OUT OF JAIL--AND IDEAS

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

DESPITE HIS CONTROVERSIAL REPutation, Tupac Shakur was always an ambivalent gangsta, at least on record. His 1993 album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., included an anthem called Keep Ya Head Up that was chivalrously supportive of black women; on his last album, the confrontationally titled Me Against the World, he rapped a surprisingly tender tribute to his mother titled Dear Mama. Even as Shakur was being vilified in the mainstream press as a tough-talkin', gin-and-juice-drinkin' gangsta rapper, his songwriting was becoming increasingly intelligent and introspective.

Too bad the trend comes to a halt with the release of his ambitious new album, All Eyez on Me--the first double album in rap history. A year ago, Shakur was convicted of sexually abusing a female fan; now, thanks to recent court decisions that allowed him to be freed while he appeals his conviction, he's out on $1.4 million bail, and he's angrier than ever. As the title of his highly anticipated album brags, all eyes are indeed on him--and it's not a pretty sight.

Shakur seems to have decided that if people were going to criticize him for things he wasn't doing, if the justice system was going to convict him of a crime he claims he didn't commit, well, then, he was going to become the most dysfunctionally fearsome gangsta in America just to spite them all. In Wonda Why They Call U Bytch he offers up a dishearteningly crass justification for calling women cruel names. In Ambitionz az a Ridah he raps, conspiratorially, "Now these money-hungry bitches gettin' suspicious/ Started plottin' and plannin' on a scheme to come and twist us." Since his last album, Shakur has switched from Interscope to Death Row Records, home to controversy-courting rappers Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre, and in the song 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted Shakur engages in a boastful duet with Snoop that revels shamelessly but tellingly in their shared notoriety.

The songs on Me Against the World had a hard, gritty poetry. They felt confessional, intimate. In So Many Tears Shakur eulogized dead friends; in Can U Get Away he offered up a clever attack on domestic violence in the form of a love song. The lyrics on All Eyez on Me seem rushed, inchoate--we don't get a look at Shakur's wounded heart, just a peek at the scribblings in his notebook. Musically, he's also regressed. On the last CD the melodies were strong and tight, but while there are a few winning tunes on All Eyez on Me--including the soulful I Ain't Mad at Cha and the amiably defiant Only God Can Judge Me-- far too many of the songs sound like the typical drive-by hip-hop--big, smooth grooves and a lot of F words.

Shakur is fiercely talented. He has an ear for tough-but-sweet tunes, an ability to write colloquially eloquent lyrics, and a husky, passionate delivery when he raps. The white power structure he denounces so vehemently must enjoy seeing him squander his gifts reifying its stereotypes of blackness--that is, if the white power structure thinks about him much at all. By leaving the lockup for the world of gangsta rap, he's just entered another prison.

--By Christopher John Farley