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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, so this is a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned stuff you should know. One of our ongoing
Speaker 1: hip hop editions. Yeah, I feel like a door anytime
Speaker 1: I say hip hop, so I usually say rap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but regardless, that's what we're talking.
Speaker 2: About Yeah, we're talking about Biggie and Tupac, and we
Speaker 2: want to issue a.
Speaker 3: Warning and a trigger warning.
Speaker 2: No pun intended there, but this one's obviously gonna because
Speaker 2: we're talking about the lives of these two guys who
Speaker 2: were in many ways real gangsters. A lot of stuff
Speaker 2: went down, including sexual assault and gunplay and murder, and
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's probably not appropriate for the younger listeners,
Speaker 2: and so you just wanted to get that out there. Hopefully,
Speaker 2: if you know anything about Biggie and Tupac, you know
Speaker 2: that there's some more adult content coming your way.
Speaker 1: Nice CoA man. Yeah, so, yeah, we are talking about
Speaker 1: Biggie and Tupac, and they are pretty well known. If
Speaker 1: you listen to either one of them, or even kind
Speaker 1: of have a passing awareness of hip hop, especially in
Speaker 1: the nineties, you probably know that Biggie and Tupac had
Speaker 1: probably the biggest rivalry in the hip hop world. It's
Speaker 1: referred to as a beef between one another, so much
Speaker 1: so that it actually triggered, or caused, at the very
Speaker 1: least popularized the East Coast versus West Coast thing of
Speaker 1: rap in the nineteen nineties. That was huge. It was
Speaker 1: the central focus of rap during basically that whole decade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and sadly would leave both of them dead from violence.
Speaker 2: It was I hope that's not a spoiler for anyone,
Speaker 2: but yeah, at very young ages. It's super sad what
Speaker 2: happened to those guys, and just super sad that that was,
Speaker 2: you know, brought about because of just sort of the
Speaker 2: lifestyle that went along with their careers, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a lot of people make a case that
Speaker 1: that lifestyle was essentially demanded by fans and the media
Speaker 1: and certainly fostered and nurtured by fans in the media.
Speaker 1: And so I think both Biggie and Tupac and all
Speaker 1: the people around them and other rappers basically felt like
Speaker 1: they had to act like they the stuff that they
Speaker 1: wrapped about, or else they would be fake baby gangsters
Speaker 1: sometimes or studio gangsters even worse. Well yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then they were also surrounded by literal bloods and crips,
Speaker 1: so it essentially had it was inevitable that it would
Speaker 1: end in death and violence.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think hip hop more than other types
Speaker 2: of music too, there's an expectation to be.
Speaker 3: To be real again, got all these funs flying out of.
Speaker 1: My mouth, oh from Cypress Hill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: But to be real and like you said, not you know,
Speaker 2: if you were found out to be sort of rapping
Speaker 2: about something and really kind of fake in real life
Speaker 2: like that, that's no good for your career as a
Speaker 2: hip hop artist. So it's sort of you know, they
Speaker 2: I don't know, to me, they're sort of victims of
Speaker 2: that whole thing in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at the same time, they definitely bought into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, they essentially laid the groundwork for that. It's
Speaker 1: just it's crazy because it's just such a ubiquitous, widespread
Speaker 1: thing for so long. It's strange to think that you
Speaker 1: can trace it back to one group, one duo essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're going to tell you a little bit
Speaker 2: about Tupac and his beginnings, a little bit about Biggie
Speaker 2: and then once they met up kind of what happened
Speaker 2: from there. But as far as Tupac goes, he was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen seventy one, same year as me. He
Speaker 2: was born in Harlem. His mother was a Finny Shakur
Speaker 2: and she was one of the Panther twenty one. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure we talked about them in the Black Panther episode,
Speaker 2: but they were part of the Black Panther Party, the
Speaker 2: ones who were accused of carrying out a bombing campaign.
Speaker 2: She did win an acquittal in court defending herself and
Speaker 2: exposed a lot of stuff about undercover cops and the
Speaker 2: tactics they used that were very untoward. But Tupac was
Speaker 2: born about a month after that trial and born Lesaine Crooks.
