Tupac: Until the End of Time

Tupac Shakur is not dead! He is living on a island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with Elvis and Biggie Smalls where he continues to make albums. I would venture to say that is true, if not for the latest posthumous release from the prolific and successful M.C. Until the End of Time, two discs of "new" material, is lackluster at best.\nTime, which is the fourth album released since Tupac died Sept. 13, 1996, is hardly a collection of unreleased work. Instead, the producers took lyrical content that had yet to be released, put some new beats behind it and found several names to add their lyrical input to the album. Tracks such as "Breathin," "All Out" and "U Don't Have 2 Worry" feature The Outlawz, a group Tupac worked with before his death. Other guests include Left Eye (from TLC), KCi & JoJo and Richard Page. Considering that eight tracks feature The Outlawz and 17 of the 29 tracks feature one guest or another, calling this album a solo project would be incorrect.\n"Ballad of a Dead Soulja" kicks things off in classic Tupac fashion. One of the few true solo tracks, Tupac raps over a stripped-down beat. "Fuck Friends" follows, and while not as strong, stays true to Tupac as well as possible considering he wasn't involved in the final album making process.\nNot until "Let Em Have It," featuring SKG, does the album really start to slide. Not only is the beat obnoxious and repetitive, but SKG lacks in vocal talent. The reason that Tupac songs featuring Snoop Dogg tracks were so successful was the simple fact that Snoop can rap, SKG cannot.\nFor all the conspiracy theorists, there's plenty of new material on Time to feed the fire. Continuous references of death by shooting pervade the entire album. But then again, would Tupac really let an album of this poor quality hit the market?\nIt's like "Jurassic Park," where the engineers take DNA left over from extinct beings and then fill the holes with frog DNA. While Time isn't likely to start eating people, it did top the Billboard charts, so it is potentially dangerous.