The iconic 90s hip-hop artist was known for his pained intensity. But Dear Mama, a tribute to his mother Afeni, showed off his softer side – and still brings listeners to tears.

"Not everyone is so lucky and gets to experience the love of a mother for a long time," explains DJ Master Tee, whose words are staggered due to deep emotion, before he starts to cry down the phone.

"A lot of people's mothers died way too early… and I think Tupac Shakur understood that well," the producer continues. "He didn't just want to make a song that celebrated the mothers who are here, but also the ones that passed away."

DJ Master Tee made the original silky-smooth beat (which was later adapted by co-producer Tony Pizarro) for Dear Mama, the late rap legend Tupac's candid tribute to the many sacrifices of his single mother Afeni Shakur. She was an activist in the radical political group The Black Panthers, who subsequently struggled with drug addiction and to make ends meet while raising her two children.

This song is the pained yet ultimately joyful epicentre of Tupac's otherwise death-obsessed third studio album, Me Against the World, which was released 30 years ago this month. In the context of an album where Tupac shifts from suicidal (So Many Tears) to grief-stricken (Lord Knows), repeatedly using the word "hopeless", Dear Mama feels like uncovering a diamond at the bottom of a pitch-black mine.

"Even as a crack phene, momma / You always were a black queen, momma," he famously rapped.

This lyric alone represented a radical shift in rap storytelling in the way it represented victims of the so-called Crack Era, when use of the drug soared across the US during the 1980s and 90s.

Previously, rap artists had stripped away the humanity of crack addicts via slurs such as "basehead" and "zombie". But, Tee says, Tupac saw addicts "as victims of the state, who needed our support". And although Tupac expresses sadness over a childhood with little money – where he and his sister Sekyiwa observed the matriarch of their family descend into the hell of addiction – he leads with empathy for Afeni Shakur's struggle.

He chants out all his words with a bear-hug warmth, confirming that he never stopped seeing Afeni as a superhero. In celebrating her, Tupac serves to pay respect to the struggle of single mothers everywhere, as well as mothers full stop – a sentiment the whole world can appreciate. This is reflected in the numbers, with the song racking up over 345 million streams on Spotify alone. Indeed, Dear Mama remains one of the rapper's most celebrated tracks: in 2009, it became the first song by a solo rapper to be inducted into the US Library of Congress's National Recording Registry, awarded for its profound cultural significance.

"It really doesn't matter if you grew up in the ghetto or not, because Dear Mama transcends all of that," explains the song's engineer, Paul Arnold. "You could be rich, poor, black, white, brown, whatever; you'll find a way to relate to the song. Honestly, it's difficult for me to even talk about it and not get choked up. It forces you to think about your own mother and that isn't always easy. Behind all the controversy, it was obvious he was a very emotional guy."

To properly explore the creation of this song, you must follow the roots of the woman who inspired it. Born in North Carolina in 1947, Afeni Shakur (whose birth name was Alice Faye Williams) was confronted with racism from the start. This was a time where Jim Crow laws around racial segregation were bluntly enforced.

Afeni's family moved to the Bronx when she was 11. Despite living in the diverse melting pot of New York City, she felt she was part of a system designed to push black people to the bottom of US society. She found solace hanging around local street gangs (including the Gangster Disciples) and subscribed to the "by any means necessary" approach of activist Malcolm X, who preached that black Americans should violently resist their oppressors in sharp contrast to Martin Luther King's celebrated pacifism. After seeing the co-founder of the Black Panther party Bobby Seale speak at a political rally in 1968, Afeni was inspired enough to join, telling The New York Times in 1970 she was impressed by the way he spoke of the homeless leading their revolution: "I'd never seen that before."

Afeni quickly rose through the ranks of the Black Panthers, pioneering a free breakfast plan for hungry schoolchildren and starting a protest campaign against exploitative landlords. The party won high-profile enemies including FBI director J Edgar Hoover, who ran surveillance on key members (resulting in the 1969 assassination of radical deputy chairman Fred Hampton) and considered the group a threat to the status-quo. In 1971, Afeni was one of 21 Black Panther members indicted by a New York grand jury, accused of plotting to shoot police officers.

From prison Afeni maintained a position of strength, writing in one unapologetic letter to the media: "We know that we live in a world inhuman in its poverty. We know that we are a colony, living under community imperialism. The US that we see is not one of freedom, beauty, and wisdom, but of fear, terror, and hate. We have no respect for your laws, taxes, your gratitude, sincerity, honour and dignity. You don't respect us – thus we don't respect YOU." This defiance and righteous anger........

© BBC