Loyal to the Game

During an interview with MTV, Eminem stated he was so moved by Tupac's life and work that he wrote a letter to Tupac's mother, Afeni Shakur, asking her to consider letting him produce his next album. Shakur agreed, allowing Eminem to produce three new songs for the 2003 soundtrack album, Tupac: Resurrection, and the entirety of Loyal to the Game, bar bonus content.^[5]

All songs on the album were recorded prior to Tupac's involvement in the controversial East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry, serving as the second posthumous album released consisting of material from this time period, the first being 1997's R U Still Down? (Remember Me). Although the songs are mostly unreleased, the title track, "Loyal to the Game", was previously released on the cassette edition of the 1994 soundtrack album Above the Rim, and subsequently as the B-side to the album's lead single, "Regulate".

The album featured two singles: "Thugs Get Lonely Too", which served as a promotional single for the album, and "Ghetto Gospel", which served as the lead single.^[6] The album has a version of "Ghetto Gospel" with a much faster tempo and contains a third and fourth verse which did not appear in Eminem's remix.^[7][8]

Loyal to the Game marks the only posthumous Tupac album not to feature any original production. When remixing these songs, Eminem used various unusual production techniques, namely, modifying the pace and pitch of Tupac's voice to better suit the instrumentals he produced. The style of the production on the album fitted more to the form of a Shady/Aftermath release, of which Eminem partly created, than it did to any original or previous posthumous Tupac release.^[9] There were also various uses of cutting and pasting vocals to produce new words synonymous with rap culture at that time, such as making it sound as though Tupac is saying, "2005", "G-Unit", "Obie Trice" and "Em".^[9]

The album includes four bonus remixes by Scott Storch, Red Spyda, Raphael Saadiq, and DJ Quik.

Loyal to the Game debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week-sales of over 330,000 copies in its first week.^[3] On February 15, 2005, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over a million copies in the US.^[4] As of September 2011, the album has sold 1,204,124 copies in the United States.^[19]

Sample credits

• "Ghetto Gospel" contains a sample of "Indian Sunset" performed by Elton John.
• "Don't You Trust Me?" contains a sample of "Do You Have a Little Time" performed by Dido.
• "N.I.G.G.A." contains a sample of "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go" performed by Curtis Mayfield.

Notes

• Originally, "Out on Bail" was intended for an unreleased version of Thug Life: Volume 1 but due to controversial reasons, the original version did not make the final cut and was remixed after Eminem went on board. The original version can be found on YouTube.

“Judgement Day” (Soldier Like Me) featuring Stretch, Mopreme Shakur & Sister Soulja.

”The Uppercut” information unknown.

“Out On Bail” was meant to be released on Thug Life Vol. 1.

“Ghetto Gospel” 2 Versions of the song, one was Remixed and the other version has 4 Pac verses.

“Black Cotton” featuring Mouse Man.

“Loyal 2 The Game” featuring Treach & The Riddler.

“Thugs Get Lonely Too” a version of the original song was featured Tech N9ne and was meant for the R U Still Down (Remember Me).

“N.I.G.G.A.” featuring Mopreme Shakur & Mouse Man.

“Who Do U Love” fearuring Stretch.

“Crooked Nigga Too” featuring Stretch

“Don’t U Trust Me”.

“Hennessey” featuring Mopreme Shakur & Big Syke.

“Thug 4 Life” featuring Stretch.

Most of the songs are available on YouTube