Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't you never know stories of things
Speaker 1: we simply don't know the answer to. Hey, guys, welcome
Speaker 1: to another episode of Thinking Sideways, the podcast the podcast
Speaker 1: in music. Yeah, I'm Devin, joined this week by Steve
Speaker 1: and a departure from normal times where it's Joe and
Speaker 1: then Steve. Yeah, And we're going to talk about an
Speaker 1: unsolved mystery, which I know is shocking to most of you. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty twisty one. It's a pretty big one. Um,
Speaker 1: some of you may or may not know of it.
Speaker 1: You probably know of the people that it involves. I
Speaker 1: really would be shocked if nobody, if somebody didn't know
Speaker 1: who at least one of these people, I would too,
Speaker 1: but hey, who knows. Also, before we get too far
Speaker 1: into it, and by too far, I mean even into
Speaker 1: it at all. This was a listener suggestion from Jody
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Thanks Jody. This is one of those mysteries
Speaker 1: that I had always thought about doing, but always kind
Speaker 1: of thought maybe our listeners wouldn't be interested. But we're
Speaker 1: just gonna do it anyways. You know, honestly, I never
Speaker 1: I never knew the mystery, and I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: far this thing win. No, I didn't either. It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty confident that there's a lot of players in this,
Speaker 1: a lot of moving parts. Yeah, and you know, by
Speaker 1: popular demand, since apparently you guys love really long episodes,
Speaker 1: we're going to try and make this as long as possible.
Speaker 1: In case you didn't read the episode title, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about the unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and
Speaker 1: Biggie Smalls a k a. The Notorious b I G.
Speaker 1: A k a a k a. Christopher Wallace. Yes, a
Speaker 1: lot of a kas in here, Yeah, just every every player.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm gonna for convenience sake, in case you
Speaker 1: might easily get confused, it's going to be Tupac or
Speaker 1: Poc and Biggie or b I G. That's probably a
Speaker 1: good thing. Yeah, And I was, I was reading to
Speaker 1: all the stuff about this, you know, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: Notorious b I G. Right on. Then later on they
Speaker 1: referred to referred to as Biggie Smalls. I'm going, okay,
Speaker 1: is that the same guy? Was? It was confusing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna try and keep it um as consistent
Speaker 1: as possible, but just also as a disclaimer. I am
Speaker 1: a huge hip hop fan, and particularly Wrapped from the
Speaker 1: mid nineties era is kind of where my love started.
Speaker 1: And so sometimes I just start calling people different things
Speaker 1: because I knew them as different things. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I just say I cut my teeth on Wrapping in
Speaker 1: the late eighties early nineties, and the same thing I
Speaker 1: kept catching myself, all right. Uh. And I'm also not
Speaker 1: totally sure how to start this episode because there's so
Speaker 1: many different ways. So I guess there's a lot of
Speaker 1: information out there. Just talk fast. I'll just talk really fast.
Speaker 1: That's not gonna happen. We're gonna I guess we'll start
Speaker 1: by just kind of doing the cliff notes of Tupac
Speaker 1: and Biggie. That's probably good. Plea, you guys. Cool. Let's
Speaker 1: start with Tupac. Tupac grew up in what most would
Speaker 1: call a broken home. His biological father walked out of
Speaker 1: his life when he was I think five, maybe younger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: His mom wasn't um, was addicted to crack, and they
Speaker 1: moved around a lot Cheapac spent a fair amount of
Speaker 1: his childhood around people who had been or were very
Speaker 1: active members of the Black Panthers. See we feel like
Speaker 1: we need to talk about what the Black Panthers are.
Speaker 1: I think everybody knows what the Black Panthers were. I
Speaker 1: think most people know, if you don't Wikipedia, many or
Speaker 1: most of them were also convicted felons. Um, we don't
Speaker 1: really need to talk about that too much. But Cheepac
Speaker 1: was by all accounts also an incredible talent, kind of
Speaker 1: from the start. At twelve, he was cast as Travis
Speaker 1: Younger in a play that some of you may know
Speaker 1: about called A Raisin in the Sun and performed at
Speaker 1: the Apollo Theater in New York City, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal for a twelve year old. When his
Speaker 1: family moved to Baltimore, he attended the Baltimore School for
Speaker 1: the Arts, where he studied things like jazz and ballet.
Speaker 1: He was, in fact the Rat King and the Nutcracker. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also studied poetry and acting and apparently was a
Speaker 1: really talented Shakespearean actor. And I think this description of
Speaker 1: him doesn't sound like what you would expect from a
Speaker 1: kind of gangster apper. It's it's kind of a shame
Speaker 1: you got shot. Obviously a talented guy he was, and
Speaker 1: he also became really good friends at the Baltimore School
Speaker 1: of the Arts with Jada Pinkett now Jada Pinkett Smith,
Speaker 1: will Smith's wife, Willio Smith's mom for those of you
Speaker 1: who are like really young. Tupac moved to California and
Speaker 1: was eventually got a gig as a did roadie for
Speaker 1: the Digital Underground. You guys remember Digital Underground? Yes, actually
Speaker 1: you're kidding, what's no? No, we're not going to go there.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about it later. This ended up
Speaker 1: being really huge because he appeared on a song called
Speaker 1: the Same Song, and that's generally considered to be the
Speaker 1: launch of his career, was being in a Digital Underground
Speaker 1: song called the Same Song. His career, I would say,
Speaker 1: as they say, is history. If you guys don't know
Speaker 1: who Tupac is, I'd be shocked and probably a little offended.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I think Tupac is probably one of the
Speaker 1: most famous musicians of all times. Well, he's one of
Speaker 1: the great selling but I wouldn't. I wouldn't put it
Speaker 1: that way. I mean, people have their own musical interests
Speaker 1: and they don't always bleed over. I mean there's there's
Speaker 1: giant country stars that I have no idea who they are,
Speaker 1: and I've never heard of so I guess that's fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fair. I well, okay, I think that he was
Speaker 1: one of the most famous musicians in the entire world
Speaker 1: of all times. His music has been definitely heard all
Speaker 1: around the world, and his influence on artists is really undeniable.
Speaker 1: It's just a solid fact, and that bridges genres as well.
Speaker 1: It's not just in the hip hop community, though, in fairness,
Speaker 1: it's probably not in the country community so much. Uh.
Speaker 1: And like I said already, I'm in I'm kind of
Speaker 1: a huge fan of Tupacs, and I think that the
Speaker 1: loss of his talent is like a really actual, legitimate tragedy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do believe that he wouldn't have stayed a gangster rapper,
Speaker 1: but I think that, like a lot of guys that
Speaker 1: came from that a scene, originally, he would have spun
Speaker 1: up into something really phenomenal. Yeah, you never know. I
Speaker 1: could have done the whole music thing for a while
Speaker 1: and then become an actor. He actually was an actor.
Speaker 1: There's in a couple of movies. Yeah, and he and
Speaker 1: he was a trained Shakespearean actor and things like that.
Speaker 1: I think that his talent would have been one for
Speaker 1: the ages had he lived past how old. I'm also
Speaker 1: going to go ahead and mention and we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about this when we start talking about Biggie.
Speaker 1: But they were friends, they were very good friends. There's
Speaker 1: this interview with Biggie talking about Tupac after his death,
Speaker 1: and I when I listened to it and watch it particularly,
Speaker 1: I guess watch it the listening, it's, you know, bigg
Speaker 1: he's talking about Tupac and his death. But when I
Speaker 1: watch it, it's like, I don't know, it just seems
Speaker 1: like he really really you can see it on his
Speaker 1: face and his causes and the way he's trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to say the words where an audio
Speaker 1: just uncomfort cross unless he was a great actor to Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that legitimately, I'm sad about the whole thing, yea,
Speaker 1: which what sort of undermines the whole idea that they
Speaker 1: were enemies right ahead of the script here, Yeah a
Speaker 1: little yeah. Anyways, there was a rivalry in the rap
Speaker 1: industry that tore the two apart. And this rivalry can
Speaker 1: be traced pretty much to one man, one night, one speech.
Speaker 1: Though it had been brewing for a while. It had
Speaker 1: been brewing, but really just kind of blew up, uh
Speaker 1: and enter Suge Knights. What a lovely gentleman. Suge Knight is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At the Source Awards, he was awarded something and this
Speaker 1: is how he decided to say his acceptance speech. And
Speaker 1: I've watched videos of this. Literally he walks up to Mike,
Speaker 1: says this, and walks off. He walks up to the
Speaker 1: mic and he says, any artist out there that wants
Speaker 1: to be an artist and stay a star and don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about the executive producers trying to be
Speaker 1: all in the videos on all the records dancing, come
Speaker 1: to death Row and then walks off stage because death
Speaker 1: Row was the name of his label. Death Row was
Speaker 1: the name of the recording company that Suge Knight was
Speaker 1: the executive for at that point. Yeah, because I mean
Speaker 1: that that statement that he made and then you know,
Speaker 1: just troops off stage and the crowd is booing. That
Speaker 1: change the tone of that entire award. Everybody got up
Speaker 1: at that Ord show. Every time it wasn't thank you,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to thank God and my mom and
Speaker 1: whoever suddenly was. No, the East Coast is better, No,
Speaker 1: the West Coast is better. Oh you don't like so
Speaker 1: and so, and it just the whole thing just went down.
Speaker 1: The tune really did. And so let's just to clarify,
Speaker 1: puff Daddy Sean P Diddy Combs, what what are we
Speaker 1: calling him? From here on forward? So we get a
Speaker 1: consistent P Diddy puff Daddy. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk too much. I wasn't I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure. But he ran an East Coast recording label
Speaker 1: called bad Boy, and Suge Knight ran the label that
Speaker 1: Tupac was on. Death Row. Biggy was signed to Bad
Speaker 1: Boy and was I think a kind of a founding
Speaker 1: member Tupac. We'll talk about Tupac and death Row in
Speaker 1: a minute, but suffice to say, for whatever reason, bad
Speaker 1: Boy and death Row we're hating on each other. And
Speaker 1: death Row was in Los Angeles, right, Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: the West Coast. They were the West Coast side of it.
Speaker 1: In the year prior to his death, Tupac, We're sorry,
Speaker 1: We're going back to Tupac. Tupac became increasingly reclusive and
Speaker 1: kind of seemed to be losing it. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of home videos that you can watch of Tupac
Speaker 1: from all different times in his life, and most of
Speaker 1: them are him just being kind of an entertainer and
Speaker 1: being happy. He was laughing, making other people laugh, smiling,
Speaker 1: kind of really just enjoying life and really having fun,
Speaker 1: very outgoing, really just really a born entertainer personality, huge personality.
