The other day J-Zone put up a great post about his cassette collection, "I'm not an ex-con I just like tapes." Part of his compelling argument in defense of cassettes was the fact that they occasionally had exclusive tracks that weren't available on the CD version of the same album. That got me to thinking about one of the few cassette albums that I still keep in fairly constant rotation (I have roughly a thousand mixtape cassettes from the late 80's and 90's that I still keep around, too, but I've upgraded most of my albums to CD versions): the Above the Rim soundtrack.
One could make a solid case for the soundtrack being among the strongest releases to come out of Death Row. Aside from the usual cameos that you'd expect from a Death Row album - Snoop, the Dogg Pound, Dre, Lady of Rage - ATR managed to get a ton of other artists on there as well: Beastie Boys, Akinyele, Pharcyde, Naughty By Nature, YZ. Even Al B Sure dropped a song for it! By far the best cut, though, was available only on the cassette version and the original vinyl pressing, Pain. This Tupac song, which along with Pour out a little Liquor was the first song he ever recorded with the label, featured a guest verse from Stretch, the forgotten soldier of the war between Bad Boy and Death Row.
Opening up with a soundbite from Star Trek V, Pain builds around a sample from the classic Earl Klugh track Living Inside Your Love. Five years later, Sauce Money would use the same beat for Middle Finger U's Section 53, Row 78.
I traded away my copy of the ATR soundtrack shortly after copping it (an indiscretion that would later force me to scour through the tape collections at several flea markets before eventually finding another copy), and forgot all about Pain until several years later, when Irv Gotti mentioned it during an interview on Hot 97. In the same sentence that Irv attempted to defend Ja Rule against accusations that he was biting Pac's whole steelo, he mentioned that they had just recorded a remake of Pain for the Pain Is Love album, in which Ja would be reciting Pac and Stretch's lyrics verbatim. Eminem, 50 Cent and Busta eventually called him out for it on their "remake" of Hail Mary.
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