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Gangstas   

Logo for Death Row Records








The logo for Death Row Records is a blindfolded black man strapped into an electric chair at the moment of execution. Death Row is the label that made rappers such as Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre, and Tupac Shakur famous, and its logo is emblematic of the violent posturing adopted by many gangsta rap artists—not just Death Row artists—in their quest to sell their music. A rapper's public face is frequently a gangbanger's scar face, whether he has a genuine gang affiliation or not. But as rap's popularity grew in the 1990s, the violent posturing turned real. Tales of beatings and public humiliations surfaced. Rappers slandered one another with increasing viciousness and frequency. An East Coast-West Coast feud developed, pitting Death Row Records, which is based in southern California, against New York's Bad Boy Entertainment. The feud eventually escalated from a battle of words to a bloody war. Its two most prominent casualties were the rival rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

Tupac Shakur in 1993




The circumstances of these two deaths were remarkably similar. Both young men were shot multiple times while sitting in the front passenger seats of their vehicles. Both victims were rushed to the hospital by their own entourages. Notorious B.I.G., who was born Christopher Wallace and was also known as Biggie Smalls, was dead on arrival. Tupac Shakur lived for six days and endured multiple operations before succumbing to his wounds.

Notorious B.I.G.



Both incidents followed major public events and took place on crowded streets. Shakur was killed in Las Vegas. Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down in Los Angeles. In both instances, witnesses refused to come forward and help the police. Gang enmity between the Bloods and the Crips appears to have played a part in both murders.




NOW A QUESTION ARISES WHY AND HOW WERE THEY MURDERED???????????



BECAUSE OF


Rival Companies

Competition between rival record companies is natural, but when it came to the premier rap labels, Death Row and Bad Boy, the rivalry went from nasty to vicious to deadly in short order. Despite many denials and explanations issued by both companies, the antagonism between the labels was at least partly fueled by their larger than life founders, Suge Knight of Death Row and Puffy Combs of Bad Boy.


Tupac Shakur (left) and Marion "Suge" Knight

Marion "Suge" Knight was raised on the same streets in Compton, California, where the infamous street gang, the Bloods, made their name. His parents called him "Sugar Bear" as a child because of his sweet nature, and the nickname stayed with him, later shortened to "Suge." He didn't run with the gangs when he was in high school, preferring to play sports and capitalize on his extra large size. He grew to be six-foot-three and weighed over 300 pounds, and eventually played professional football with the Los Angeles Rams during the strike-plagued 1988-89 season. He worked as a bodyguard for singer Bobby Brown, then in 1990 started promoting gangsta rap acts. Two years later he formed Death Row Records in association with Interscope Records. But according to Ronin Ro in his book Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records, the seed money for Death Row came from a convicted drug dealer named Michael Harris who put up $1.5 million. Death Row went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars, but allegedly Harris never saw a return on his investment.

As the prime mover behind gangsta rap, Suge Knight was able to walk the walk, reportedly doling out beatings to whoever crossed him. Though he had avoided the Bloods when he was growing up, he embraced them when he became head of Death Row, allying himself with the Mob Piru Bloods (named after Piru Street in Compton) and proudly wearing the Blood color, red. He had red suits and fedoras made for himself and even had his house painted red.

LAbyrinth

Bad Boy founder Puffy Combs was a straight arrow by comparison. Though Combs often said that his father was a Harlem drug dealer, according to Randall Sullivan in his book LAbrynth, Combs's father died when Puffy was two and a half years old. Combs had attended an all-white Catholic school and became an altar boy. At age 11, his family moved to suburban Westchester County, north of New York City, where Combs worked two paper routes. He later went to an all-boys prep school in Manhattan, then enrolled at Howard University where he majored in business administration. His drive to succeed and knack for discovering musical talent earned him a job with Uptown Records where at the age of 22 he became vice president for A&R. Threatened by the up-and-comer, the president of Uptown fired Combs, but the young entrepreneur bounced back a few months later, signing "a $15 million distribution deal with Arista Records." (Combs would later brag that his company, unlike Death Row, was founded with legitimate money.)

The former altar boy did have his problems with the law, a condition that became de rigueur for anyone who was anyone in the rap world. In December 1999, Combs was arrested and charged with gun possession and bribery after a shooting incident at Club New York, a Manhattan night club. Victims testified that they had been shot by Combs who fled the scene with his then-girlfriend singer/actress Jennifer Lopez. He allegedly offered his driver a bribe if he would claim that a gun found in Combs's Lincoln Navigator belonged to him. Combs, who was represented by attorney Johnnie Cochran, was ultimately acquitted on all charges.

Bad Boy Entertainment logo

Over the years Bad Boy Entertainment has been rumored to have an affiliation with the Crips gang, the arch rivals of the Bloods, using them for security work, but Combs has always denied any official alliance between his company and the Crips.