Speaker 1: And then in the home videos kind of from you
Speaker 1: can see him more agitated. Really. There are some videos
Speaker 1: that he just he's in a studio after having recorded
Speaker 1: sixty seven tracks in a month. I think it was
Speaker 1: where he's just kind of lost it, like he just
Speaker 1: is pacing back and forth and babbling about nonsense and
Speaker 1: just screaming at people and being really annoyed. There's another
Speaker 1: video where you can see him spitting at paparazzi later
Speaker 1: that same month. It was not a good video, and
Speaker 1: many people feel that this decline was fueled by Suge Knight,
Speaker 1: who had kind of been cutting Tupac off from his
Speaker 1: family and friends. How that well, so he had a
Speaker 1: pretty strict contract with Tupac, and remember he made him
Speaker 1: live in he specified the apartment he was supposed to
Speaker 1: live in, right, And you know, we'll talk again more
Speaker 1: about this when we start talking about Suge Knight a
Speaker 1: little bit more but essentially what happened is Suge Knight
Speaker 1: managed to control Tupac's life for a little while through
Speaker 1: a monetary gift kind of that didn't really ever materialize
Speaker 1: really just kind of had him in his grip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really did. Also, Suge Knight was a huge dude
Speaker 1: and had huge influence in the community, huge, huge, violent
Speaker 1: friends too. Yeah, so it would be not a situation
Speaker 1: that you would necessarily push back too hard on. Was
Speaker 1: not a dude that you would want to have an
Speaker 1: argument with because he's like six seven not he's still alive.
Speaker 1: And I meant in that situation where he's the executive
Speaker 1: used to be an NFL football player, he's that of
Speaker 1: that high Yeah, he's yeah, nothing but muscle or was.
Speaker 1: I don't know about now. But so let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and just pause there on Tupac. Cliff notes Tupac's life,
Speaker 1: All right, let's cliff note Biggie's life. Biggie Smalls a
Speaker 1: k A. The Notorious b I G a k A.
Speaker 1: Biggie a k A. Christopher Wallace. Not confusing at all,
Speaker 1: not at all. I'm just gonna call him all of
Speaker 1: those things. Yeah, So Biggest Small was born to a no,
Speaker 1: So Biggie was actually also born to black panther parent,
Speaker 1: but he had a pretty stable home life. His father
Speaker 1: wasn't in the picture really. He was a Jamaican politician
Speaker 1: kind of guy too. But his mom was a kindergarten
Speaker 1: school teacher and she really did anything the Biggie wanted.
Speaker 1: He did not have a hard life. Uh No. She
Speaker 1: she was a pretty strong lady, and she kept control
Speaker 1: of things and she had it all in order. She did.
Speaker 1: And you know, she also made a fine living. And
Speaker 1: she only had one son, and they they just had
Speaker 1: a really strong connection, is from everything I can tell.
Speaker 1: Obviously I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: But although allegedly Biggie started selling drugs when he was twelve,
Speaker 1: that I think the fact is a bit murky. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's on the Wikipedia page, but I've read and heard
Speaker 1: interviews with his friends and family, and most of him
Speaker 1: say that that's not true. Whether that's a them trying
Speaker 1: to protect his reputation though he was a gangster rapper,
Speaker 1: so like, I'm not sure that that protects his reputation
Speaker 1: not much. I'm not sure. I got the feeling that
Speaker 1: it was more of a boast once he became he
Speaker 1: got on the rap scene, it was kind of a
Speaker 1: boast because he made bows in his songs about how
Speaker 1: he lived terrible and he lived in a shack when
Speaker 1: that was not the case at all. Well. He yeah,
Speaker 1: he definitely created a story for the Notorious b I. G. Right,
Speaker 1: So the childhood that Christopher Wallace had was not the
Speaker 1: childhood that the Notorious b I. G. Or Biggie Smalls had.
Speaker 1: Artists do that all the time. It's not unheard of
Speaker 1: at all. He originally attended a private Roman Catholic school,
Speaker 1: but asked to be transferred to a public school partway
Speaker 1: through his time in high school and started to actually
Speaker 1: kind of his His grade stayed good. He had a
Speaker 1: good student but he did fall in with maybe a
Speaker 1: rougher crowd. He ran into trouble with a lot seventeen.
Speaker 1: I spent some time in jail, but he'd been wrapping
Speaker 1: on the streets with his friends and started to gain notoriety.
Speaker 1: He participated in rap battles and things like that and
Speaker 1: just kind of grew in the industry. He signed with
Speaker 1: Bad Boy Records and that that was a kind of
Speaker 1: a founding move. As we talked about It was early
Speaker 1: in the Bad Boy days, and he was kind of
Speaker 1: the bigger talent that they had brought in. He rose
Speaker 1: to prominence over the next few years and became definitely
Speaker 1: one of the most popular artists on Bad Boy. Bad
Speaker 1: Boy had a lot of artists that you know now,
Speaker 1: lots of names that you definitely would recognize. It it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a great incubator for a lot
Speaker 1: of big really was, and they all kind of fueled
Speaker 1: each other's creativity and really did a great job. But
Speaker 1: at the time Biggie Smalls was, you know, in the
Speaker 1: mid to late nineties, while they were alive, Biggie and
Speaker 1: Tupac were really it. It remains to be seen, or
Speaker 1: you know, it would have remained to be seen if
Speaker 1: that would have stayed that way, or if these other
Speaker 1: talents would have kind of come to the scene and
Speaker 1: it would have flushed out a little bit more. But
Speaker 1: they were the two that people really were into. In
Speaker 1: nine four, Biggie and Tupac met. I think they did
Speaker 1: a collaboration and they became really good friends really fast.
Speaker 1: In ninety four, Tupac was with a different recording label
Speaker 1: than he than he wasn't with death row yet, Okay,
Speaker 1: just making sure I had that right. Biggie, it turns out,
Speaker 1: was actually good friends with a lot of unexpected people,
Speaker 1: Like he was really good friends with Shaquille O'Neal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were really good friends. Actually Shaquille O'Neale was on
Speaker 1: his way to meet Biggie when Biggie got killed. But yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of unexpected friendships there. But the friendship, it seems
Speaker 1: between Biggie and Cheepac seemed kind of unpublicized. You know,
Speaker 1: people knew that they were friendly, but I think to
Speaker 1: what degree people didn't really know. Uh. They apparently were
Speaker 1: frequently at each other's houses, they traveled with each other
Speaker 1: all the time, they worked to further each other's career,
Speaker 1: and they were quote constantly together whenever either of them
Speaker 1: were in each other's town. And this comes from firsthand
Speaker 1: accounts of close family and friends of both Biggie and Cheepaw.
Speaker 1: And there's some speculation that the feud that we've kind
Speaker 1: of touched on earlier was actually just for show that
Speaker 1: they never stopped being friends, but that having a big
Speaker 1: old feud between two warring rappers might do something good
Speaker 1: for your career. And right, also, they might also be better,
Speaker 1: like say, if you work for somebody like like sug
Speaker 1: like Sugar and Death Row, you know, and then butt
Speaker 1: your buddies with somebody on Bad Boy Well, you might
Speaker 1: not like that, and you might have to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, for the sake of appearances, pretend to I
Speaker 1: really hate the guy. That's what Bad Boy Well I
Speaker 1: was also going to say is think about there's a
Speaker 1: lot of entertainment industries that do that, and the one
Speaker 1: that I'll point to professional wrestle. Yeah, which is true.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know here, but as a twelve
Speaker 1: year old, I didn't know that Hulk Hogan didn't really
Speaker 1: hate Andre the Giant and the buddies, but it made
Speaker 1: for great publicity. Yeah, so there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: speculation there. There's not a whole lot of bassis to it.
Speaker 1: It's just a sense that some people have gotten that
Speaker 1: it would be hard for something to go so wrong
Speaker 1: that these two really fast friends would have just walked
Speaker 1: away from their friendship. I can see reasons why, but
Speaker 1: I know we're going to get into some of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's just talk about right now. Okay. November, while Tupac
Speaker 1: was recording in a studio, he was shot five times
Speaker 1: and robbed of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, and
Speaker 1: Tupac apparently said that Biggie knew that this was going
Speaker 1: to happen and that he had even planned it. Biggie
Speaker 1: of course denied it and was quoted as saying later that,
Speaker 1: um Tupac quote just he just couldn't really say who
Speaker 1: had something to do with it at the time, So
Speaker 1: Tupac had just kind of leaned in and blamed Biggie,
Speaker 1: I don't know who it is. Well you must know
Speaker 1: who it is. Is that what I am reading that
Speaker 1: to say, I, you know, I interpret it as Biggie saying, uh,
Speaker 1: Tupac knew who did it, but wasn't in a position
Speaker 1: to bad mouth said did it? Like maybe hey, it
Speaker 1: was that crappy manager that he had that ripped him
Speaker 1: off all the time and orchestrated something. Yeah, like a
Speaker 1: guy named Suge Knight. I should maybe maybe we should
Speaker 1: like be taking the scientology route on this one, and
Speaker 1: I should just be like backpedaling possible, because like Suge
Speaker 1: Knight exists in the real world, and I don't really
Speaker 1: want to be on his eight list in this particular situation.
Speaker 1: I think we're saved because this is all based on
Speaker 1: the research, and this is all based on what people
Speaker 1: have given interviews to say. So in this this instance,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried that Joke Knight's gonna know where we are.
Speaker 1: Plus I gave out Joe's address. Yeah. Plus you can't really,
Speaker 1: you can't really sue us because this is all out
Speaker 1: there the public's true. Yeah. Anyway, the rivalry had been
Speaker 1: kind of brewing between East Coast and West Coast rappers,
Speaker 1: and no, it hadn't reached its head. It hadn't reached
Speaker 1: its head at that point. Now. The reason that Tupac
Speaker 1: thought that Biggie knew something about this was because in
Speaker 1: Biggie released a song that you most certainly know of
Speaker 1: his called Big Papa. The B side of this single
Speaker 1: was a song called who Shot You? And this did
Speaker 1: not sit super well with Tupac. He was pretty sure
Speaker 1: that the song was meant to be a taunt. I've
Speaker 1: heard that it was even recorded in the same studio,
Speaker 1: not the like actual physical soundbox studio, but the same
Speaker 1: I don't know what the recording student studio building. I
Speaker 1: guess that Tupac was shot in. This is not true.
Speaker 1: The documents that quote proved that Biggie was recording in
Speaker 1: that studio that night. They were they were faked. I
Speaker 1: had heard that he actually recorded who Shot before the
Speaker 1: shooting actually took place. Yeah, well that's actually the next
Speaker 1: point that I was going to bring up, is that
Speaker 1: the truth of who Shot You is that it was
Speaker 1: actually recorded years prior and it was meant to be
Speaker 1: an intro to a Mary J. Blige album. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if Tupac ever knew that I Gotta be
Speaker 1: Illness with You. I listened to it. I didn't hear
Speaker 1: anything that that I could even remotely connect to Tupac
Speaker 1: in terms of a taunt. Maybe not Tupac specifically, but
Speaker 1: it is about a dude getting shot, and in this
Speaker 1: particular genre music, there's a lot of people getting shot.