Speaker 2: But it's not like he changed his name to be
Speaker 2: a cool hip hop guy later. He was actually renamed
Speaker 2: by his mom when he was about a year old,
Speaker 2: after indigenous South American revolutionary Tupac Amaru the second, So
Speaker 2: he's essentially he was always Tupac.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was named after an eighteenth century Incon I believe,
Speaker 1: who led a rebellion against the Spanish. Little known fact.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, did you. I did not, So
Speaker 1: I usually think I associate Tupac with New York because
Speaker 1: pretty much all the movies he was ever in were
Speaker 1: all set in New York. But he's from San Francisco.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was born in Harlem, but his family
Speaker 1: moved to San Francisco, or actually Marin County, which is
Speaker 1: a suburb of San Francisco pretty early on in his life,
Speaker 1: and at the time, his mom was struggling with a
Speaker 1: crack addiction, So Tupac was essentially on his own from
Speaker 1: a very young age, and as black kids at the
Speaker 1: time in the eighties in particular, did to make money
Speaker 1: when you were in a situation like that, he sold
Speaker 1: drugs and that's how he supported himself for a long
Speaker 1: time while he was even going through school too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was like, we'll see, Biggie was he
Speaker 2: was a really good English student, and I bet a
Speaker 2: lot of hip hop performers were good in English. You know,
Speaker 2: it just sort of makes sense. But he dropped out
Speaker 2: of high school. He studied poetry. He continued to after
Speaker 2: he dropped out, and actually his teacher, his English teacher,
Speaker 2: one of them, Leela Steinberg, was like, hey, I see
Speaker 2: a lot of potential in you. You can crash on
Speaker 2: my couch when you need to, And she ended up
Speaker 2: becoming his first manager.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she said, you always have to wear that
Speaker 1: bandana around your head just so like you because I
Speaker 1: love it.
Speaker 3: It looks super cool.
Speaker 1: I know we've also talked about this before, but he
Speaker 1: was a member of Digital Underground with Humpty Hump of
Speaker 1: the famous Humpty Dance. He's shown dancing in the Humpty
Speaker 1: Dance video in the background. He was a dancer for
Speaker 1: Digital Underground, but later I think wrapped on some of
Speaker 1: their albums. Yeah, but even from the outset, his whole
Speaker 1: vibe was much much edgier than Humpty Humps was. Like
Speaker 1: Humpty Hump was rapping about how big his nose was
Speaker 1: and having sex and burger king bathrooms, right like Tupac
Speaker 1: was rapping about what poverty and crime are like in
Speaker 1: the black community.
Speaker 3: You know, he didn't go by Humpty Hump.
Speaker 1: What was this? Why do You Go Buy?
Speaker 3: That was shock G.
Speaker 1: I've heard him referred to on other songs as.
Speaker 2: Well, all right, aka Humpty Hump. So yeah, you weren't
Speaker 2: completely wrong.
Speaker 1: A little side. I would direct people to the mrs
Speaker 1: song Risky Business that features Humpty or shock G. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty cute little song, all right. So Tupac
Speaker 1: goes out on his own. He's got, like I said,
Speaker 1: a totally different vibe, and he released a solo album
Speaker 1: called Tupac Ellipse. Now, there was no other title that
Speaker 1: it could have possibly been than that, Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: But the problem was like there was. He was keeping
Speaker 1: it real, so there was nothing in the studio that
Speaker 1: he was producing that could be played on the radio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was an underground sensation, but publicly, most people
Speaker 1: had not heard of Tupac at that point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Dan Quayle kind of gave him a little more press
Speaker 2: when he blamed that record to Apocalypse Now on the
Speaker 2: shooting of a Texas State trooper. So he was in
Speaker 2: the news a little bit at least mm hm. And
Speaker 2: he started acting kind of right afterward. In nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: two and nineteen ninety three, he put out where he
Speaker 2: was in the movies Juice and Poetic Justice, both really
Speaker 2: great movies. Juice is awesome, actually, so is Poetic Justice.
Speaker 2: I love both of those movies.
Speaker 1: The one I've seen him and I don't think. I
Speaker 1: think I saw Juice. I didn't see Poetic Justice. I
Speaker 1: saw Above the Rim. He was really good, and Above
Speaker 1: the Rim.
Speaker 3: I never saw that one.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one. He should see it.
Speaker 3: Wet them together and have a Tupac watch party.
Speaker 1: I guess, Okay, let's do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But he started getting a little more famous, sort of slowly,
Speaker 2: and this is when kind of the early nineties, at
Speaker 2: the very beginning of his career is when he first
Speaker 2: started getting into trouble and getting like a real reputation
Speaker 2: as sort of living that lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like for real. He was involved in
Speaker 1: a shootout at the Marin County Festival where he lived,
Speaker 1: where he had just performed, that killed a six year
Speaker 1: old who was playing on a school ground nearby.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He shot at off duty police in Atlanta in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three when he tried to prevent them from beating
Speaker 1: up a black motorist, and those charges were thrown out
Speaker 1: because it turns out the cops were off duty, didn't
Speaker 1: announce themselves as cops, and were super drunk. But you know,
Speaker 1: those kind of things, like his legend as like a
Speaker 1: thug living the thug life, which I think he basically coined,
Speaker 1: that just formed, melded really quickly right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: Like this guy was legit as far as his fans
Speaker 1: were concerned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So that's Tupac's early days.
