Tupac Shakur Website, Hit 'Em Up

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Hit 'Em Up

"Hit 'Em Up" is a song performed and written by Tupac Shakur and his clique, The Outlawz. It is known as a 'diss song'; that is, a song which has the only purpose of verbally assaulting and insulting a person or a group of people. It is widely regarded as "a classic" diss, and the best, or one of the best, of Tupac's myriad diss songs. Ths 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" remix.

A brutal diatribe, "Hit 'Em Up" was released on the "How Do U Want It" single in 1996. Its targets are: Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy (also known as P. Diddy), Mobb Deep, Lil' Kim and Junior M.A.F.I.A., Chino XL, and Bad Boy Records and New York as a whole. Originally, there was a Jay-Z diss 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. Supposedly, the part of the outro where Shakur spouts, "Fuck you die slow motherfucker ,my fo-fo make sure all y'all kids don't grow" were the part aimed at Jay-Z. The music video of the song frequently showed hookers burning and stomping on the flag of the State of New York.

Many people at the time felt that this song went 'too far', what 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 anemia. Many listeners and critics have also criticized it for further inciting violence in the 1990s East Coast-West Coast rap wars. None of the criticism affected Tupac at all, and he seemed very proud of the song. He remarked that "Hit 'Em Up" was a "classic battle record."

Overall, the song is not noted for its lyricism, as are the cases with other battle records like Nas's "Ether", Jay-Z's "Takeover", Canibus' "2nd Round Knockout", LL cool J"1,2,3,4" or Eminem's "Nail in the Coffin". It is mostly noted as a "shock value" song, aimed at simply discrediting the Notorious B.I.G. and Bad Boy Records. XXL called it the #1 diss song ever.

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

Greatest Hits Original version of the song.
Nu-Mixx Klazzics Re-mix--Same lyrics, different beat and slightly edited.

Parody use: The song was used as an Anti-Barney humor song with an online video which appears that Barney and other characters are rapping, it is humorous because of the adult content of the song which opposes Barney's status quo of a children's atmosphere.

Other uses: 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 often removing Biggie and other Bad Boy names with the usernames with one whom hates. They 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.

Eminem Re-made the song, entitled "Quitter". It becomes the beat of "Hit 'em up" when its three minutes into the song. Insted of "Makaveli and tha Outlawz" Eminem made it into "Silm Shady and D12".

In 2006 shortly after Terrell Owens was singed into the Dallas Cowboys, he created his own version of Hit 'em up, this time dissing the Philadelphia Eagles his former team that terminated his contract due to bad behavior.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors, This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hit 'Em Up".