Speaker 1: There's a is hubris the right word to to assume
Speaker 1: that they're talking about you? It is exactly the right way. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's so. I guess we so, I guess we
Speaker 1: have the two theories right. Either the feud was real
Speaker 1: or was fake. I think that it was real in
Speaker 1: that Tupac thought it was real, and I think that
Speaker 1: it caused Biggie genuine pain that his friend was kind
Speaker 1: of walking away from the friendship. That's just a total
Speaker 1: personal perception of my own. I don't have anything to
Speaker 1: back it up, but I do think that Tupac was
Speaker 1: being influenced by a lot of people around him and
Speaker 1: probably some drugs around him, and it caused him. It
Speaker 1: caused him to really alienate people who really cared for
Speaker 1: him and forge kind of relationships that maybe didn't have
Speaker 1: his best interests at art. Yeah, I do think that
Speaker 1: maybe Tupac was indulging in drugs a little bit much.
Speaker 1: And the reason I say that is you see him
Speaker 1: in a lot of videos and he's either smoking a
Speaker 1: rollie or he's smoking a joint, And there's there's things
Speaker 1: where he was at a ward shows that everybody was
Speaker 1: puffing and it was not an uncommon thing for people
Speaker 1: to lace pot with angel dust at the time. So
Speaker 1: I really feel like, whether he knew it or not,
Speaker 1: he was on a lot more than he probably intended
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, that's possible. Let's talk about some other
Speaker 1: important stuff. Still doing the kind of housekeeping of this story. Sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: huge backstory, huge backstory. We're gonna get Cliff notes, Babe's
Speaker 1: got a huge backstory. This is actually the scary part
Speaker 1: of the story. Huge backstory. Yes, this is I agree
Speaker 1: with that. It's really important to this story to know
Speaker 1: that death Row Records had on the payroll many quote
Speaker 1: off duty cops as bodyguards. They were working for Was
Speaker 1: it Right Way Security? Was that the security company that
Speaker 1: they were using. Reggie Wright junr who works for death Row,
Speaker 1: He I believe is the one who set up and
Speaker 1: ran the security company because it was it was Right Way.
Speaker 1: I know that, and I'm almost positive it was a
Speaker 1: play on his name. Yeah, So some of these people
Speaker 1: have become really key players in the death of Tupacan Biggie.
Speaker 1: All of the cops were implicated in the Rampart scandal,
Speaker 1: which you didn't know what that is. You don't know.
Speaker 1: This is a thing that happened in the god it
Speaker 1: was the late nineties, right, that exposed more than seventy
Speaker 1: l a p d Cops who were part of the
Speaker 1: anti gang ta force called CRASH, which is an acronym
Speaker 1: for Community Resources against Street Hoodlums, which I love as
Speaker 1: basically really crappy dudes. Yeah, they were sorry, go ahead
Speaker 1: just to say I remember hearing about the time that
Speaker 1: things about like faking evidence and framing people. Yeah, unprovoked shootings,
Speaker 1: unprovoked beating, beatings, planting evidence, framing suspects, stealing then dealing narcotics,
Speaker 1: a bank robbery, perjury, and cover ups. One of the
Speaker 1: key players here is David Mack, who was an officer
Speaker 1: who walked into a bank and stole a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy thousand dollars while he was still a cop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's protecting served. Yeah, he worked for death Row records.
Speaker 1: He was kind of involved in a lot of illegal
Speaker 1: stuff and they were just providing like, you know, protection.
Speaker 1: I mean, they got involved in some really nasty stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There were a couple others that I don't think we
Speaker 1: really need to name. Rampart Lice officers had strong ties
Speaker 1: not only to death Row but also gangs, most notably
Speaker 1: the Piru Bloods, which we're going to talk about in
Speaker 1: just one second. But David Mack, who is currently in jail,
Speaker 1: openly affiliates with the Bloods. So we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the Pirus, which you may or may not
Speaker 1: know about. If you listen to rap music, you've probably
Speaker 1: heard that word before. I thought I did I really
Speaker 1: I thought I did, but it's amazing how much there
Speaker 1: is too the bloods and the crips when you actually
Speaker 1: start diving into it. Yeah, it's actually really really fascinating,
Speaker 1: and I would recommend that you go out and do
Speaker 1: some research on it if you're interested. Essentially, the blood
Speaker 1: and the crips are overarching, I guess, like umbrella gangs
Speaker 1: and there are gang factions all over America and other
Speaker 1: places that are part of that. Right, that's how you
Speaker 1: would That's how I would the corporation and and the
Speaker 1: the individual games would be like the little franchises of
Speaker 1: a business. Is kind of how I would look I
Speaker 1: look at it as kind of a tribal structure, and
Speaker 1: I'd say, you know, you have a you have a small,
Speaker 1: a small plan, and then that clan is smarter as
Speaker 1: part of a larger tribe, and that larger tribes is
Speaker 1: in turn part of a larger tribal organization. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's I've heard it actually described from some people. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it was. Maybe it was even like Kendrick
Speaker 1: Lamar was talking about how he would he would kind
Speaker 1: of describe it as tribes in Africa, because that's kind
Speaker 1: of how it is. But to your point, Steve, the
Speaker 1: reason that I would say that's not true is that
Speaker 1: Bloods are the overarching international corporation. As I tried to
Speaker 1: put in, Hiu is a local family, gang family. They're
Speaker 1: actually referred to as a mob family sometimes, and I
Speaker 1: had never heard that either until I watched some stuff
Speaker 1: and would that makes so much sense? Yeah, So they
Speaker 1: still exists, this group. They are still have pretty strong
Speaker 1: ties to many rappers that are famous and really really rich.
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, it will probably not surprise
Speaker 1: very many people. Suge Knight is a very very well
Speaker 1: known and very very outspoken member of the Piru family.
Speaker 1: Did did either of you ever think to look to
Speaker 1: see what that stands for? Yeah? I don't think. Oh
Speaker 1: it's an acronym. It stands for pimps in red uniforms.
Speaker 1: That's from the reason the stuff that I read, it's
Speaker 1: pimps in red uniforms, p I R you and crips. This.
Speaker 1: I don't know where this came from or how somebody
Speaker 1: came up with this, but crip is Piru spelled backwards
Speaker 1: if you turn to you on its side to make
Speaker 1: it a c According to the like Urban dictionary and
Speaker 1: stuff that I and they're not just urban dictionary, but
Speaker 1: there was a number of things that I was reading through.
Speaker 1: That's where that came from. Is that's why you hear
Speaker 1: piru when you hear crips, and they're they're the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's just a different way of saying it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not utterly creative, but it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: That's interesting thought that the crips got their name because
Speaker 1: they like to shoot their their opponents in the knees
Speaker 1: and cripple them. No, really, that's not a real thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I really hope already shouldn't get it back to
Speaker 1: you guys next week. You can come back to you
Speaker 1: next week about it. Yeah, that's I think all of
Speaker 1: the housekeeping. I think. Do you guys feel like there's
Speaker 1: any more backstory that needs to be talked about before
Speaker 1: we start talking about the actual story that we're talking
Speaker 1: about that we're half an hour in. Oh no, let's
Speaker 1: muddy this some more. Let's just let's just add some
Speaker 1: more facts. Yeah, what else you want to talk about?
Speaker 1: There's so much, so complicated, and it's just it's confusing
Speaker 1: after a while, so many names involved Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of names involved, there's a lot of players involved,
Speaker 1: and keeping it straight, there's not Honestly, there's not one
Speaker 1: good source. I can't say, go check out this thing.
Speaker 1: This is, you know, of course, a bunch of research
Speaker 1: from a bunch of different sources. I think there are
Speaker 1: a couple of documentaries that do a pretty good job
Speaker 1: lotch ringing all of the information together, but you have
Speaker 1: to watch all of them because they all have different
Speaker 1: information that different all have a different agenda. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was my hard part. I watched two or three documentaries
Speaker 1: on this because, as we talked about, there's just so
Speaker 1: much going on. And I was telling Joe and I
Speaker 1: were talking about this earlier before we started recording, that
Speaker 1: was the only way I could keep these names straight
Speaker 1: is I could actually get a face to the name
Speaker 1: through an interview or other people. And still still I would.
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of the second or third
Speaker 1: one going wait who Yeah. I actually ran into that
Speaker 1: when I was, you know, kind of writing the script
Speaker 1: for this and what a couple of documentaries and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I really want to talk about that
Speaker 1: one guy they interviewed, uh uh oh, no, what's the
Speaker 1: guy who wasn't how was he related? And why did
Speaker 1: I care about him? I just had the face in
Speaker 1: front of me, you know. So let's just try to
Speaker 1: stumble our way through this story. Okay, So where are
Speaker 1: we started again. We're gonna start September seven, so we're
Speaker 1: starting with what We're going back to Chupac. Okay, We're
Speaker 1: gonna start at the beginning of the events. So September
Speaker 1: seven might be a date that someone recognized for reasons
Speaker 1: not because of the thing we're about to talk about.
Speaker 1: Because it was a night in boxing history, actually, which
Speaker 1: is fairly controversial. People were so angry for paying for
Speaker 1: HBO pay per view. It was the championship UH in
Speaker 1: America between Bruce Selden and Mike Tyson. This fight was
Speaker 1: pretty controversial for a number reason ends, but mostly because
Speaker 1: it seemed really fixed because Tyson knocked Selban out in
Speaker 1: just one minute and forty nine seconds for the heavyweight
Speaker 1: the heavyweight title. I haven't I didn't ever watch it.
Speaker 1: I don't really care to watch boxing, but I read
Speaker 1: I read an account that said that Tyson hit him
Speaker 1: in the head, but it looked like he kind of
Speaker 1: just grazed him. At like a minute thirty and he
Speaker 1: goes down and then he gets up and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: says no, no, I can go. And then Tyson hits
Speaker 1: him one more time and the dude gets back up
Speaker 1: but he can't stay standing, and so the ref is
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, I know, we're done here, which to
Speaker 1: me and so many people paid what like a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars or something to watch this. H yeah,
Speaker 1: I was supposed to go a really long time. It
Speaker 1: lasted less than two minutes, to be honest. I played
Speaker 1: Mike Tyson's punch out on the Nintendo and Mike had
Speaker 1: hit pretty hard. Yeah, I don't. I actually think if
Speaker 1: they if they had actually fixed the fight, then they
Speaker 1: would have stretched it out for a while. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this fight was orchestrated. This is a fun little fact here.
Speaker 1: This fight was orchestrated by a man named James Rosemond,
Speaker 1: who was also known as Jimmy Henchman. Really yes, I
Speaker 1: mean it's not his real name, but times people get
Speaker 1: dumb names, right. Sug Night's real name isn't Sug, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he goes by Sug, which I suppose was at
Speaker 1: one point sugar. I it's spelled s u g E
Speaker 1: in case anybody was wondering, that's how you say that?