Speaker 2: Biggie Smalls was born he's a little younger. He's born
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two in Brooklyn. His name was Christopher Wallace.
Speaker 2: He was born to Jamaican immigrant parents, and his mom
Speaker 2: was a preschool teacher. His dad was a politician in
Speaker 2: Jamaica but ended up, you know, leaving when he was
Speaker 2: two years old and became a welder in the United States.
Speaker 2: But her, his mom, you know, Veletta, really thought a
Speaker 2: lot about education, obviously as a teacher, so she took
Speaker 2: on a second job just so she could send him
Speaker 2: to a very well regarded high school and then later
Speaker 2: went to George Westinghouse Career in Tech Education High School,
Speaker 2: which had quite an alumni base as far as hip
Speaker 2: hop goes, because DMX, Buster Rhymes, Love Busta, and jay
Speaker 2: Z all went there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm guessing I didn't. I wasn't able to find it,
Speaker 1: but I'm guessing they crossed paths. May have been there
Speaker 1: at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Donald Glover would have gone to my
Speaker 2: high school had they not sent him to the School
Speaker 2: of the Arts. Oh yeah, And I saw him in
Speaker 2: New York City a few feet from me when I
Speaker 2: was there in December. And let me tell you, dude,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I've ever seen a more handsome
Speaker 2: grown man in person.
Speaker 3: With my eyeballs.
Speaker 2: Really, he's astoundingly good looking, and I wanted to go
Speaker 2: over and say, like, hey man, we grew up in
Speaker 2: the same neighborhood basically.
Speaker 1: And you're really good looking, You're really handsome.
Speaker 2: But he I'm such a big fan of his but
Speaker 2: from his music to his acting. But he was with
Speaker 2: his family and like it was just like, I'm just
Speaker 2: not going to do that.
Speaker 1: Instead, you got in your car and shouted Dan high
Speaker 1: rules and like laid rubber peeling out of the parking lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right. Sure, Danger Mouse went to my high
Speaker 3: school too, though.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh I forgot about Danger Mouse. Danger Mouse
Speaker 1: did that gray album with the Beatles, and.
Speaker 3: Right, I don't know, we'll.
Speaker 1: Find out the hard way. So, like you said, a
Speaker 1: lot of hip hop artists are probably or probably were
Speaker 1: our good English students, and Biggie Smalls was not an
Speaker 1: exception to that. Like Tupac, he was. Actually he excelled
Speaker 1: in English and high school. But also like Tupac, his
Speaker 1: family was not exactly well to do. Remember, his mom
Speaker 1: took a second job to put him just through high school.
Speaker 1: So he started selling drugs on the side, crack again
Speaker 1: because it's the eighties, and eventually he dropped out of
Speaker 1: high school, and I think any kind of straight and
Speaker 1: narrow he might have been on from high school was
Speaker 1: just kind of removed and he started to get in
Speaker 1: like actual trouble with the cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he ended up in jail, actually spent nine months
Speaker 2: in jail at one point because it couldn't make bail.
Speaker 2: And once he got out, he made a demo tape
Speaker 2: under the name Biggie Smalls. His nickname as a kid
Speaker 2: was big, but I think that came from a gangster
Speaker 2: in a movie from nineteen seventy five called Let's Do
Speaker 2: It Again. Biggie Smalls did, and he said that he
Speaker 2: wasn't trying to get into a career, he just sort
Speaker 2: of did it for fun, and that got him on
Speaker 2: Source magazine's list in nineteen ninety two of Unsigned in
Speaker 2: their Unsigned hype Columneah, which eventually put him on a
Speaker 2: compilation with other Unsigned rappers, which eventually landed him on
Speaker 2: the ears of a twenty.
Speaker 3: Three year old named named Sean Combs.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Shawn Combs, puff Daddy did he People have
Speaker 1: probably heard of him by now for all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 1: His career as a twenty three year old was as
Speaker 1: vice president of Uptown Records, and being an entrepreneur and
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things, he decided to found his
Speaker 1: own record company, bad Boy Worldwide Music Group usually known
Speaker 1: as bad Boy Records, and one of the first things
Speaker 1: he did was sign Biggie Small's and they became paired
Speaker 1: up in the media. They hung out there, friends, They
Speaker 1: were fairly close, but like those two were inseparable as
Speaker 1: far as like the public was concerned whether that was
Speaker 1: fully true or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah and his when he put out his first single,
Speaker 2: it was under the name Notorious Big because of legal issues.
