Synopsis

2Pac's "Changes" video is an archival portrait rather than a conventional narrative. It intercuts footage from earlier music videos with home-video material, interviews, photographs and performance clips, tracing the rapper's public image and personal history. As his verses address racism, poverty, violence, police brutality and the hope for social progress, the montage presents Shakur as both a street poet and a reflective public figure. The result is an elegiac posthumous tribute that connects his past work to the song's call for change.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was assembled after Tupac Shakur's death, using previously released music-video footage alongside unreleased home-video material and still photographs.

• "Changes" was released posthumously on October 13, 1998, as a single from *Greatest Hits*. The song itself had originally been recorded in 1992 and was later remixed for release.

• The chorus is performed by Talent, while the track reworks the melody and much of the musical framework of Bruce Hornsby and the Range's 1986 hit "The Way It Is."

• The archival editing helped the video function as a career-spanning tribute, rather than presenting footage of a newly filmed performance. Its rapid movement between public appearances and more personal images reinforces the song's tension between political anger and self-examination.

• The video received 1999 MTV Video Music Award nominations for Best Rap Video and Best Editing in a Video.

• The song earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Solo Performance at the 2000 ceremony, making it the only posthumous track nominated in that category.