East Coast VS. West Coast

The East Coast-West Coast feud had largely been a war of public insults and nightclub brawls until November 30, 1994. Death Row superstar Tupac Shakur and Bad Boy newcomer Notorious B.I.G. had been friends despite the bitter rivalry between their labels. Shakur, a wiry bantam weight, had been brought up in New York, Baltimore, and San Francisco, and though he declared his allegiance to the West Coast, it didn't keep him from associating with East Coast rappers. Notorious B.I.G., as his name implies, was a rotund man who weighed over 300 pounds and was known for his quick wit and clever rhymes. While Shakur was in New York in November 1994 awaiting sentencing on a sexual-assault conviction, he'd been invited to record with another East Coast friend, Little Shawn, at Quad Studios in Times Square.

Mugshot of Tupac Shakur

Quad Studios, which takes up five floors of a midtown office building, was a busy place that night. While Little Shawn was recording on one floor, Junior M.A.F.I.A., a teenage rap group sponsored by Notorious B.I.G., was recording on another floor, and B.I.G. and Puffy Combs were working on a video on yet another floor. Tupac and his entourage arrived at the building shortly after midnight on November 30. As they were getting into the elevator, three armed black men ambushed them and stole their jewelry. Tupac's alone was worth over $35,000. Tupac lunged at one of the gunmen in anger and was shot five times—in the head, groin, and left hand. Despite his wounds, Shakur was able to get upstairs where he paced and ranted that he'd been set up. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he underwent surgery.

The next morning Notorious B.I.G. visited him there. Against his doctors' advice, Shakur checked himself out and continued his convalescence at actress Jasmine Guy's apartment. He made it to court for his sentencing the next day and was ordered to serve four and a half years at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. While imprisoned, Shakur had time to think about the ambush and came to the conclusion that it was ordered by Puffy Combs and B.I.G. He went public with his feelings. B.I.G. defended himself, calling the accusations insane and offensive, and demanded an apology from Shakur. He didn't get one. Suge Knight's publicist issued a statement, calling the incident "the result of jealousy between immature rappers." In the meantime, Shakur's album All Eyez on Me became the number one recording in the country.

Album cover: All Eyez on Me

The next fall Shakur cut a deal with Suge Knight. The rapper agreed to sign a three-year contract with Death Row Records in exchange for Knight putting up the bail money for Tupac's release pending an appeal of his conviction.

A Fatal Blow

On September 24, 1995, the West Coast contingent suffered another blow, and this time it was fatal. The occasion was a late-night birthday party for a record producer at the Platinum House in Atlanta. Suge Knight and Puffy Combs were in attendance with their respective entourages. A fight broke out outside the nightclub and shots were fired. Jake Robles, a Death Row employee who was also a Mob Piru Blood, lay on the ground, seriously wounded. Robles was a close friend of Suge Knight. Witnesses accused Puffy Combs's bodyguard of the shooting, and Knight immediately put the blame directly on Combs.

A few days after Jake Robles's death, Mark Anthony Bell, an independent record promoter from New York, was contacted by a mysterious stranger who promised him a record deal if he "cooperated." According to Randall Sullivan in LAbyrinth, Bell had gone to high school with Puffy Combs and had done some work for Bad Boy. The stranger asked Bell to write down the home addresses of Combs and Combs's mother on a piece of paper and drop them on the ground where it could be retrieved. The stranger assured Bell that his "help" would never be revealed. Bells refused to give out any information about Combs, suspecting that the stranger was in some way connected to Death Row.

Three months later Bell attended the Death Row Christmas party at Chateau Le Blanc in Hollywood. When Suge Knight arrived, he went over to Bell and asked, "Why didn't you cooperate when you had had the chance?" Bell told him that he didn't know Combs's home address. Knight invited Bell up to the V.I.P. room for a little talk. Six other men accompanied them, including rappers Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur.

In the V.I.P. room, Knight continued to question Bell about Puffy Combs. When Knight didn't get the answers he wanted, "an especially scary-looking Blood" punched Bell in the face several times. "This is for Jake," the Blood said, then promised to kill Bell .

Suge Knight left the room and went into the bathroom. When he returned, he was holding a champagne flute filled with urine. He ordered Bell to drink it. When Bell refused, the Blood hit him again. Bell took the glass as if he was going to drink it, then suddenly dropped it and ran for the balcony, intent on escaping. The others caught him as he tried to leap over the railing. They hauled him back into the room and beat him savagely, taking orders from Knight who shouted, "'Body blows only!'" Bell finally played dead and the beating ended, but not before his assailants stripped him of his wallet and jewelry.

