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Producer Hurt-M-Badd told XXL:

I left the studio [after making the beat] and when I came back the next day, everybody from the security guard to the phone lady to the engineer – everybody ran up to me like, “Wait ‘till you hear what this man done laid down over your track.” When I heard it, I didn’t think it was a hit. I was like “Why is Tupac laying this stuff down over my track?” We all had a listening party for the album, and 'Pac was loving every song but when they played that song, he just went though a thing. He threw his hand up in the air with his Hennessy bottle. He threw his hand up in the air like he ruled a nation.

Young Noble told XXL that “Hail Mary” took “maybe 30 minutes”:

It probably took about 15 minutes to write it and about five minutes to lay it. We laid the shit, my verse was already written … And then [‘Pac] came up with the “Hail Mary” shit. 'Pac, he wrote from the heart, so it wasn’t even like writing, it was like talking.

He also stated on an interview with VladTV:

I didn’t like the beat because it was more of a church beat, and, being from New York, we were used to that boom-bap head-knocking beat. That changed when I heard the mix, though.

E.D.I.:

I give Hurt-M-Badd credit for “Hail Mary”. ‘Pac told him, “I need some slow, thuggish shit.” Hurt-M-Badd made “Hail Mary” and when we heard it, 'Pac went crazy. We just did the song in an hour and a half. It wasn’t my favourite record on Makaveli. It reminded me of some down-South record. I didn’t know it was going to be as big a record as it is today.

‘Pac loved Kastro and Noble’s part. How they changed the whole vibe of the song up on some Outlawz shit. But really, I think he just loved what he was saying in it. It’s some real cold shit he’s saying. Because he knew [people] was coming for him.

“Hail Mary” actually only took me 15, 20 minutes to create the whole beat. I just came to work one day, I was feeling good. I was sitting behind the boards. I just touched a few sounds man, and it was like done. And so an engineer came into the room where I worked, and he heard the track – I told him to put the headphones on. He looked at me like “Damn, Hurt! This sounds like a hip-hop funeral, man.” When I do stuff, I don’t be feeling it like everybody else, I guess ‘cause it’s me. He said, “Why don’t you let Tupac hear this?” When Tupac heard it, he really didn’t say nothing but “Gimme that.”

— Hurt-M-Badd, XXL, 2003