2pac - All Eyes on Me (Lyrics)

The Top song in Hollywood industry
.................BEST SONG.............
So over the years, I've noticed myself gravitating towards We Think We Know You and Can't Handle This as two of my all time pieces from Bo. To me, they are the songs that represent the creative backbone of those specials, the reason they were made in the first place. And in Inside, I believe that All Eyes On Me is that piece for this show. I watched the show this morning and have been thinking about it all day, and this song in particular has been at the forefront. So in an effort to kind of tease out my own relationship to Inside, I wanted to write my interpretation of the song. This is long, so fair warning.

The song begins with Bo addressing the canned audience that has popped up here and there with him thanking them for the experience he’s had writing and performing the show. In this context, we see Bo address an audience he cannot see, and when he breaks into the “get your fucking hands up”, it almost feels like there is a sense of dark comedy here. Bo cannot interact with the audience he’s written this special for, so he has to pretend that they are there, watching him perform. If nobody is watching, then what is the point of this? Maybe it can also be interpreted as a call to celebration that the pandemic seems to be manageable with the advent of the vaccines. Now we can go outside and back to normalcy. But it’s a bit scary, especially I imagine if you live in LA like Bo does, where the pandemic hit extremely hard and went through multiple lockdowns. The lyrics say here that we don’t have to be nervous about going outside anymore, and not to overthink this. Come out, jump in the pool, have fun with your friends. Now we’re going back to where everyone knows (pre-Covid normalcy). And then Bo repeats the chorus, and it takes on a similar meaning. But he adds in the lines “Hands down, pray for me/ Heads down now/pray for me”. I’m still struggling with this part, but my best guess is that here he means that he knows that while there is celebration to be had, it’s a bittersweet one, and that Bo and all of us are mentally scarred from the past year.

Then the bridge comes, where Bo explains that he got better mentally since completing his work on Make Happy. He had been having panic attacks on stage and what he loved to the most had become his worst fear as well. This isn’t a secret, since he has spoken about this few times on podcasts. But what I think was more unknown was that he had decided that since he got better, he wanted to perform again since he had been feeling better. He then states that the funniest thing happened, alluding to the when the pandemic hit. I believe that he is saying that it’s funny because it was ironic to him personally. Now he finally felt like he had the mental fortitude to perform again, but right when he was ready to expose himself to the world after five years, lockdowns strike. Then he goes into the “Are you feeling nervous” passage again, but the message has completely shifted from talking to us about going outside after the pandemic, to what I believe is a reflection of what he was thinking as he came to realize that he would not be able to perform to a live audience for the foreseeable future. And I feel like every line from here to the end of the song is very calculated. So I’m going to break down each line one by one.

Are you feeling nervous? Are you having fun?

I imagine himself asking himself these questions while preparing to perform again, right before lockdowns. Making sure he’s checking in on his mental health periodically.

It’s almost over, it’s just begun

This is where the shift begins to the depression. His mental health fight after Make Happy was coming to a close. But now he’s beginning a new fight with depression over the desire to perform and create, but with no one to watch him.

Don’t overthink this, look in my eye, don’t be scared, don’t be shy, come on in, the water’s fine

I think this is Bo’s depression coming back and directly addressing him, saying that this is familiar. Depression is tricky, and it can at times feel comforting in the darkest days. Just laying in bed all day distracting yourself with your phone can make you feel like you’re okay in the moment. But as you realize that you’re not doing anything productive, at least for me, that’s when the depression and the existential dread really kicks in. I’m sure Bo and a lot of us went through a period like this during the last year.

You say the ocean’s rising, like I give a shit

Bo has accepted his depression and that it is getting worse. And in the moment, he doesn’t care and doesn’t want to do anything about it. They say you make your best art at your lowest points, and maybe Bo was trying to channel that kind of on purpose. Please take this particular piece with a grain of salt though. I feel like I’m implying a lot of connections that might not actually be there.

You say the whole world’s ending, honey it already did