the results were usually impressive including this song's famously scrapped Inspectah Deck verse. Proof that Wu always collaborated with people outside of that hardcore East Coast "purist" world. At the height of so-called East/West friction, this was a cross-regional collab that never sounds forced. But "Got My Mind Made Up" is a different beast entirely Redman and Method Man were always down to work with anybody who was dope. The Nate Dogg-assisted "All About U" feels like a 2Pac-is-on-Death-Row G-Funk pronouncement. "Scandalouz" has a similar feel, with the slow-rolling production finding Pac firmly in his element with the slickness of his newfound digs at Death Row. But it was an announcement that Pac was back and, for his enemies, worse than before.
The album opens with "Ambitionz Az A Ridah," one of the best album openers in Hip-Hop history, the song sounds like his middle finger. Coming on the heels of the "pensive, introspective" Tupac Shakur that had seemingly emerged circa Me Against The World, this was a sharp left turn to some listeners.
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