Hit 'Em Up

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"Hit 'Em Up (featuring Tha Outlawz)"
Single by 2Pac
Recorded	1996 in Tokyo, Japan
Genre	West Coast hip hop Gangsta rap
Label	Death Row/Interscope
2Pac singles chronology
"How Do You Want It" (1996)	"Hit 'Em Up" (1996)	"All Bout U" (1996)

"Hit 'Em Up" is a song performed and written by Tupac Shakur and his rap group, Outlawz. It is known as a "diss song"; that is, a song which has the purpose of verbally assaulting and insulting a person or a group of people. It is widely regarded as a classic diss, and is the most well-known diss released by Shakur. This song samples Dennis Edwards's "Don't Look Any Further" and repeats "take money" in the background as satirical play on Junior M.A.F.I.A.'s "Get Money" .

Shakur aimed "Hit 'Em Up" at two other hip hop artists, The Notorious B.I.G. and Sean "Puffy" Combs. Shakur believed that they had advance knowledge that he would be shot and robbed in a November 30, 1994 incident in New York, but didn't warn him (and possibly even deliberately distracted him just prior).

A brutal diatribe, "Hit 'Em Up" was released on the "How Do U Want It" single in 1996. Besides Biggie and Puffy, Lil' Kim and Junior M.A.F.I.A., Chino XL, Mobb Deep and Bad Boy Records were also targeted. Originally, there was a line addressing Jay-Z in the rather lengthy outro, but Hussein Fatal of the Outlawz convinced Shakur that Jay-Z should not be attacked since he hadn't been aggressive to Shakur. The several seconds of silence of the outro before Shakur spouts, "Fuck you die slow motherfucker, my fo-fo make sure all y'all kids don't grow" was the part aimed at Jay-Z. This is verifiable by studio footage of Shakur.

[edit] Reception

Some people at the time felt that this song went 'too far', with Shakur's claim that he had slept with Notorious B.I.G.'s wife, Faith Evans, and the attack on Prodigy of Mobb Deep having sickle-cell. Many listeners and critics have also criticized it for further inciting violence in the 1990s East Coast-West Coast rap wars, citing it as a major escalation of the feud that would end in the murders of both Biggie and 2Pac. None of the criticism affected Shakur at all. He remarked that "Hit 'Em Up" was a "classic battle record." Shakur also later recorded "Hit 'Em Up II" and "Hit 'Em Up III".

Although few rappers from New York responded to the song, Biggie made a joking reference to Shakur's claims that he slept with his wife on the Jay-Z track "Brooklyn's Finest" from Reasonable Doubt, rapping, "If Faith had twins, she'd probably have two Pacs/ Get it? Tu...pac's."

The song is aimed at simply discrediting the Notorious B.I.G. and Bad Boy Records. XXL called it "The #1 diss song ever".

This song has been featured on two of Shakur's posthumous albums:

• Greatest Hits features the song.
• Nu-Mixx Klazzics features a remix of the song, with the intro lyrics from the originally explicit version and the main lyrics from the edited radio version.
• Live at the House of Blues features Hit Em Up, the concert was Tupac's last live performance, and the song was available on DVD and CD.

[edit] Other uses

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The song is often dedicated as a hate song to other people mostly perhaps by the most hated member in Internet forums. Often the most hated member posts the lyrics of the song for everyone to read, usually removing "Biggie" and other Bad Boy names, replacing them with the usernames of ones whom he or she hates. There are also many other variations of the song, one includes attacking the Republican Party by using George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as the subjects instead of Biggie and Mobb Deep.

In his feud with Everlast, Eminem utilized the same lyrical format and beat of "Hit 'Em Up" in the second part of his diss "Quitter". While the track starts with an ominous beat vaguely reminiscent of "The Way I Am"^{[citation needed]}, it switches up in the middle of the song to the "Hit 'Em Up" beat. Eminem's crew D12 takes the place of Tupac's Outlawz.

The song is also featured in a notorious internet video featuring Barney the Dinosaur seemingly lip-syncing the lyrics.