“Now let me welcome everybody to the Wild Wild West,” Tupac says as the song really gets going. The song was Tupac’s first single with Death Row Records that was released two months after he was released from prison, Song Meanings + Facts explains. This is a fact he brings up again later in the song with the lyrics, “out on bail, fresh out of jail, California dreamin’.”
The hit track is definitely a celebration of Los Angeles and California, but it can also be about the beginning of Tupac’s career. The song was written in twenty minutes at a party, which speaks both to Tupac’s genius and the collaboration chemistry between Dr. Dre and Tupac, per Pitchfork.
“Only in Cali where we riot, not rally, to live and die” is a line that’s particularly haunting, given how Tupac was shot and killed just a year later in September 1996, per Britannica.
