Toss It Up

"Toss It Up" is a song by rapper Tupac Shakur under the new stage name, Makaveli, hence making it the first song released under this name. It released as the lead single from the album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. It was released just under 2 weeks after his death.There are 3 versions of this song (Album version, Radio cut, and video versions). The song contains a diss to Dr. Dre questioning his sexuality and calling him gay. The phrase “Toss it up” (used to refer to sex in verse 1 and violence in verse 2) represents the love/death nexus. The song features vocals and singing from Aaron Hall, Danny Boy, K-Ci & JoJo. The song contains samples from No Diggity which both came out close to each other. The single only peaked in the RnB singles chart at number 34.

The song was also included in Greatest Hits with a new mix and some altered lyrics.

Controversy

After hearing No Diggity (which features Dr.Dre) for the first time, several of Dr. Dre's former Death Row colleagues, including Makaveli, recorded and attempted to release the song, containing numerous insults aimed at Dr. Dre and using a deliberately similar instrumental to "No Diggity", but were forced to replace the production after Blackstreet issued the label with a cease and desist order stopping them from distributing the song . He also made an indirect reference to the song Straight Outta Compton of Dr. Dre's former rap group N.W.A On the outro of the song, Puff Daddy and Lil Kim were dissed. 2Pac also responds to what Puff Daddy said about him in an interview.

Toss

Toss, Tossed or Tossing may refer to:

See also

Danny Boy

"Danny Boy" is a ballad written by English songwriter Frederic Weatherly and usually set to the Irish tune of the "Londonderry Air". It is most closely associated with Irish communities.

History

Initially written to a tune other than "Londonderry Air", the words to "Danny Boy" were penned by English lawyer and lyricist Frederic Weatherly in Bath, Somerset in 1910. After his Irish-born sister-in-law Margaret (known as Jess) in the United States sent him a copy of "Londonderry Air" in 1913 (an alternative version has her singing the air to him in 1912 with different lyrics), Weatherly modified the lyrics of "Danny Boy" to fit the rhyme and meter of "Londonderry Air".

Weatherly gave the song to the vocalist Elsie Griffin, who made it one of the most popular songs in the new century; and, in 1915, Ernestine Schumann-Heink produced the first recording of "Danny Boy".

Jane Ross of Limavady is credited with collecting the melody of "Londonderry Air" in the mid-19th century from a musician she encountered.

Death row

Death row, in English-speaking countries that have capital punishment, is the place, often a section of a prison, that houses prisoners awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution ("being on death row"), even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. After persons are found guilty of an offence and sentenced to death, they remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures.

Opponents of capital punishment claim that a prisoner's isolation and uncertainty over his or her fate constitute a form of mental cruelty and that especially long-time death row inmates are liable to become mentally ill, if they are not already. This is referred to as the death row phenomenon. In extreme cases some inmates may attempt to commit suicide.

In the United States, prisoners may wait years before execution can be carried out due to the complex and time-consuming appeals procedures mandated in the jurisdiction. The time between sentencing and execution has increased relatively steadily between 1977 and 2010, including a 22% jump between 1989 and 1990 and a similar jump between 2008 and 2009. In 2010, a death row inmate waited an average of 178 months (roughly 15 years) between sentencing and execution. Nearly a quarter of deaths on death row in the U.S. are due to natural causes.

The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (commonly shortened to The 7 Day Theory or Don Killuminati and sometimes called Makaveli) is the fifth studio album by Tupac Shakur. Released under his new stage name Makaveli, it was his first studio album to be posthumously released. The album was completely finished in a total of seven days during the first week of August 1996. The lyrics were written and recorded in only three days and mixing took an additional four days. These are the last songs Shakur recorded before his fatal shooting on September 7, 1996. The album was originally due for release in March 1997, but due to his death, Suge Knight released it four months earlier.

George "Papa G" Pryce, Former Head of Publicity for Death Row, claimed that "Makaveli which we did was a sort of tongue-in-cheek, and it was not ready to come out, [but] after Tupac was murdered, it did come out... Before that, it was going to be a sort of an underground."

Concept

Though Shakur had been using the new name Makaveli or Makaveli Tha Don as far back as All Eyez On Me, the Makaveli album was conceived as a sort of introduction for Shakur's alternate stage name. Thus, the album’s sleeve contains the text, "Exit 2Pac, Enter Makaveli". The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory was recorded and mixed in 7 days in August 1996.