****

Suge Knight awarded special friends with expensive Death Row medallions that featured the company's electric-chair logo in gold and diamonds. In July of 1996 a Mob Piru named Tray Lane was wearing his medallion while shopping with two fellow Bloods at the Foot Locker at the Lakewood Mall in California. A group of seven or eight Crips entered the store and jumped the three Bloods. During the melee one of the Crips took Lane's Death Row medallion. It was a relatively minor incident in the ongoing gang war, but it would prove to be the spark that touched off an explosion in the East Coast-West Coast feud, resulting in the murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

"THUG LIFE"

At 8:45 P.M. on September 7, 1996—two months after Tray Lane was robbed of his Death Row medallion—Lane was in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. He was with Tupac Shakur, Suge Knight, and a group of Mob Piru Blood bodyguards. They had just attended the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon prizefight at the hotel—one of Tyson's many Round 1 knockouts—and were on their way out when Lane spotted a young man across the lobby. The young man's name was Orlando Anderson, and Lane recognized him as one of the Crips who had beaten him and stolen his medallion. Lane's group rushed Anderson, knocked him to the ground, and proceeded to beat, kick, and stomp him. The 30-second incident was caught on tape by the hotel's security cameras. It showed Shakur and Knight participating in the assault, Shakur throwing the first punch. By the time the police arrived, the Death Row contingent was gone. Anderson refused to press charges.

Later that night a caravan of luxury vehicles was wending its way through the congested streets of Las Vegas, heading for Club 662, a known Blood hangout. (662 is California penal code for death row). It was a Death Row Records caravan, and Suge Knight was behind the wheel of the lead car, a black BMW 750. Tupac Shakur was sitting in the front passenger seat. At around 11:17 P.M., Knight pulled to a stop at a red light on Flamingo Road. The streets were jammed with tourists. Shakur was flirting with a car full of girls to the left of the BMW so he didn't notice the white Cadillac with four black men inside pulling up on their right. A hand holding a gun emerged from the Cadillac's backseat through the driver's window. Shots were fired into the BMW.

When Shakur realized what was happening, he tried to jump into the backseat for cover, but he was hit four times in the chest. A bullet fragment grazed Knight's head, but he still managed to maneuver the BMW around the stopped traffic, making a u-turn and heading back toward the Strip. The other vehicles in the Death Row caravan followed him. He finally stopped when he ran his car into a curb. When the police arrived, they called for an ambulance for Shakur and ordered everyone else out of their vehicles, treating the Death Row entourage as suspects. In the meantime the white Cadillac slipped away into the night.

Shakur was rushed to the University Medical Center where doctors performed emergency surgery to save his life. In an effort to stem the internal bleeding, surgeons removed his right lung. Suge Knight stood vigil at the hospital with Shakur's family, waiting for hopeful news. His heart stopped beating several times, and doctors revived him. Finally Shakur's mother Afeni decided not to resuscitate her son if he went into arrest again, explaining to reporters that "it was important for his spirit to be allowed to be free." Six days after he was shot, Tupac Shakur died.

When Shakur's body lay face up on a gurney about to be autopsied, his infamous tattoos were fully displayed, including his signature phrase, THUG LIFE, in large letters in a semi-circle around his abdomen.

"Hit 'Em Up"

In "Who Killed Tupac Shakur?" a controversial two-part article published in the Los Angeles Times, journalist Chuck Philips presented evidence that Notorious B.I.G. was behind the murder of Shakur. According to Philips, after Orlando Anderson's beating at the hands of the Death Row Bloods, Anderson went back to his hotel room and called his brother Crips who hastily put together a retaliation plan. The Crips, figuring that they could make some profit off a hit on Shakur, sent an emissary to Notorious B.I.G. who Philips contends was in Las Vegas for the Tyson fight, staying at a hotel under another name. The emissary negotiated a $1 million fee for the murder of Shakur whom B.I.G. had allegedly come to despise not only for being a staunch member of the West Coast rappers who disparaged him regularly in public but also for releasing a song called "Hit 'Em Up," in which he boasted of having had sex with B.I.G.'s estranged wife. But according to Philips, B.I.G. agreed to pay the fee on one condition: the hit had to be done with his own gun. In Philips's scenario Notorious B.I.G. gave the Crips' emissary his ".40-caliber Glock pistol."

In the meantime the Crips had organized a team to hunt down Shakur. Philips writes that they had two cars, a late-model white Cadillac and an older yellow Cadillac driven by a lone Crip armed with an AK-47 assault rifle. Their plan was to take out Shakur at Club 662, but when they happened upon the Death Row caravan on Flamingo Road, they seized the opportunity and struck.

Vibe magazine, however, cast doubt on this scenario when it presented a time line of the events as Philips describes them. On fight nights, the streets of Las Vegas are always jammed with vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The shooting occurred two hours and thirty-two minutes after the beating of Orlando Anderson. According to Vibe, the Crips couldn't possibly have gotten a hit team on the street in that time. They would have needed at least another 22 minutes and probably much more.


Furthermore, Notorious B.I.G. claimed he was not in Las Vegas on the night of Shakur's shooting, and he had an alibi. Witnesses swore that B.I.G. was in a studio in New York recording new songs that night. His best friend, rapper Lil' Cease, claimed that they both went back to B.I.G.'s home in New Jersey after the recording session to watch the Tyson fight on television. As Sam Anson points out in his Vibe article, it should have been relatively easy to confirm that "a 6'3", 315-pound black celebrity with an entourage" was present in Las Vegas on the night of the shooting, but the Las Vegas police have been unable to confirm B.I.G.'s whereabouts that night.

The murder of Tupac Shakur remains an unsolved homicide.

So is Notorious B.I.G.'s.