Speaker 1: Now everybody I can. I can hear them all going,
Speaker 1: oh that dude. Yeah, for once, we're not mispronouncing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I did my research. Shuge night. Yeah. Okay, So
Speaker 1: tupacin Shug, we've just been saying suge and now thinking
Speaker 1: I want to say it that way. No, but Tupac
Speaker 1: and Sug we're at the fight and Kevin Hackey, who's
Speaker 1: one of the off duty l a p D officers
Speaker 1: who is actually now an ex con and bounty hunter,
Speaker 1: was asked to tell Tupac that a member of the
Speaker 1: rival gang, the Crips, was at the casino. This is
Speaker 1: before the fight. This was This was before the fight
Speaker 1: actually took place. The boxing match hadn't started. They were
Speaker 1: just in the casino having a good time. Yes. Hackey
Speaker 1: was also asked to implicate the man the Crip in
Speaker 1: a robbery that had happened earlier that year from the
Speaker 1: Piru family. Turns out, some Crips walked into a foot
Speaker 1: locker and robbed a bunch of members of the Piru
Speaker 1: So that's cool. This guy was named Orlando Anderson, but
Speaker 1: was known as Baby Lane. I wish that I had
Speaker 1: cool names like this Tupac. We really need to give
Speaker 1: ourselves some awesome monikers. Mine would be d Unit Shorty
Speaker 1: a k A. D Unit. It's true, that's mine. I've
Speaker 1: got mine. Yeah, you can meet Jay Dogg and Steve
Speaker 1: can be Baldy McGee. That's the whitest name I ever heard.
Speaker 1: I know what my name is gonna be. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be notorious Joe. That's good. Yeah, it's actually really good. Yeah, notorious. Okay, okay, notorious.
Speaker 1: This guy Orlando was in or Anderson, Lando Anderson. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call mem Anderson sorry by his last name. He's
Speaker 1: the only one. Tupac sees him and just attacks him
Speaker 1: because Hackey had told him, because Hackey told him he
Speaker 1: was you know, part of it. Tupac was probably drunk
Speaker 1: and high and angry, and even if if he wasn't,
Speaker 1: he was prone to fly off the handle at that
Speaker 1: point pretty quickly. Yeah, at that point definitely. So just
Speaker 1: to be straight, here was Tupac ever officially a blood
Speaker 1: and he was he was there for the music what
Speaker 1: I can tell, But by affiliation, I think that he
Speaker 1: had to stand by the quote unquote family. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a member of the mob, but I've got
Speaker 1: to respect the mob kind of mentality. Obviously, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be sad since your boss, Shug is a crip. You
Speaker 1: kind of got on or excuse me of blood straight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Shug joined in in the beating. It's pretty much just
Speaker 1: a beating. There's surveillance tapes of it. I watched it. Shug,
Speaker 1: who was on probation at the time, kicks Anderson a
Speaker 1: couple of times in the head. In the head. This
Speaker 1: was obviously a violation of parole and he was eventually
Speaker 1: sent to jail for his parole violation. After the fight
Speaker 1: that they had the beating, they watched the fight the
Speaker 1: other beating, and then Tupac got into Sugars car with him.
Speaker 1: They were going to go to uh death Row owned
Speaker 1: club called Clubs six six two six six two is
Speaker 1: not wasn't actually owned by death Row. I think death
Speaker 1: Row made a lot of claims or Sugar made a
Speaker 1: lot of claims that they were in ownership of it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think from the stuff that I've heard
Speaker 1: that they actually owned it. They just went there a
Speaker 1: lot and spread that room. That's fair I guess what
Speaker 1: I've always seen and just assumed was true is not.
Speaker 1: It did never say they owned it. It It just that
Speaker 1: it was a death row club, and that's yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a club they went to, but they made allusions
Speaker 1: to ownership. That's fair because well they thought they owned
Speaker 1: the place. So Shug was driving his car and Tupac
Speaker 1: was in the passenger seat. Well, yeah, that the weird
Speaker 1: thing is it was only those two in the car.
Speaker 1: Normally have godards, You've got your bodyguards with you and
Speaker 1: I it was odd. Yeah, Actually his bodyguard Frank Alexander
Speaker 1: TWOPOCX bodyguard, Sorry it was it was meant to be
Speaker 1: in the car with them, but Tupac at the last moment,
Speaker 1: right before leaving, actually asked Frank if he would get
Speaker 1: in the car with Tupac's then fiance. Oh that's right,
Speaker 1: said under the guys of saying in case we need
Speaker 1: more cars to leave the club. But that's a weird
Speaker 1: little tidbit about this story, right that at the very
Speaker 1: one of two PACs very last acts in life was
Speaker 1: to tell his bodyguard, na, go hang out with my
Speaker 1: fiance instead, right, Yeah, So that that I think is
Speaker 1: an action that does put a lot of question marks
Speaker 1: in people's heads. Well, I didn't, didn't should have a
Speaker 1: bodyguard or two. I don't he did, but I don't
Speaker 1: know that. I was not on the impression that they
Speaker 1: necessarily rode with him. There there was a security team,
Speaker 1: there was there was security, Yeah, but they mostly it
Speaker 1: was kind of like a caravan entourage sort of situation.
Speaker 1: They all had big suburbans that they would drive. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like the president, you know. And it was
Speaker 1: my impression that sug frequently did not have them in
Speaker 1: the car with him, that they would drive in other
Speaker 1: cars in a kind of caravan situation makes sense. Sugar
Speaker 1: was pulled over because the dummy didn't have license plates
Speaker 1: on his car because it's brand new. It was, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was brand new. I don't think so his license
Speaker 1: plates were Actually this was the bit that's dumb. They
Speaker 1: were in his trunk. Oh so it wasn't that new
Speaker 1: know that he had them. Why did he not put
Speaker 1: them on? I don't know? Again, Yeah, no, I mean
Speaker 1: I think that this is where stuff that sends red
Speaker 1: flags that for people starts to happen. Right, Why did
Speaker 1: Tupac tell his bodyguard, hey, right, in a different car,
Speaker 1: Why did Sugar not have license plates on his car?
Speaker 1: It takes like two seconds and three bolts, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like a huge ordeal to put your license
Speaker 1: plates on, particularly if you are probably gonna get pulled
Speaker 1: over since you don't have license plates on. So they
Speaker 1: got pulled over, but they were released free to go.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the term they proved they had
Speaker 1: the plates. Sorry, they have a chance. Probably handed a
Speaker 1: hundred dollar bill to somebody and went on their autograph
Speaker 1: something something like that. They drove just a couple yards
Speaker 1: down the road and stopped at a red light. Now
Speaker 1: it's important to point out to everybody this is all
Speaker 1: in Vegas, Vegas. But this is not on the Vegas Strip,
Speaker 1: because remember the Tyson fight has gotten out, so the
Speaker 1: strip is a parking lot. Yeah, so they're not on
Speaker 1: the strip. They're off the strip at this point. Yeah. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: the car pulled up to the stoplight, and a car
Speaker 1: with two women pulled up on the left side of
Speaker 1: the car, and Tupac was standing in the sun roof.
Speaker 1: You know, you stand up in the sunroof like you're
Speaker 1: going to prom or whatever. Um, and he apparently had
Speaker 1: a conversation with the women and invited them to the club,
Speaker 1: and then I guess sat back down, is my understanding.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of recreations of what happened that night.
Speaker 1: Some of them include the fact that he was standing
Speaker 1: up and talking to women. Others don't, but he did
Speaker 1: sit back down, and a car, a white Cadillac, an
Speaker 1: older model white Cadillac, pulled to the right side of
Speaker 1: Shook's car. The windows were rolled down, and nobody's quite
Speaker 1: sure how many people were in the car, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear that somebody I think it was in the
Speaker 1: back driver's side side right, so the left side of
Speaker 1: the car. So it's important to note, because you're saying
Speaker 1: somebody in the rear of the Cadillac, is that when
Speaker 1: they were at the stop light, shooks car was not
Speaker 1: the first car in line. What are their bodyguards cars
Speaker 1: was in front, then Shug's car and then another bodyguard.
Speaker 1: So they're there too. There one car length away from
Speaker 1: the intersection, which is why this car is able to
Speaker 1: go where it goes. Yeah, So it goes right next
Speaker 1: to them, and driver's side American driver's side, right left
Speaker 1: side rolls down and just opens fire through the passenger
Speaker 1: side passenger side of Sug's car, Chupac. It's pretty clear
Speaker 1: was the main target of this attack. He was hit
Speaker 1: in the chest, pelvis, and right hand and right thigh.
Speaker 1: Shug claims that he had taken a bullet to the head,
Speaker 1: big fat liar. He said that he took a bullet
Speaker 1: to the head and that it was embedded in his skull,
Speaker 1: and the doctors had told him that it was too
Speaker 1: dangerous to operate to take it out, so he just
Speaker 1: had been in there. In interviews, there's but it was
Speaker 1: really just a scratch. Well, a bullet grazed the side
Speaker 1: of his head glass flying glass. Yeah, So what what
Speaker 1: makes me curious about this is that one is not
Speaker 1: neither one of the two cars fill of bodyguards one
Speaker 1: after the white cattle as they did, actually one of
Speaker 1: them did, did they? I haven't seen. I hadn't seen.
Speaker 1: Everybody I've read is focused on what happened with Sugar's car, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's my understanding that one of the bodyguard
Speaker 1: cars pursued the white car, but that nobody ever really
Speaker 1: heard from the occupants. I think they just lost them.
Speaker 1: That was my sense. Probably didn't react right away either,
Speaker 1: because what the hell is going on? Right? Yeah, your
Speaker 1: boss just got shot, so sug reacts poorly. That's a
Speaker 1: good way to put it. Suspiciously panic in just blind panic.
Speaker 1: He just started driving. He drove towards the strip, he said,
Speaker 1: because he didn't know if there were more attackers, and
Speaker 1: he thought maybe it'd be safer on the strip. Anyways,
Speaker 1: he's not doing a great job driving. He run into
Speaker 1: a bunch of signs and lamp posts and finally breaks
Speaker 1: down a couple of blocks away. He drives like Alicia's
Speaker 1: Silverstone includes exactly. It's worse than that, actually, somehow worse
Speaker 1: than that. Chupac was rushed to the hospital put on
Speaker 1: life support. One of the bullets had entered his long
Speaker 1: Chupac was heavily sedated, and they actually had to eventually
Speaker 1: put him in a coma because he kept trying to
Speaker 1: get out of bed. He's a badass, for real, the
Speaker 1: way you have to put him in a coma, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't stay in bed, so they just put him
Speaker 1: in a coma, and then six days later he died
Speaker 1: in the hospital after I guess they did CPR for
Speaker 1: a really long time, and his mom was just like,
Speaker 1: not just just call it. And then he was cremated,
Speaker 1: like suspiciously quickly after that the next day. There must
Speaker 1: have been an autopsy, right, No, because he was in
Speaker 1: the hospital. They knew what, right, they knew what was
Speaker 1: going on with his body. They were trying to save
Speaker 1: when he was in the hospital for six days, so
Speaker 1: they knew what was going on with him. They didn't like,
Speaker 1: they need to do an autopsy, so they just cremated.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised by that because that that in cases of
Speaker 1: murder than autopsy was mandatory in this case. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's true because they knew it. Well. I don't
Speaker 1: think an autopsy would really feel anything. Well, No, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know it is. It is. Sometimes it seems like
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be mandatory because obviously something. Oh no, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of his death certificate. Never mind, I'm sorry, there's
Speaker 1: stuff about his death certificate. But I yeah, I I
Speaker 1: don't know why there wasn't an autopsy. Yeah, because even right,
Speaker 1: it's your understanding too, that there wasn't an autopsy. I
Speaker 1: didn't just miss that, know what I was thinking of.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, oh, wait, there was it,
Speaker 1: but no, what I was looking at was his death, Curt,
Speaker 1: I don't think there was, and I'm freely going to
Speaker 1: admit that I could have just missed it, but I
Speaker 1: will say he was cremated really quick. I think I
Speaker 1: think it was even within twelve hours. Four hours. I
Speaker 1: definitely twenty four, but I think it was within twelve even.
