The song features Talent, an R&B trio from Kansas City consisting of Marlon "Castor Troy" Hatcher, Keith "Casino" Murrell and Ernest "Bishop" Dixon that was active from 1998 to 2005.

[2] The song makes references to the many wars in the Middle East, the war on drugs, the treatment of black people by the police, racism, the reconciliation between the black and white people in America, the perpetuation of poverty and its accompanying vicious-cycle value system in urban African American culture, and the difficulties of life in the ghetto.

The chorus on the original track features a notable difference in a vocal sample of the line, "It's like that and that's the way it is", from Run DMC's "It's Like That", which is also played twice during the intro.

Bay Area rapper E-40 had interpreted the song already on his track, "Things'll Never Change", for his album Tha Hall of Game.

The song was a number-one hit in Norway and the Netherlands and reached the top ten in the singles charts of several other countries, including number three in the United Kingdom, which gained Tupac a broader audience.

Released posthumously on his album Greatest Hits, the song talks about all of the different issues that were related to Tupac's era of influence—notably racism, police brutality, drugs and gang violence.

Further, the last verse of the song refers to Tupac's imagining himself being shot to death, mimicking the sound of the gun with the phrase "rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat".

He tells of the trials and tribulations of life in the ghetto and is blunt about the need for change and an end to black-on-black violence, saying that 'misplaced hate makes disgrace to races.'