California Love  

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"California Love" is a hip hop song by 2Pac featuring Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman. The song was released as 2Pac's comeback single upon his release from prison in 1995. A popular remix version of the song appeared on his 1996 double album All Eyez on Me. This is perhaps 2Pac's best-known song and his most successful, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks (as a Double-A side single with "How Do U Want It"). The song was nominated for a posthumous Grammy Award as a Best Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group (with Dr. Dre and Roger Troutman) in 1997. The song was actually written and performed by Roger Troutman in the Original Version of California Love, Tupac and Dr. Dre made a modern day version of the song.

The original version of the track was not available on any of Shakur's studio albums, but it can now be found on Shakur's compilation of Greatest Hits.

The tune was adapted from Joe Cocker's song "Woman to Woman", and "California knows how to party" lines listing Los Angeles County neighborhoods are sung by Roger Troutman. The vocals "In the City of Compton" and the other cities and "California knows how to party" is adapted from Ronnie Hudson and the Street People's "West Coast Poplock". The remix features sample from the song "Intimate Connection" by Kleeer written by Norman Durham and Woody Cunningham.

"California Love" was Shakur's only entry on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, ranked #346 and #51 on VH1's countdown of the 100 Greatest songs of the 90s.

Track listings

  1. "California Love" (Short Radio edit) — 4:04
  2. "California Love" (Short Remix edit) — 4:06
  3. "California Love" (LP Instrumental) — 4:14
  4. "California Love" (Remix Instrumental) — 4:11

Writing and background

Dr. Dre did not plan to include the recording in 2Pac's project. It was one of only two songs produced by Dre on All Eyez on Me namely "California Love" and "Can't C Me" and was originally going to be his single for his second album, as the original version has three verses featuring Dr. Dre's rapping. The only copy of this original version is now in the possession of DJ Jam, Snoop Dogg's personal concert DJ. Suge Knight's ideology was, "When it's time to work on a project, everybody needs to give everything to whoever's project it is"Template:Fact so he decided to put 2Pac on the remix, and it was made the single off his upcoming album. Dre's first version was unedited and home-studio recorded, and therefore differs to the version later included in 2Pac's Greatest Hits.



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "California Love" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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