Speaker 1: And I don't I really don't think that there's anybody
Speaker 1: who's totally satisfied with the investigation into tupox death. I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody in this world. The official line is
Speaker 1: that it was members of the Compton Crips trying to
Speaker 1: avenge the beating of Anderson that had happened just prior
Speaker 1: to the boxing match in the casino. The second part
Speaker 1: of this official line is that the gun used was
Speaker 1: paid for by Biggie Smalls, actually the one of the
Speaker 1: lead investigators, and then some investigative reporters that did some
Speaker 1: heavy digging. Faith Evans was married to Biggie and she
Speaker 1: recalls Biggie calling her the night that Chupac was shot
Speaker 1: and he was crying. Yeah. She said that he didn't
Speaker 1: have hate in his heart for anybody, And then a
Speaker 1: few nights later Biggie saw Snoop Doggie Dog I'm sorry, uh,
Speaker 1: And Snoop recalls Biggie telling him that he never hated Chupac,
Speaker 1: and by most accounts, Biggie was like very heartbroken about
Speaker 1: the death of Chupac about six months go by w
Speaker 1: correct Now Snoop was with which label? Again, Snoop was
Speaker 1: on death Row? Okay, there was a mass exodus that happened,
Speaker 1: and he was one of the people who kind of
Speaker 1: bail started that what how did you how did you
Speaker 1: how did you like have a mass excess from death
Speaker 1: Row and not get murdered by my sugar? Really though,
Speaker 1: that is a good question. Well, and there's some stuff
Speaker 1: and I think that there's some leadership issues that come
Speaker 1: up here very shortly. Well, I know we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into some of that later, Am I wrong? I mean
Speaker 1: probably we will if you want. Well, basically, you know,
Speaker 1: Suge Knight because of his prol violation for beating the
Speaker 1: crap out of Anderson and goes to jail. Did so
Speaker 1: it's suddenly easy to get away from the boss when
Speaker 1: the boss is locked up. Yeah, I can't, except people
Speaker 1: like that have connections. They can still like you know,
Speaker 1: or or are you rubbed out from behind bars? Do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about connections. Suge Knight really creased
Speaker 1: me out with the connections to that he has. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen the interviews of that guy. Well, he's
Speaker 1: in jail, he's spoken, a giant, fat cuban cigar, has
Speaker 1: a walking cane, and it's not not maximum security, and
Speaker 1: it's not you know, the cheapy Charlie. We give this
Speaker 1: out just because we have to. It's like a nice
Speaker 1: looking solid wooden things that could break. Yeah, that guy
Speaker 1: had connections, because I mean, it was amazing to me
Speaker 1: to watch an interview with him and he's just puffing
Speaker 1: on a cigar like he's the Godfather. Especially. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I'd really like to see changed about
Speaker 1: our prison system because it's like the worst criminals, the
Speaker 1: ones who deserve to be punished the most harshly, always
Speaker 1: have the best time in prison. Yes, somehow that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: six months go by, I think that's where we were. Yes,
Speaker 1: six months go by, Biggie had taken a bit of
Speaker 1: a step back from the scene. There's this great quote
Speaker 1: from him where he just says, my mom, my son,
Speaker 1: my daughter, my family, my friends, They're what mattered to me.
Speaker 1: Now it seems as though the death of tupac In
Speaker 1: a couple other things that happened to him during that
Speaker 1: time really affected him. So that's he probably realized how
Speaker 1: dangerous things were becoming. Well, I think that there was that,
Speaker 1: and also there was just so much violence around him,
Speaker 1: and he he did go to jail a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and he had some charges against him, and some bad
Speaker 1: stuff happened. He was actually in a car accident. His
Speaker 1: cousin was driving a car, and it was so bad
Speaker 1: that he was confined to a wheelchair for a number
Speaker 1: of months. Right, Yeah, he shattered one of his legs.
Speaker 1: So I think that all of that kind of contributed
Speaker 1: to Biggie thinking maybe this was not a great place.
Speaker 1: And he had, you know, he did, he had He
Speaker 1: was married and he had two kids, and by all accounts,
Speaker 1: he was pretty happy. Although there's some rumors about him
Speaker 1: having an affair with Little Kim, but that's not here. There.
Speaker 1: In February, you know, that's kind of funny. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: February seven, Biggie went to l A to promote his
Speaker 1: new album, which included the song Hypnotized, which is the
Speaker 1: other song you definitely know by him. I was going
Speaker 1: to try and imitate that like the intro song You're
Speaker 1: going to get Please come on, we need another another
Speaker 1: song to mix for we need another rap song. So
Speaker 1: when did he cut wood Shook? Not for nothing? But
Speaker 1: the album he was promoting was called Life After Death.
Speaker 1: What's Kyle's prop? On March eight, Biggie was a presenter
Speaker 1: at the Soul Train Music Awards. He left the event
Speaker 1: in a suburban driven by I think a bodyguard, and
Speaker 1: I think his cousin Lilci was in the backseat. I
Speaker 1: think that's my understanding. Yeah, Joe was just laughing at
Speaker 1: the Biggie and then little everybody got it. They attended
Speaker 1: an after party and then left. About twelve d a m.
Speaker 1: The suv stopped at her at light and a dark
Speaker 1: sedan pulled next to the car. The driver rolled down
Speaker 1: his window and fired open fired uh full. Four bullets
Speaker 1: hit Biggie and the shooter was seen and a composite
Speaker 1: sketch was made and I forget the car was a
Speaker 1: It was a black sedan. It was a black or
Speaker 1: very dark and PAULA, yeah, yeah, yeah. Biggie was of
Speaker 1: course rushed to the hospital and of four bullets only
Speaker 1: one did Lasting day Okay, well lasting damage. I mean
Speaker 1: it killed him. It was fatal, but well, he would
Speaker 1: have easily survived the other one, so had this one not. Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: there was one flash wound in his groin groin area,
Speaker 1: which probably wouldn't have been super fun to heal, but
Speaker 1: they would have all healed. You know. It was like
Speaker 1: one in his arm and one in his thigh, but
Speaker 1: the other one went through his pal I was went
Speaker 1: in his hip pretty much. Yeah. And there's a picture
Speaker 1: I have you guys have in the script in front
Speaker 1: of you of the man who did it. Who, honestly,
Speaker 1: do you know who he looks like? To me? No
Speaker 1: is Andre from Outcast right does, especially in the like
Speaker 1: hey video or a little bit of Mr Belvet here,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of little Yeah, but he looks
Speaker 1: so much like I'll show you get the picture later
Speaker 1: because it looks exactly like that to me. He's wearing
Speaker 1: a bow tie. I don't think so. I think we
Speaker 1: would know about that by now. There are, of course,
Speaker 1: a lot of theories. There are a lot um I've
Speaker 1: picked a couple of my favorites, and you know, as
Speaker 1: with these stories, many of these just kind of fall
Speaker 1: under the same umbrella, and the details are just different
Speaker 1: and kind of boring. So let's get into them. Let's
Speaker 1: start with gang violence. There's a lot of one. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of them. Why bullet pointed these, and
Speaker 1: I think four of them are gang violence of different
Speaker 1: varieties the subtext because I wouldn't know what was going on.
Speaker 1: So just gang violence, the mundane kind that the Crips
Speaker 1: did in fact retaliate by shooting at Tupac, and then
Speaker 1: Biggie was shot for also gang related reasons. Because Biggie
Speaker 1: was Biggie was again affiliated with which gang, if any,
Speaker 1: the Crips. The Crips mostly just didn't that bad Boy
Speaker 1: was affiliated with the Crips, not because Biggie himself was affiliated.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of the practice of making your blood,
Speaker 1: which is your initiation kill. Yeah, that'd be a that's
Speaker 1: pretty big initiation kill. Though. Hey, if you want to
Speaker 1: make a statement and you want to come in gangbusters,
Speaker 1: you find the biggest guy you can and you kill you.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that's what's happening, but I'm just looking
Speaker 1: at like, if this is just random gang violence and hey,
Speaker 1: you got to kill somebody. Hey, look there's Biggie Smalls
Speaker 1: get him. I'm gonna be honest, honest with you. If
Speaker 1: this were initiation, we like somebody everybody be bragging about that.
Speaker 1: The dude who did it would be telling everybody. But
Speaker 1: there's also the fact that a lot of the guys
Speaker 1: that are involved in this case, we're dead within two years. True,
Speaker 1: So it's quite possible that somebody did and a couple
Speaker 1: of dudes knew who it was, but they really had
Speaker 1: to shut their mouths and then they subsequently die. Then
Speaker 1: we don't know now. And my understanding of this too
Speaker 1: is that this is a really professionally done hit. It
Speaker 1: wasn't some random, like little gangbanger thing. Yes, because I
Speaker 1: mean they had other cars that basically like they had
Speaker 1: was the Toyota land Cruiser that did a U turn
Speaker 1: and and it's basically separated the cars from the from
Speaker 1: the bodyguards car and another one that blocked him in
Speaker 1: the front. Were you gonna talk about that, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm not well. And when we're just talking about these theories,
Speaker 1: are we talking about Tupac specifically, or we talking about
Speaker 1: Biggie specifically, or are we just talking in general for
Speaker 1: the whole however, long we've been talking so far, well
Speaker 1: in this one, in the like it's just general gang violence.
Speaker 1: We're talking about both, okay, because I gotta agree with Joe,
Speaker 1: which is the whole One of the things I read
Speaker 1: is the killing of Tupac follows one a lot of
Speaker 1: government agencies like the CIA and places that will go
Speaker 1: overseas and to do a hit on somebody that they
Speaker 1: need to take out. There was a lot of steps
Speaker 1: that were followed, the separating of the vehicles and kind
Speaker 1: of like you were talking about, the blocking into the vehicle.
Speaker 1: On the other side, there was a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: which again I I don't think it was just random
Speaker 1: gang violence. I don't know what it was, but it's pinky.
