he was one of those artists where if you going through some hard hard times (especially if you're trying to keep up an emotional facade)and feel like nobody can relate to how you feeling, a lot of his music gonna resonate with you.
I might catch some slack for it (especially nowadays), but I've always felt Joe Budden is prolly the GOAT when it comes to hip hop that delves into how you geel during hard times (it gets dismissed as "emo rap" because it's regular nikka shyt, not "real nikka shyt" though).
Pac was levels and levels and levels deeper than that. It was like he mastered how you felt AND what you thought about while going through it.
That's my view of MATW. Anger. regret. rampant paranoia, denial, second guessing, begging for a moment of relief, fantasizing about moments of non-drama, begging for god to forgive him....
MATW is a fukking masterpiece of an album, IMO. Might be the closest we'll ever get to an actual hip hop "blues" album. And you'd be hard pressed to non-biasedly find a better, more damn near flawless 3 hip hop album run than MATW/AEOM/7 Day Theory. And that's even with me not liking AEOM that much.
I used to give Pac stans a hard time, but it's only because I can't stand anyone being a zealot for someone I'm a fan of. Dude was truly one of the GOATS, and I can't be mad if somebody got him as GOAT, even if he ain't my GOAT of GOATs. When he died, we legit lost one of our voices. All that lyrical dexterity and entendres aside
edit: long ass post, Pac one of the GOATS. RIP to him.