Speaker 3: I guess with the movie Yeah Biggie Smalls was that
Speaker 3: my take you? Okay? So he was Notorious Big Ig
Speaker 3: officially everyone called him Biggie. Of course.
Speaker 2: He had as a kid in ninety three with his
Speaker 2: high school girlfriend jan Jackson, not Jana Jackson, and he
Speaker 2: hadn't really broken through at this point, even though he
Speaker 2: was with Shawn Combs at the time. But he you know,
Speaker 2: so he continued to kind of deal drugs, apparently colms.
Speaker 2: It was like, he can't do that kind of stuff
Speaker 2: if you want to get anywhere.
Speaker 3: But he broke up with his.
Speaker 2: High school sweetheart who he had his first kid with
Speaker 2: and a few months after that ended up with Faith Evans.
Speaker 3: Who was also on the Bad Boy label.
Speaker 2: And that is is Biggie and his start, So good
Speaker 2: time for a break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're at nineteen ninety three, Tupac's already a star
Speaker 1: and Biggie's starting to come up.
Speaker 3: All right, We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: As why why Why s K as big.
Speaker 4: Tough. He should know, definitely should know, Charles s K. So.
Speaker 1: One of the things you may or may not know,
Speaker 1: if you're just kind of passing passingly familiar with the
Speaker 1: beef between Biggie and Tupac, is that they started out
Speaker 1: as friends. They were actually pretty good friends for a while. Tupac,
Speaker 1: like I said, before he broke, was already a star.
Speaker 1: His star was established and still growing. Biggie was just
Speaker 1: starting to come up. He was pretty pretty well known
Speaker 1: around New York, and Tupac kind of became a mentor
Speaker 1: to him. They met in nineteen ninety three, and they
Speaker 1: hung out with a bunch of other people, played around
Speaker 1: with a bunch of guns at Tupac's house, and they
Speaker 1: became close enough that whenever Biggie went out to la
Speaker 1: he stayed on Tupac's couch.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Uh, he was, like I said, he was a He
Speaker 2: kind of considered Biggie like one of his lieutenants at
Speaker 2: the time and definitely was a mentor. Biggie's debut came out,
Speaker 2: it was called Ready to Die in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: and before that, Biggie was like, you know what, I
Speaker 2: think you should just be my manager and take over
Speaker 2: from takeover for Shawn Combs, and Tupac was like, no, man,
Speaker 2: you need to stick with that guy. Apparently Tupac wasn't
Speaker 2: a big fan of Combs. Yeah, but you know he
Speaker 2: said that I had a feeling he just didn't want
Speaker 2: to get into managing him.
Speaker 1: Well, he said, he'll make you a star, and I
Speaker 1: think he did know that. Like, you know, Tupac wasn't
Speaker 1: a manager or a label owner. Like he was a
Speaker 1: performer and Sean Combs liked the thing think of himself
Speaker 1: as a performer, but really he was an executive. So
Speaker 1: it probably was the smarter move to stay with him,
Speaker 1: at least at first, right. Yeah, the problem was is
Speaker 1: Seawn Combs again remember inextricably linked BFF with Biggie as
Speaker 1: far as the public's concerned, was actually jealous of Biggie
Speaker 1: and Tupac's friendship. He wanted to be friends with Tupac.
Speaker 1: He was jealous that Bickie got to be friends with Tupac.
Speaker 1: The reason Tupac didn't care about being friends with Sean
Speaker 1: Combs is that he thought Shawn Combs was basically a poser.
Speaker 1: He was a record executive, playing like he was a
Speaker 1: hardcore rapper, and he didn't have much respect for him.
Speaker 1: And I think that really kind of came through to
Speaker 1: Shawn Combs after a little while, and he didn't he
Speaker 1: started not liking Tupac.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: So the beef is sort of the beef seed is
Speaker 2: planted as they are, you know that old saying.
Speaker 1: Where's the beef seed?