Speaker 1: That's actually one of the reasons I want to talk
Speaker 1: about later. But white people think that Suge Knight did
Speaker 1: it remind me while we're talking about Sue Knight that
Speaker 1: we want to talk about that because it's a good
Speaker 1: and but it's also not unfair to say that. One
Speaker 1: thing that I haven't mentioned, and I know you wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about, is that the FBI
Speaker 1: was following Hupac and Biggie both and has pictures of
Speaker 1: Biggie the night that he was shot, like getting into
Speaker 1: his car, and they were they were following him. So
Speaker 1: it's not the most outlandish thing in the world to
Speaker 1: say that maybe it was a government hit job. It's weird, well,
Speaker 1: and it's it's weird because if they have photos of
Speaker 1: him going to the event, leaving the event, going to
Speaker 1: the next event, leaving the next event, then where the
Speaker 1: hell were they when the shootings happen? His mom asks
Speaker 1: that same question, does but there's people who asked that
Speaker 1: for Tupac as well, because he was under surveillance and
Speaker 1: and so that's that's the really really odd thing. There's
Speaker 1: the I know that I think we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: this later, but might as well just do it now
Speaker 1: because we're talking about yeah, is there's there's conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna call it a conspiracy theory. There are
Speaker 1: a couple this, I know. The one you want to
Speaker 1: talk about now is that this was that both of
Speaker 1: these were government hits. Y. Here's the background on this
Speaker 1: is that, Okay, Tupac comes from a family that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's got ties with the Black Panthers. He's a very
Speaker 1: persuasive figure, He's a very very big figure for the
Speaker 1: young black community. So people say that certain elements in
Speaker 1: the government were worried that he was going to become
Speaker 1: the next Martin Luther King, the next Malcolm X maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know who. They thought he was gonna combat
Speaker 1: they had. There was enormous fear, so they decided to
Speaker 1: take him out rather than have this urban uprising. I've
Speaker 1: heard that for Tupac. What I don't understand is how
Speaker 1: that relates to Biggie. Well, so this is, uh, I
Speaker 1: don't see what Biggie was doing. Well, so this is
Speaker 1: echoed throughout a lot of a lot of the theories.
Speaker 1: You'll hear this that the Biggie death is a coincidental
Speaker 1: cover up of whatever happened to Tupac, right, that it
Speaker 1: was a lean into the feud, and that it was
Speaker 1: convenient if you would just off Biggie then it would
Speaker 1: look like retaliation for Biggie killing even though Tupac even
Speaker 1: that was more or less the same person who kill
Speaker 1: them both. Right, So that that that you can hear
Speaker 1: that echo throughout many different, many different theories that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about, is that the reason that Biggie
Speaker 1: died is because Tupac died and that it was easier
Speaker 1: to explain and the aftermath that oh, Biggie had to
Speaker 1: pack offt and then the Piru family had Biggie off
Speaker 1: and then yeah, that that doesn't hold. I agree. I
Speaker 1: absolutely agree with that. I agree it's nonsensical to commit
Speaker 1: another murder six months later to cover up another. I
Speaker 1: mostly agree. There's one theory that I think it fits
Speaker 1: nicely into, but the rest of them I totally agree
Speaker 1: with as far as as government assassination theory now because
Speaker 1: I don't think there was any threat there was going
Speaker 1: to become the next Malfolm whatever. And also again, you're
Speaker 1: talking about a bunch of an industry where people kill
Speaker 1: each other all the time, So why go to the
Speaker 1: trouble and the risk of murdering somebody when he's probably
Speaker 1: gonna get murdered anyway. People, because people point to our
Speaker 1: our past vice president who is worse pronouncing words than
Speaker 1: we are, Dan Quayle, who was giving speeches about the
Speaker 1: read of urban youth and the rap industry, and people
Speaker 1: point to that as an executive office mandate to quell this.
Speaker 1: That's but that. But you gotta remember too that Dan
Speaker 1: Quill left office three January. But if it's an executive
Speaker 1: level thing, I mean no, I think the whole thing
Speaker 1: is it's hair brain. Yeah, that that's what it is.
Speaker 1: But that's where I know it stems from, at least
Speaker 1: from the research I've seen. Yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker 1: There's also some conspiracy theories that the Illuminati killed them.
Speaker 1: You're laughing, but it's true and in fairness right. Tupac's
Speaker 1: last album was called The don Killum, Killer Kill Him.
Speaker 1: I can't actually say it, Kati. Yeah, the seven Day Theory.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I got that. Yeah, it's a play
Speaker 1: on Illuminati. Yeah, I think I like that. That's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Yeah. That was his first or his last.
Speaker 1: That was the title of his album with a month
Speaker 1: after he died. Yeah, it was released prematurely, was released
Speaker 1: earlier than it was meant to be released. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk all about this, Okay, second, but I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, we do have to mention
Speaker 1: that the Illuminati might have done it, even though that's dumb.
Speaker 1: They didn't. They didn't do it, they didn't. Why not?
Speaker 1: I like it just kidding. So the next gang violence
Speaker 1: theory is we've talked about a little bit already, right,
Speaker 1: is that Biggie, for whatever reason, had Tupac killed death
Speaker 1: row in turn, had Biggie killed in retaliation. I think
Speaker 1: that's done for a number of reasons. Not one of
Speaker 1: them notwithstanding is that, like, I really do believe that
Speaker 1: Biggie had nothing but love for Tupac. You know where
Speaker 1: they came from, right, Yeah, the l A time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the l A times, like made stuff up, so much
Speaker 1: of a lot of cover up. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: make up, made stuff up. And that's where it from
Speaker 1: his I think somebody they put out an article from
Speaker 1: a source they couldn't disclose that he offered a million dollars.
Speaker 1: And by the way, according to the story, he was
Speaker 1: also in Las Vegas at the time, which he absolutely was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably not. Um next theory is gang violence, but this
Speaker 1: time with p DDE Tough Daddy, Shawn Colms, you know
Speaker 1: however you want to call him. He apparently he was
Speaker 1: also he owned bad Boy Records, Right, it still does.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's still a thing. I'm not
Speaker 1: totally sure, I'll be honest with you. He had Tupac
Speaker 1: off because reasons and biggieming by reasons. You mean, we
Speaker 1: don't know. And then death Row had Biggie killed in retaliation,
Speaker 1: this time with a lot of the l a p
Speaker 1: D corruption that it was. It was essentially that Suge
Speaker 1: Knight paid the cop to do it. Yeah, bigg shooting,
Speaker 1: but an undercover polace or off the book shooting. That
Speaker 1: was it really interesting to see. Um, I can't remember
Speaker 1: which l A cop it was, but as far as
Speaker 1: as far as as big E goes Biggie goes, I
Speaker 1: mean there was one of the one of the cops
Speaker 1: that was involved with this soul thing. Actually wasn't it?
Speaker 1: Was it Hacky? I think it might have been Hacky,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. No, Hackey was the one. Was
Speaker 1: one of the ones that said he knew who had
Speaker 1: done it, but it was I think it was David Mac.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure, yeah right, yeah, yeah, And so he
Speaker 1: was an l A p D officer but he worked
Speaker 1: for he was the one who did the bank robbery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his his his handle was d Mac and he
Speaker 1: owned a black and Palaea. Interestingly enough, the l A
Speaker 1: p D never bothered to even take a close look
Speaker 1: at that car. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, there's one of
Speaker 1: many things that they didn't bother there to do. That's true.
Speaker 1: They didn't bother to interview so many l A p
Speaker 1: D and the Las Vegas p D. They both kind
Speaker 1: of screwed the pooch on these cases. They didn't bother
Speaker 1: to investigate a lot of people, and I think it's
Speaker 1: just because they had biases against those people. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's a racial thing. I'm saying that it's you're
Speaker 1: in this rap industry and we know that you're dealing
Speaker 1: drugs and you're just not going to tell the truth,
Speaker 1: so we're not even gonna waste our time kind of bias.
Speaker 1: Although many of the cops were corrupt, so I'm just
Speaker 1: going to cover sprevolved and involved. Next theory is that
Speaker 1: they take their deaths, both of them, so they both
Speaker 1: take their desks, that they're off living on an island
Speaker 1: somewhere together. Yeah, I don't know, they were friends. You
Speaker 1: could also theorize that I think the case for Tupac's
Speaker 1: faking his death is much stronger than Biggie faking his death.
Speaker 1: So you can combine theories and say that Tupac faked
Speaker 1: his death and then in retaliation, people had Biggie killed
Speaker 1: because they thought that he had Tupac killed. That doesn't
Speaker 1: sit right with me, but it's always possible. Tupac. Well,
Speaker 1: let's first talk about Biggie. Life after Death was his
Speaker 1: last record that was released, and then in bad Boy
Speaker 1: released another one of his albums called Born Again, which
Speaker 1: in fairness people point to. But I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: bad Boy just named it that it didn't actually come
Speaker 1: from Biggie. But okay, yeah, the Tupac album was already
Speaker 1: named before he died, Yeah, the don kill him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the Biggie album that Born Again wasn't released. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's way after his death. I don't think they
Speaker 1: had that record. No, it was all just unreleased stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that's a marketing bit. I agree Tupac. You know,
Speaker 1: he released the album The Dawn Lamati. The seven day
Speaker 1: depends on how you want to pronounce. Yeah, I seven
Speaker 1: just as right, the seven day principle. No, it's this.
Speaker 1: I had it before the seven Days something something, Now
Speaker 1: I've lost it was originally the three Day Something and
Speaker 1: then they did the Seven Day Something. He was Jesus
Speaker 1: on the cover. He was Jesus on the cover. There
Speaker 1: lyrically a lot of references to life after death, resurrection,
Speaker 1: also faking one's own death. You know, Tupac was super
Speaker 1: obsessed with Machiavelli at the time. He really was. No,
Speaker 1: he well he always was, he had always yeah, he
Speaker 1: So he released this album actually under his stage name
Speaker 1: quote unquote of maki Velli. It was spelled differently than
Speaker 1: the Italian artist, but that he had always kind of
Speaker 1: planned all of his stuff that he had planned to
Speaker 1: do for a death row he planned to do under
Speaker 1: that name as a stage name. Was not an artist, philosopher,
Speaker 1: political philosophy. Sorry, yeah, yeah, I said, Well he wasn't
Speaker 1: away but you know, one of the things that Machiavelli
Speaker 1: was so popular for, I was talking about deceit and
Speaker 1: deception and things like that, particularly within the political system. Sure,
Speaker 1: but people kind of point to that and say, well,
Speaker 1: Tupac was talking about deceit. He was really obsessed with
Speaker 1: deceiving people. So, and there have been some sightings of
Speaker 1: Machiavelli or Tupac, Well he was, you know, he was
Speaker 1: called Machiavelli an artist. So maki Velli was the original
Speaker 1: cynic he was you never read the book, you should
Speaker 1: as good ridden. Yeah, I've seen a number of things
Speaker 1: that Tupac is still alive. Oh yeah, I don't ascribe
Speaker 1: to it, agreed, but there are but that that hologram
Speaker 1: was super convincing though, right, I totally know about the hologram.
