Dr. Dre, who was Death Row Records' in-house producer, had left earlier in 1996 to start his own label, which led Snoop's first cousin Daz Dillinger to become Death Row's head producer; he worked on this record. The murder of Snoop's close friend and fellow rapper, label-mate Tupac Shakur in September 1996 also weighed on him heavily; Shakur appears on the closing track "Outro", under the name "Makaveli", which he began using a short while before his death.