America lit fireworks. Pac lit the Strip. On July 4, 1996, Tupac Shakur walked into the House of Blues and turned a holiday into a time capsule, two months before the world slammed shut. The footage later became Tupac: Live at the House of Blues, the clip people click when they want to see what peak Pac looked like without a studio filter and without patience for anything slow.

The night ran like a Death Row roadshow. The bill said 2Pac, but the choreography said family business: Pac with the Outlawz to start, K-Ci & JoJo sliding in to raise the temperature by exactly ten degrees, then Snoop and Tha Dogg Pound with Nate Dogg cruising the middle stretch before everyone crashed the stage again for a final victory lap. It moved like a mixtape that accidentally grew legs. No downtime. No hemming. No hawing. Just the sound of momentum paying rent.

The set was nine shots in a row. He opened with “Ambitionz az a Ridah,” then cut clean through “So Many Tears,” “Troublesome,” “Hit ’Em Up,” “Tattoo Tearz,” “All Bout U,” and “Never Call U Bitch Again.” K-Ci & JoJo tossed out an a cappella wink at “Freek’n You,” slid into “How Do U Want It,” and melted the room exactly as intended. After Snoop’s block, Pac came back for the closer, “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” shoulder to shoulder with Snoop, Tha Dogg Pound, the Outlawz, Nate Dogg, plus K-Ci & JoJo. That was the last song he ever performed on a public stage, which is the kind of sentence that lands like a brick even decades later.

Part of the charge is that three cuts were unreleased at the time. “Troublesome,” “Tattoo Tearz,” “Never Call U Bitch Again.” You can feel the crowd hearing tomorrow in rough draft, which is rare in any genre and borderline mythic in rap. It’s the sensation of history arriving five minutes early and refusing to sit down.

What makes the performance hit isn’t ceremony. It’s pace. Pac treats the stage like a rally. Verses barked from the diaphragm, hooks handed to the Outlawz like hot glass, constant motion that reads less like choreography and more like compulsion. K-Ci & JoJo tilt the room without killing speed. Snoop, Daz, and Kurupt pull everyone into a G-funk glide, then the whole crew swings back for a full-cast finale. If you want Death Row’s live chemistry in a clean vial, this is the sample.

The tape took the scenic route to legitimacy. For years it lived in bootlegs and rumor, then in September 2005 it arrived as a CD and DVD with the full concert plus a stack of videos: “California Love (Remix),” “To Live & Die in L.A.,” “Hit ’Em Up,” “How Do You Want It,” “I Ain’t Mad at Cha.” It went platinum as a video release in the U.S., which is exactly what happens when the definitive bootleg finally gets a barcode.

Context does the rest. Early 1996 was a blur of acceleration. New label. A double album that behaved like a summer blockbuster. Headlines lining up like taxis. Two days before the show he walked the Versace runway in Milan on July 2, then touched down in L.A. and hit the Sunset Strip. Two months later, on September 7 in Las Vegas, he planned to swing by Club 662 after the Tyson fight, was shot en route, and died six days later. The House of Blues footage isn’t a memorial. It’s a freeze-frame of the last time he did the thing that made him unavoidable.

Why it endures is simple. Plenty of artists leave immaculate studio catalogs. Very few leave a final concert that feels definitive without trying to be. This one compresses his entire range into about forty turbocharged minutes and surrounds him with the exact cast that defined mid 90s West Coast rap. It isn’t tidy. It isn’t polite. It’s better. Raw, fast, loud, absolutely alive.