Speaker 1: I just can't believe you win there. That was the
Speaker 1: look of are you kidding? Uh No. What I was
Speaker 1: gonna say is is there's things that people have pointed out.
Speaker 1: I looked at Tupac's death certificate. I couldn't read it
Speaker 1: because the copy that I came across on the internet
Speaker 1: was so bad. But people say that two Bucks alive
Speaker 1: and then he faked his death, and that the body
Speaker 1: that was cremated wasn't actually his because the body that
Speaker 1: was listed on the death certificate had a sixty pound
Speaker 1: weight difference from him. Because Tupac, what was he I
Speaker 1: can't remember how much he was. I think he was
Speaker 1: like a hundred sixty or a hundred seventy pounds or
Speaker 1: something like that. He was only muscular dude, but he
Speaker 1: was kind of a tall guy, and there was there
Speaker 1: was a weight difference. Evidently, there's some just crepencies on
Speaker 1: the tattoos because he had a budget. Big notable one
Speaker 1: was thug life across his abdomen. But there's that, and
Speaker 1: there's the fact that the the guy that cremated the body,
Speaker 1: nobody can find him. He wasn't hardly a regised person.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing amount of money that he was paid.
Speaker 1: I think he's paid like three or five grand to
Speaker 1: do it, or no, it was more than that, but
Speaker 1: I can't remember how much it was. But he's paid
Speaker 1: some obscene amount of money to do the cremation super fast.
Speaker 1: So I know that's what fosters people to say that
Speaker 1: Tupac is still alive. There's also an awesome report that
Speaker 1: I read that said that in Cuba, a week after
Speaker 1: Tupac's death, like one thousand people called the cops to
Speaker 1: say that they saw Tupac in Cuba, which is one
Speaker 1: of the stupidest things I think I've ever heard in
Speaker 1: my entire life. According to the lore, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to call it the lore, his grandmother evidently his grandmother
Speaker 1: killed a cop in seventies seven, So again he comes
Speaker 1: from a family that just unlike the law, not making
Speaker 1: any any any conclusions about that, but just she killed
Speaker 1: a cop. She escaped from jail after she was convicted
Speaker 1: of the killing and supposedly went to Cuba. So people say, well,
Speaker 1: bos in Cuba, that's where you were. I would have
Speaker 1: won to Cuba. I don't know that i'd go to Cuba.
Speaker 1: There's some there's some really interesting videos of the sightings
Speaker 1: of Tupac. You should just go out and google because
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. Because it's just some brown skin dude
Speaker 1: walking down the street with his head shaved. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like dudes who look kind of vaguely like Upac. But
Speaker 1: the next theory, oh this is yeah. Is the last
Speaker 1: theory in my favorite Yeah, which I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of people think and a lot of people don't like,
Speaker 1: but that's okay, is that Suge Knight orbustrated the whole
Speaker 1: thing on both killings, on both killings, Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: a little bit high risk in the case of the
Speaker 1: Tupac shooting shot a little Yeah. And although that would
Speaker 1: explain actually why the shooter was in the backseat, because
Speaker 1: if he's alongside and he would actually not be firing
Speaker 1: directly into the bat and the side of the car,
Speaker 1: but actually firing from behind, which would leaves anyway, Am
Speaker 1: I getting ahead of you? But that's the FA point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that would leave, That would leave because the bullets
Speaker 1: would go into the dash and then the engine apartment
Speaker 1: instead of going through and so going through tupacing into Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let's just back up for two seconds. You did get
Speaker 1: a little It's totally fine because we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about that, and it's good points to bring up
Speaker 1: the reason. You remember how I mentioned earlier that Tupac
Speaker 1: had recorded sixty seven songs in a month. He did
Speaker 1: that because of sugar. As far as anybody can tell,
Speaker 1: Tupac had initially fused to join death Row, saying that
Speaker 1: he just wasn't ready in Tupac landed himself in jail
Speaker 1: on sexual assault charges and he couldn't make bail. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty high bail in fairness, they really forwarded.
Speaker 1: But should Night decided, oh, hey, I will bail you
Speaker 1: out if you joined death row? Records, can I clarify
Speaker 1: something I just because I'm not absolutely was it bailed
Speaker 1: him out or got him out because I thought he
Speaker 1: had like a three or four year sentence. That's what
Speaker 1: I thought too. Actually sprang him out of prison? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he sprang him out of prison with money. So people
Speaker 1: refer to it as kind of bailing him out, because
Speaker 1: I think, as far as I can tell, it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily bail. It was well, it was served the time
Speaker 1: or befind X number of dollars. That's my my understanding
Speaker 1: of it. Again, I could be totally off that between
Speaker 1: the time he said yes and the time he walked
Speaker 1: out it was like a month. Yeah, but that's like
Speaker 1: it took almost no time. But uh so Sugar got
Speaker 1: him out of jail with money. And also, and you know,
Speaker 1: the deal was, i'll get you out of jail. You
Speaker 1: signed with death Row, and here's this super generous signing
Speaker 1: package that was like a million dollars for his first album,
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for a car,
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty thousand dollar expense account per year,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thou dollars, legal allowance, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: He there was like fairly generous, pretty good royalty situation
Speaker 1: that he worked out, lots of percentages and on points.
Speaker 1: So I just kind of chose to not write any
Speaker 1: of that stuff down. And I wish I found an
Speaker 1: article because that's really trying to figure out what his
Speaker 1: contracts said. Yeah, well, essentially he was promised a whole lot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but once Tupac actually signed with death Row,
Speaker 1: Shug just kind of started screwing him over. He charged
Speaker 1: you have written down here for a family friendly show
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, so he uh, he charged him outrageous
Speaker 1: amounts for rent on the apartment that Sug kind of
Speaker 1: required Tupac livin. He also charged one of He charged
Speaker 1: Tupac for one of his bodyguards child support payments. What wait,
Speaker 1: explain that to me because he took it out of
Speaker 1: his check. So he had a bodyguard. Tupac had a
Speaker 1: bunch of different bodyguards, right, so Tupac has to pay
Speaker 1: part of his bodyguards fee. I get that, but you're
Speaker 1: saying he also had to pay for the child sports
Speaker 1: said bodyguard owed to a woman. Well, Sug had him
Speaker 1: do that, Yes, is my understanding of the Mostly it
Speaker 1: was kind of just a mess. And the deal that
Speaker 1: Tupac had signed with that throw was that he would
Speaker 1: do three albums for them. So he decided, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to do three albums in a month and get
Speaker 1: myself out of this crappy situation. And he released one
Speaker 1: album before he died. He released one, and I think
Speaker 1: he had recorded the majority of both of them, both
Speaker 1: of the next ones. He had definitely recorded the entirety
Speaker 1: of the next one that was released, right, but I
Speaker 1: think he had many of the next album recorded as well. Basically,
Speaker 1: he was recording a bunch of tracks. To say, here's
Speaker 1: three albums worth. He recorded three songs a day, which
Speaker 1: if you're recording artists or know anything about recording, you
Speaker 1: know that is an outrageous number. That's a hellacious pace. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: he he had done too again pulled the dev I
Speaker 1: watched it. Yeah, grabbing sparked food. I think I have
Speaker 1: the article open. No, he did two albums he had
Speaker 1: done All Eyes on Me was released in nineties six
Speaker 1: and then the Don Kilimannati, which I suddenly can't say
Speaker 1: the seven day theory, that's what it was. We couldn't
Speaker 1: think of earlier. That was also released in And that's
Speaker 1: two albums in a year, and he had he was
Speaker 1: well on his way for a third. He probably could
Speaker 1: have left him with four albums worth. That's that's saying
Speaker 1: they're going to cut so many in short Sugar with
Speaker 1: kind of introl and control of Tupac's life for as
Speaker 1: long as Tupac was working for death Row, and he
Speaker 1: was highly motivated to get the heck out of Dodge.
Speaker 1: And in fact, it's rumored that Tupac was planning to
Speaker 1: leave death Row like really soon after the fight in
Speaker 1: Vegas and then sue them for all of his old incomes,
Speaker 1: like millions of They owed him serious back money, like
Speaker 1: millions of dollars. They weren't paying anybody at that point.
Speaker 1: Suge Knight was making a whole Suge Knight was making
Speaker 1: the money, but death Row owed everybody money and there
Speaker 1: was a mass exodus, you know, when Sugar finally went
Speaker 1: to jail, there was that mass exodus of a lot
Speaker 1: of artists. They left and went onto their own things.
Speaker 1: Well that's um not gosh. I can't remember when. But
Speaker 1: death Row eventually went bankrupt and they're now owned by
Speaker 1: Entertainment One. I think it's Entertainment One, which is out
Speaker 1: of Canada. So they got bought up, and all of
Speaker 1: the legal garbelet cook that has been sued since then
Speaker 1: for e one has has been stuck with. I don't
Speaker 1: think they realized what they were getting into. What the
Speaker 1: Suge Knight's still in jail by the way, No, No,
Speaker 1: he does seven year. I think he did a five
Speaker 1: or seven year too. He spent five years. He was
Speaker 1: sentenced to nine. I think he spent five. He spent
Speaker 1: five in and then he got out and he's doing
Speaker 1: whatever he wants now. I'm sure he's quite wealthy. Well,
Speaker 1: Suge Knight has his own set of problems. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was going to just talk about that for a second.
Speaker 1: He actually I read something recently on on Reddit that
Speaker 1: said that his girlfriend, one of his girlfriends, went missing.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't surprise me. He hasn't missing. Is in he
Speaker 1: misplaced her? Yeah? No, I'm guessing that's not what you
Speaker 1: mean when just he misplaced her, like she just disappeared. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like he might have just misplaced her, intentionally misplaced her.
Speaker 1: I was doing the joking misplaced it seems that, and
Speaker 1: I didn't actually do any research into that, and so
Speaker 1: that could be totally liable. And I'm super sorry if
Speaker 1: that's true. But Suge Knight, however, is truly demonstratively a
Speaker 1: bad man. He Here's the story that I like to
Speaker 1: tell about Suge Knight, which I think is fairly interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: it involves Vanilla Ice. He actually I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: don't like Vanilla Ice. Yeah, I don't remember what the
Speaker 1: situation was why Shug was mad at Vanilla Ice. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: actually that's not true. I totally do remember. It was
Speaker 1: that the he had a tenuous business agreement with the
Speaker 1: guy who produced Vanilla's ICE's Ice Ice Baby, and he
Speaker 1: exploited that to gain the rights or trying strong arm
Speaker 1: the rights of Ice Ice Baby from the dude who
Speaker 1: actually owned the rights and Vanilla Ice, and Vanilla Ice
Speaker 1: was like, nah, I'm gonna keep that, thanks, and Sugar
Speaker 1: was trying to strong arm him into signing the rights
Speaker 1: over to him and death Row. So Sugar, after a
Speaker 1: series of other kind of trying to intimidate Vanilla Ice tactics,
Speaker 1: shows up at a hote tell the Vanilisa staying in
Speaker 1: with two of his giant bodyguards, gets him on the
Speaker 1: balcony and either does dangle him off the balcony or
Speaker 1: says he's about to dangle him off the balcony. I
Speaker 1: think he actually did do that. Definitely could have actually
Speaker 1: done that. Anyways, Well that's than that when he first
Speaker 1: when when he first opened up his label. To remember
Speaker 1: I was alluding to this, yeah, yeah, when he visited
Speaker 1: that guy and basically after an hour with him and
Speaker 1: his tooth, his tooth thug accomplices, basically persuaded this guy
Speaker 1: to just signed over its reacts. You know that I
Speaker 1: can't remember the guy's name now, Easy, easy, who if
Speaker 1: you know the music catalog was a bad guy. He
Speaker 1: was a strong presence in the community or in the
Speaker 1: rap community, and just for no money, for no nothing,
Speaker 1: just just I'll give you Trey, I'll give you a snoop.
