The idea for "Temptations" began in late 1993 when record producer Easy Mo Bee came to Shakur while he was on the set of Above the Rim (1994). At Rucker Park in New York City, Mo Bee approached Shakur with several different songs they could sample from in the Me Against the World album. Out of the pieces he showed the rapper, Shakur favored the Zapp song "Computer Love." Despite being frequently sampled in the past by other artists, Shakur proposed that they simply speed up the tempo of "Computer Love" and use a low frequency automatic filter to retrieve the song's bassline.