Tupac is still a power at retail...

... Predicts Howard Krumholtz, a buyer for Tower Records in West Hollywood, Calif.: "Even though it's greatest hits, this will be one of the top-selling rap albums through the end of the year."

Undying rage explodes from '2Pac' Skeptical rap fans figured it would never happen, but 2Pac: Greatest Hits, the late rapper's first comprehensive retrospective, is finally out.

Tupac Shakur: Double CD offers a retrospective of the late rapper's work (AP).

Labels Death Row, Interscope and Amaru, each of which owns parts of the Tupac treasure trove, collaborated on this 25-track double CD, released last week. It features four unreleased tracks: Death Row's Unconditional Love and Troublesome '96 and Interscope's God Bless the Dead and Changes (the first single).

These factions had been doing more squabbling over rights issues than cooperating since Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in Las Vegas on Sept. 13, 1996, at the age of 25 a slaying that's still unsolved.

Interscope, which propelled him into the limelight, and Death Row, his primary label in the last year of his life, have rights to tracks recorded at various stages of his career. After he died, his mother, Afeni Shakur, who formed the Amaru label to market her son's unreleased material, joined the fray, winning a rights lawsuit against Death Row.

At this point, it would take a team of lawyers to clarify who owns what, but there are enough unreleased tracks to keep Tupac's fans happy well into the next century.

The new package is culled from his Interscope and Death Row albums. It doesn't include any music from the two-CD set R U Still Down? (Remember Me), which came out late last year on Amaru. Still, Tupac's mother was a factor.

"She had a lot to say about what was included," says Steve Berman, Interscope's head of sales and marketing. "Her input was very important."

From the way the factions are talking now, you'd never guess there was any animosity.

"There was incredible cooperation," says Brenda Jones, executive in charge of Death Row Records. "To get it done, we had to agree on what was best for the project and what was best for all sides, and we were able to do that without a lot of trouble."

Though it's being released just in time for the lucrative holiday market, there's nothing merry about this package, with Tupac's morbid obsession with death and his rage exploding from just about every track. But these are among the many qualities that, in death, make him larger than life a veritable god in the rap community.

"His spirit is everywhere. You can't escape him. A lot of these kids still think he walks the earth," says Damion Young, assistant program director of Los Angeles radio station Power 106.

And Tupac is still a power at retail. Predicts Howard Krumholtz, a buyer for Tower Records in West Hollywood, Calif.: "Even though it's greatest hits, this will be one of the top-selling rap albums through the end of the year."