in the east coast we was too caught up in the beef that most of us barely heard his catalog other than his albums and didnt know about all the underground material he had.
We loved pac till the beef started, brendas got a baby was a classic, I get around was played on the radio for like 6 months. Once the beef started we wasnt feelin him. Back when mixtapes were still actual tapes, you had DJ Doo Wop yelling how "you wont hear that dogg pund tupac bullshyt on my tape" and playin the sundula diss to pac "califony" also drop a gem on em was big on mixtapes before the mobb album dropped. Dogg pound got shot at in Brooklyn, it was crazy.
So as everybody said when the news first hit, not one person thought he was gonna die. It was mixed feelings because we were saying fukk him before that then he died. I remember on sunday night street soldiers is a talk show on hot97 and tupac and violence in hip hop was the topic. I remember Prodigy called in and wasn't soundin too sad but he did say he didnt wish death on Pac but he said how people on the street get killed all the time and Twin from infamous mobb apparently had just died too cuz Prodigy said RIP to twin but i dont think he said RIP to pac which kinda showed he wasnt really cryin about no tupac at the time.
it wasnt really till after biggie died that we started hearin pacs music. the more we heard his music the more we forgot about everything and started to love him again, we didnt realize how powerful and deep his music was. it was literally a whole 2 years before we would call him the legend that he was.
and oh yeah, at the time, everybody n they mama was talking about how he still alive. Nobody could believe he had that much unreleased material, there was a new mixtape with new material like every month. Makiaveli mixtape series went past 10 cd's i believe. Then Chuck D had his own website where he would have bet his own life that he KNEW pac was alive. he had this well researched reasons he listed includin numerology stuff. at the time it was very believable but then we looked at white people and elvis and was like naaaaaahhh, he dead.
Biggie was a whole nother crazy story. now THATS when phones were ringing all over the east coast. back when we still had "answering machines" Everybodys first words that day was "yo u heard?" and occasionally the reply would be "biggie aint die who told u that?" people ran to the house to watch the tv or turned on hot 97 before they even believed it