Nu-mixx Klazzics

Poor 2Pac. Since his unfortunate passing away in 1996, his catalog was pillaged annually. Every holiday season brought with it another posthumous release, often courtesy of Suge Knight or 2Pac's own mama, Afeni Shakur. Sure, it was fascinating to hear all the unreleased recordings the rapper left behind as his legacy, and a few gems like "Thugz Mansion" and "Until the End of Time" surfaced; however, these posthumous releases were generally disappointing when you considered what could have been. Suge and Afeni were good at marketing 2Pac's posthumous catalog, no doubt, but they certainly weren't Dr. Dre -- put frankly, they were terrible music-makers, marring otherwise brilliant vocal tracks with outsourced second-rate production. As a result, none of the numerous posthumous albums even approached the quality of those 2Pac made while alive, not even by a long shot. These posthumous productions actually did 2Pac's legacy a disservice, muddling his once solid catalog with an abundance of crap. This unfortunate reality became all the more apparent with the release of Nu-Mixx Klazzics, surely the most frivolous posthumous release to date. Here Suge and his Row Hitters remix ten previously released 2Pac songs, most of which are culled from All Eyez on Me. While this is a plausible idea, it's fumbled here as these "nu-mixxes" are downright dreadful. The vocals of canonical songs like "How Do You Want It" and "Ambitionz az a Ridah" are pasted, as is, over B-grade beats. In fact, make that C-grade -- tha Row Hitters sound more like a middle-of-the-road smooth jazz band with a drum machine than credible gangsta rap producers. Even the harder-hitting tracks like "Hail Mary" and "Hit 'Em Up" sound feeble. It's quite startling, really, how ruinous these remixes are. You have to wonder whether Suge just has bad taste or just doesn't care. Either way, Nu-Mixx Klazzics is pure opportunism -- a brief, unimaginative release intended to cheaply capitalize on 2Pac's continued popularity, especially in the lead up to the highly anticipated Tupac: Resurrection film. Nonessential in every sense of the word.
© Jason Birchmeier /TiVo