All Eyez on Me (Tupac Shakur song)

In a sample of an earlier interview, later published after his death by XXL in 2015, Johnny "J" talked about connecting with 2Pac on the track:

That was the very first track I laid when we got together at Death Row. When he just got out of jail, just got released, two days later he's like, "'J', get to the studio, I'm with Death Row now." I assumed it was a joke, somebody perpetrating Tupac. I'm like "Hell no – 'Pac is locked up!" He's like "J, I'm out" I walk in, 15 minutes into the session, the first beat I put in the drum machine is "All Eyez On Me." I wasn't going to show him the track, honestly. I was like, "This track? Nah, it's not finished. It's incomplete." My wife says, "Hey, it's a dope beat!" So I just pop it in, titles just come right off his fuckin' head.^[2]

In the song, 2Pac raps about his paranoia and feeling he is under surveillance by the police and rival gangsters,^[3] as well as being willing to live the life as a "thug nigga" and "boss player".^[4] The song contains a sample of Linda Clifford's "Never Gonna Stop", originally recorded by Exile.^[5]

Roger Morton of NME cited "All Eyez on Me" as one of the songs from All Eyez on Me which he described as "superbly unsettling, unprecedented renderings of the fear-soaked, hardcore-G mentality."^[6]