Shakur trusted his audience could handle this soft touch despite his reputation, the majority of his catalogue is absent of the gun-toting, thug-life, you-claim-to-be-a-player-but-I-fucked-your-wife bravado that permeated some of his later music. As Chris Rock says – albeit about infidelity – a man is only as faithful as his options. It’s easy to have clear-cut morals when they aren’t actually tested. He realises the murky grey areas in life are often driven by decay and desperation, and notes these seeming contradictions throughout: the mother who was both a “crack fiend” and “made miracles every Thanksgiving” with food scraps the drug dealers who were also loving parental surrogates to him being able to finally provide for his mother bring counter-balanced by the darker truth of where that money came from. It’s always tempered by an understanding that the dramas that surrounded are further evidence of his mother’s strength. Shakur recorded this song just days after his 23rd birthday equal parts gratitude, love, and acknowledgement of past wrongs. The hook/crux/point of the song is a simple, “you are appreciated.” He takes his share of the blame, looking back with adult eyes at the sacrifices his mother made for him. While it’s often the parents with the limitless threshold, here it’s Tupac Shakur that holds a deep understanding of how people’s flaws aren’t the features you should focus on.

Rather amusingly, the greatest ode to parental love opens with a mother kicking a son out of her home at 17.

2pac dear mama video