Too Short worked with Tupac Shakur often throughout his career, so there are few that witnessed the greatness of his pen and performance prowess. Moreover, he recently spoke to HipHopDX at the OneMusic Fest in Atlanta last month about 'Pac's writing process. According to the Bay Area native, he had a unique skill of barely having to prepare before going into the booth and spitting a killer verse. Such praise also falls on rappers like Jay-Z, who are well-known for their off-top freestyles that end up being studio quality. But with Death Row's leading star, Short maintains, there was just a special fire.
"I know you’ve heard from a million people about Tupac, man," Too Short began his praise. "He wrote rhymes as fast as he could write words. Like, I write a rhyme- I think about it, write it down. Think about it, write something that rhyme with it. Think about it, you know, I’m writing a story, telling something, and I’m writing. But he just goes [mimics writing on paper] and he’ll go, ‘Alright, I’m ready to go in the booth.’ Like what? He can’t be ready. And it’s just dope as f**k. So I don’t how his mind was working to be able to make such prolific statements in a rhyme and then go in and put a pattern to it. And it really wasn’t like he was going in the booth and f***ing up. He’d just go in there and spit it.
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Too Short Recalls Tupac's Writing Skills: Watch
"So I don’t know, some people have the gift, you know?" Too Short continued. "I saw my man Erick Sermon so many times like put on the beat, the beat bumping and he like, ‘Let me in the booth.’ Like you ain’t got a pen, paper, nothing. And he’d get in there and say some funky-a** s**t and I’m like, he just got it. Some people just got it." Earlier this year, he shared another story of his relationship with Tupac to the 85 South Show. "I’ve been platinum before most n***as,” the 57-year-old recalled. “Shock G was the leader of Digital Underground, but Tupac was the little homie in the crew. But Tupac started coming of age and I looked at him, I liked the n***a. But I’m an East Oakland n***a, right?
"And I seen him, he used to always keep his little thing, he was not a punk," he concluded. "He was ready for whatever. He was a real one. But I was like, ‘I cannot bring this n***a around my homies ‘cause it’s going to be like oil and fire.’ When Tupac got to L.A., he went 10,000 mph. I knew it! I was like, ‘I cannot bring this n***a around my homies.’ So I literally made a conscious effort to not ever bring Tupac to- he found his way to Richie Rich; he gave ‘Pac the town. I said I wouldn’t do it ‘cause I wouldn’t want that guilt. I can’t bring ’em around them n***as ‘cause the kind of n***as I was running with the time, they would have been like, ‘Oh you wanna be a G? Come on n-gga, let’s go be a G.’" For more news and updates on Tupac and Too Short, log back into HNHH.
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