Me Against the World by 2Pac

Me Against the World, 2Pac's third album, came out on Interscope on March 14, 1995, while he was in prison, and it's the sound of a rapper turning the camera on himself. He set out to make it more personal and reflective than anything before it, and the looming sentence, run-ins with police and memories of poverty fill the rhymes with dread and hard-won tenderness.

The beats, from Easy Mo Bee, Tony Pizarro, Johnny "J", the Danish team Soulshock and Karlin and his mentor Shock G among others, are smooth and mournful rather than menacing, leaving him room to brood. "Dear Mama" was the first single and the biggest, and the title track digs in with clenched-fist defiance. The record debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and held it for four weeks, topped the R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart, went double platinum and earned a Grammy nod for Best Rap Album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.