I don't know what exactly went on behind the scenes that resulted in Eminem getting the job of producing the 6th posthumous 2Pac album. The liner notes contain statements by both Afeni Shakur & Em himself about how it's all done for the love, for the sake of Pac's spirit, without desire for remuneration, & otherwise for the best possible reasons. I have no doubt that this is partially true, but I also have no doubt that Eminem being the best-selling rap artist at the time, & everything associated with his name turning to commercial gold, also had something to do with it. There's nothing wrong with these circumstances in theory; the problem is that Eminem's production style is ill-suited to Tupac's acapellas. Listen Marshall, I don't care how much Pac influenced you, or how much you wish you had been able to meet & collaborate with him while he was alive, the fact is that your styles just don't work together. The result is little more than a failed experiment & the least essential entry in an already-marginal posthumous catalogue.
I have major reservations about the ethics of posthumous albums in general, but if you absolutely must release one, there are 3 approaches you can take: (1) take the archival approach & release the original recordings, hewing as close as possible to what might have been the deceased artist's original intention; (2) hire producers whose styles match the artist's, preferably producers they collaborated with while alive (like DJ Quik whose title song remix is the highlight here, despite being a bonus track); or (3) make some beats & do whatever it takes to squeeze the vocals around them, integrity be damned. That's how we get the sped-up vocals on tracks like the Elton John-sampling "Ghetto Gospel" & especially "Crooked N***a Too," where Pac sounds almost unrecognizable. It's not quite chipmunk levels, but it doesn't sound like Tupac either. It's this sort of thing that makes it obvious that the whole thing was a vanity project for Eminem, albeit one that he was able to convince Afeni he was doing for altruistic reasons. Why else would he put his own nasal warble on the hook to the opening track "Soldier Like Me"? Eminem is a lot of things, but he's not a singer. There's also the necromantic puppetry of chopping up vocal samples to make Pac appear to say things like "G-Unit in this muthafucka" & "drop that shit, Em!" Save that shit for the mixtape--sticking your hand up a dead man's ass & making him say your name on something branded as an official 2Pac release is distasteful & pathetic.
It doesn't matter what you think about Eminem as a beatmaker (I happen to think he catches lightning in a bottle every once in a while, like "Patiently Waiting" or Nas's "The Cross"), but it's difficult to argue with the fact that his style & Pac's are almost diametrically opposed. Eminem's sparse, skeletal beats with oddly syncopated accents complement a rapper with a rhythmically precise, busy flow like his own. 2Pac, on the other hand, leaves a lot of space in his bars, relying on interplay with a thickly-textured, funky instrumental. The 2 approaches only really come together on the title track, of which the best thing you can say it that it is unoffensive, at least until Lloyd Banks steps in & saves the whole song. Luckily, the album ends on its highest note, the DJ Quik remix of "Loyal to the Game," which uses a much slower tempo & Quik's trademark percussion & clean sine-wave synths. Quik himself also spits a contender for best verse on the whole album. Hey--any chance we can get a full 2Pac remix album by Quik?
As I said above, the only way this album makes sense is as a vanity project for Eminem. These songs remained unreleased this long for a reason. Pac isn't saying anything particularly novel or exciting here, but if they had just released the original mixes, it would at least have some integrity as a 2Pac project. Instead, we get a literal Frankenstein's monster of an album: dead parts chopped up, recombined & reanimated into something misshapen, lurching around at the behest of an egomaniacal mad scientist.
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