Speaker 1: I'll just give you my biggest acts in a in
Speaker 1: a meeting. It's just like, what did he have over
Speaker 1: easy to be able to pull that off? That's a
Speaker 1: good question. Pounds, I don't I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: that it was a matter of money or size. I
Speaker 1: think that he wasn't afraid to pull some devious practices.
Speaker 1: And I think that him I think he blackmailed, He
Speaker 1: caught him his pants down somewhere and got him in trouble,
Speaker 1: or could get him in trouble. You know, had a
Speaker 1: piece of evidence, whether it be verbal or physical. It's
Speaker 1: scared easy enough to just say, all right, dude, you can,
Speaker 1: I you never gonna Can I have that document? Can
Speaker 1: I have that whatever? Get out of my office and
Speaker 1: never talk to me again. So he was obviously not
Speaker 1: a dude. And these this is all for stuff that's
Speaker 1: way less than millions of dollars in his reputation, because
Speaker 1: had Tupac actually left death Row and sued for millions
Speaker 1: and drag Sugars name through the mud, that costs sug
Speaker 1: way more than say killing, so essentially goes, well, it's
Speaker 1: it's free if you already have dirty cops on your
Speaker 1: I'm sure you had to give him a bonus for
Speaker 1: the wax, sure, but not that much. Probably the thing Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't think shug get it well, he didn't pull
Speaker 1: the trigger. I don't think Sugar organized the Biggie killing,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm highly doubtful that he organized the Tupac killing.
Speaker 1: And my reason is is that Suge Knight is a bully.
Speaker 1: He's a big, hulking, red glowing eye bully. But I
Speaker 1: don't think that he has the wherewithal to organize it all.
Speaker 1: You don't think so, I don't think so. I think
Speaker 1: that his play is I'm gonna stand in front of
Speaker 1: you and I'm going to scare the holy hell out
Speaker 1: of you. But I don't think that he has the
Speaker 1: wherewithal to plan like what we were talking about where
Speaker 1: it takes all these bits and pieces of the car,
Speaker 1: you know, the U turn car and then the other one.
Speaker 1: You don't think are you saying he doesn't have the
Speaker 1: mental camel power? And I don't think he does. I
Speaker 1: think that's outside of his range of ability. But he
Speaker 1: can hire. But he can hire professionals who are good
Speaker 1: at that. Okay, you're right, that is completely possible. Well,
Speaker 1: so one thing we haven't really talked about because I
Speaker 1: was trying to keep this episode under two hours is
Speaker 1: that two hours shot? Is that shug antipop both but
Speaker 1: should particularly had a huge love for mob movies. He did,
Speaker 1: And it's not wildly out there to assume that he
Speaker 1: watched enough of The Godfather or whatever other mom movies
Speaker 1: to come up with a Hollywood convoluted plan enough that
Speaker 1: he could tell all the you know, off to the
Speaker 1: cops that he had on his payroll, Hey, I want
Speaker 1: to do this thing, and then they would say, oh,
Speaker 1: well we'll do it this way. Okay, let's let's run
Speaker 1: down that. Sure, I'm trying to remember the name of
Speaker 1: the documentary that gave me all the information that I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about. It's the one that came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. It was Tupac assassination or something. I
Speaker 1: can't remember pac assassination. Well, no, it's assassination or the
Speaker 1: second one was just assassination. The one that came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine was just Tupac assassination. The two
Speaker 1: thousand seven had a double part on it. But the
Speaker 1: point is what that one brings out. And this is
Speaker 1: why I know everybody thinks Shug did it. Is that
Speaker 1: we were talking about right Way security, the security guards.
Speaker 1: There was a whole bunch of weird stuff that happened
Speaker 1: in Vegas that weekend where suddenly the bodyguards were told
Speaker 1: not to carry guns. They were being shuffled around. Now
Speaker 1: you're watching Park, Now you're watching Shugar. Now you're gonna
Speaker 1: go to the bar, and now you're gonna come back
Speaker 1: like weird shuffling, So nobody knew where anybody was this
Speaker 1: whole What I would attribute to terrible management, other people
Speaker 1: have attributed to let's shake them up so they don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. So nobody knows where they're at,
Speaker 1: so it's easy to make the hit. But again, I
Speaker 1: right way security I think is is was just poorly managed.
Speaker 1: But people say, um, what Reggie Right, when Shuge Knight
Speaker 1: went to prison, you know who took over death row,
Speaker 1: Reggie Right Jr. He's the one who took the whole
Speaker 1: thing over. So I never hear him as the one
Speaker 1: who should have been respond possible for creating the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Because let's let's take another angle. Okay, Shug is just
Speaker 1: peeved that he's gonna lose his top artist, but he
Speaker 1: also owns the rights to all that music that artist
Speaker 1: has made, so he's going to make the money on it.
Speaker 1: But Reggie Wright, who wants to get to be the
Speaker 1: top dude, says, wait, my boss is on parole and
Speaker 1: I just I know he just beat the crap out
Speaker 1: of some guy and I can totally get him in trouble.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I hate that Tupac guy. Why
Speaker 1: don't I do this stuff? Like he's in control of
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and he was in control and for
Speaker 1: five years until Suge Night got out of prison. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is right. But if we're gonna
Speaker 1: say Sugar is responsible, Why don't we say Reggie right
Speaker 1: is junior is responsible and all that he probably would
Speaker 1: have even if the order had come from Sugar. I mean,
Speaker 1: Reggie would have been involved. I'm sure. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, You're right. It's possible that Reggie could have
Speaker 1: done it all on his own without shows knowledge. We
Speaker 1: we hear all these things about you know, Bob hits
Speaker 1: it where the dawn dies and it turns out and
Speaker 1: underlaying who had you know, these these cravings for powers,
Speaker 1: the one who set the whole thing up thinking he
Speaker 1: would take over it could be the same thing again
Speaker 1: you talked about earlier. Is kind of this Hollywood thing
Speaker 1: that I saw this in a movie and it worked.
Speaker 1: I could totally do that. Do I think that's what happened. No,
Speaker 1: but just as pausible, I guess, just to my point
Speaker 1: or to your point of uh, Sugar still making money
Speaker 1: off Tupac's money or records, that's fair, except that he
Speaker 1: was going to get sued for a whole bunch of money.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter you have more money potentially coming
Speaker 1: in on record sales, because you're gonna have to give.
Speaker 1: You have to give most of it up. Well, but
Speaker 1: according to the contract, they owned the rights. And that's
Speaker 1: the way I mean, that's I mean, I was I try.
Speaker 1: I got into some contract law because I had the
Speaker 1: same question. Okay, they're gonna they do. They do own
Speaker 1: the rights. That's fine. Tupac would never get those rights back.
Speaker 1: But for the amount of money that he was talking
Speaker 1: about suing, for the amount of money that he was owed,
Speaker 1: it could have very easily bankrupted. At least shug I
Speaker 1: questioned the amount of money that he was owed. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to disagree with the fact that death Row
Speaker 1: was charging him exorbitant amounts of money for things. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've I've seen the laundry list of you know, video
Speaker 1: production and and car rental, and you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar hotel room bill like this. Whether it's true
Speaker 1: or not, it doesn't matter. But the label takes on
Speaker 1: covering your costs. You get paid after those costs recovered.
Speaker 1: And they I think that they probably could have made
Speaker 1: a strong case to say this dude was charging things
Speaker 1: out there wazoo and he gets this. Okay, Steve, you
Speaker 1: don't like Suge Knight, who did it? Then? I don't
Speaker 1: know who did it. This is one of those things.
Speaker 1: This to me is like talking about the Nity killing
Speaker 1: because there's so many effing players involved that it's it
Speaker 1: could have been any of them, and it could have
Speaker 1: been all of them. It could have been somebody we
Speaker 1: don't even know about. I mean, you're talking. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna blame I'm gonna blame Dan Quayle because he's
Speaker 1: just as likely aspect well you know. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: you when you have all these gang members involved, I mean,
Speaker 1: factions that are don't even reach the radar of reporting
Speaker 1: because they're just they're they're on the street, they're not
Speaker 1: in the news. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I
Speaker 1: like Sugar Knight. I mean I don't like Sugar Knight.
Speaker 1: Actually I like him as and I don't think he
Speaker 1: pulled the trigger in either one of these heads. But
Speaker 1: I did think that it's quite likely because he did
Speaker 1: have a motive. Ye have a good motive, and obviously
Speaker 1: it was pretty bare knuckle kind of guy. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid to use violence. I think it was Shug
Speaker 1: Night too, but yeah, it's just me. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: any more theories that you guys have any more? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: why did we not bring the Masons in. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: brought the Illuminati. Yeah, or the Illuminati. Excuse me, I
Speaker 1: said Illuminaties. That was stupid. So yeah, who else is
Speaker 1: the Druids? Well then I guess that's enough of Biggie
Speaker 1: and Tupac. You know, we can go for like another
Speaker 1: forty minutes, and we can make those people who wanted
Speaker 1: the longer episodes around their office for like another forty minute.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in that. It's time for the credits
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. We have links for some of
Speaker 1: our research on the website Thinking sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can stream our episodes there. You can download our
Speaker 1: episodes there can also donate or buy merch there. Night Light, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just stand in the night like at the suggestion
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Speaker 1: little a little with a dessert because the box has
Speaker 1: been just a little bit insane, like two weeks and
Speaker 1: we got a lot of emails. Don't so don't stop
Speaker 1: sending us email. But we like we like email. It
Speaker 1: may take us a little extra time to get back
Speaker 1: to you these days. Yeah, I've actually sort of knocked
Speaker 1: off work early the other day just to work through
Speaker 1: some emails because well we had a bunch of um
Speaker 1: that having been said, I think we're gonna get out
Speaker 1: of here. I think we need to wrap. Oh so
Speaker 1: nobody good rap songs. Besides, how much would could it
Speaker 1: would chuck chuck throw your hands in the air, yotized, Well,
Speaker 1: please somebody turn this off before we make ourselves look
Speaker 1: at looking stupid air composns in the air. Future player, Bye,