The murder of DJ had a profound effect on , resulting in a drastic rethinking of his on-record persona. He re-emerged the following year with , calling himself the Teacher and rapping mostly about issues facing the black community. His reality rhymes were no longer morally ambiguous, and this time when he posed on the cover with a gun, he was mimicking a photo of . As a social commentator, this is arguably 's finest moment. His observations are sharp, lucid, and confident, yet he doesn't fall prey to the preachiness that would mar some of his later work, and he isn't afraid to be playful or personal. The latter is especially true on the subject of , whose memory hangs over -- not just in the frequent name-checks, but in the minimalist production and hard-hitting 808 drum beats that were his stock-in-trade on . figures heavily in the album opener, which explains 's transition and serves as a manifesto for socially conscious . The high point is the impassioned a plea for peace on the scene that still hasn't been heeded. Even as denounces black-on-black crime, he refuses to allow the community to be stereotyped, criticizing the system that scoffs at that violence on the spoken recitation is a startlingly perceptive look at how the drug trade corrupts the police and government, appearing not long before the CIA's drug-running activities in the Iran-Contra Affair came to light. There are also some lighter moments in the battle-rhyme tracks, and a witty safe-sex in a close cousin to ' Lyrics from this album have been sampled by everyone from to , and it ranks not only as 's most cohesive, fully realized statement, but a landmark of that's unfairly lost in the shadow of 's . ~ Steve Huey