Speaker 2: It's been exactly red to die. Like I mentioned, was
Speaker 2: Biggie's debut in ninety four. It was a big hit
Speaker 2: that went double platinum about a year later, which means
Speaker 2: a lot of records were sold. And this was when
Speaker 2: the West Coast was sort of like all the big
Speaker 2: hip hop stars were mainly out of the West Coast,
Speaker 2: so he was kind of the biggest thing coming out
Speaker 2: of New York right off the bat. And it's a
Speaker 2: great record, he was you know, he rapped a lot
Speaker 2: about you know, sort of like the lifestyle and the
Speaker 2: gangs of stuff that he was doing. But also there
Speaker 2: was a lot of vulnerability on that first record too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he and Tupac wasn't shy about rapping about
Speaker 1: mental health and stuff like that. And up to this point,
Speaker 1: like you did not talk about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It was all about partying and having sex and like
Speaker 1: doing drugs and all that stuff. You didn't talk about
Speaker 1: being paranoid or like super worried about being killed or
Speaker 1: anything like that. And I just to kind of set
Speaker 1: the scene, can we talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: brief history of hip hop up to that point and
Speaker 1: how big of a deal it was when Ready to
Speaker 1: Die came out, Sure, because you said that the West
Speaker 1: Coast had kind of taken over from the East Coast,
Speaker 1: like from Slick Rick and ll cool J and all
Speaker 1: them the ones who were coming up in the eighties.
Speaker 1: At the time that Biggie Small's record came out, everyone
Speaker 1: was all about Doctor dre Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, all
Speaker 1: these guys, like that's where rap was. It was on
Speaker 1: the West Coast. So for somebody to come along and
Speaker 1: basically snatch that away and bring it back to New York.
Speaker 1: It was just a really big deal. And it took
Speaker 1: a rapper of the caliber of Biggie Smalls to do
Speaker 1: something like that, because there are tons of other albums
Speaker 1: that had come out, like Tribe Called Quest had three
Speaker 1: albums by this time, and yet the Biggie Small's record
Speaker 1: coming out just completely undid essentially caused an earthquake in
Speaker 1: the rap world and tilted everything back to New York.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So as this is happening and Biggie's blowing up like
Speaker 2: in a big way, Tupac is in New York filming
Speaker 2: a movie in nineteen ninety three and we get a
Speaker 2: new guy on the scene, or he was actually on
Speaker 2: the scene, but a new guy as far as his
Speaker 2: podcast goes named Haitian Jack, and he starts hanging out
Speaker 2: with Tupac.
Speaker 3: Tupac likes this guy. They start partying together.
Speaker 2: Biggie knows about Haitian Jack because he was pretty familiar
Speaker 2: with the street gangs of New York, and he warns
Speaker 2: his friend Tupac and he's like, man, this guy is
Speaker 2: real trouble. So like you got to watch out. You
Speaker 2: should probably stay away from this guy because like he's
Speaker 2: a super violent dude. Like, I know, we're all real,
Speaker 2: but this guy is. He will land you in jail
Speaker 2: probably at some point, So stay away or get you killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so things are going along. Biggie and Tupac are friends.
Speaker 1: One's in New York, one's on the West Coast. It
Speaker 1: turned out Biggie was pretty right in warning Tupac against
Speaker 1: Haitian Jack, because shortly after that, Tupac met a girl
Speaker 1: named Ayana Jack. She was nineteen at the time, while
Speaker 1: he was in New York filming hanging out with Haitian Jack,
Speaker 1: and she alleged that Tupac Haitian Jack, the road manager
Speaker 1: for Tupac, Charles man Man Fuller, and another man I
Speaker 1: couldn't find who he was, gang raped her and she
Speaker 1: called the police. Afterward, the police showed up, they found
Speaker 1: guns in the room, and now Tupac is in big,
Speaker 1: big trouble again. Right, So two threads begin here. One
Speaker 1: is Tupac is now charged with sexual abus, sodomy and
Speaker 1: possession of guns illegal guns. Yeah, that starts. That thread starts,
Speaker 1: so we'll pick up again later. But another thread starts,
Speaker 1: which is a dispute a beef now with Haitian Jack
Speaker 1: because he thought that Haitian Jack had dropped the dime
Speaker 1: on Tupac to get out of the trouble for this
Speaker 1: gang rape charge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Haitian Jack had his case separated from man
Speaker 2: Man Fuller and Tupac. He pleaded down to a lesser charge.
Speaker 2: He pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and avoided jail time. Tupac
Speaker 2: always said he was innocent and that he was set
Speaker 2: up and sold out by Haitian Jack. But that, you know,
Speaker 2: we need to point out that completely contradicts the story
Speaker 2: of the victim from Ayana Jackson. So but you know,
Speaker 2: the whole point of this is there's, like you said,
Speaker 2: there's now this official beef that kind of again planted
Speaker 2: the seed of what would happen to he and eventually
Speaker 2: Biggie moving forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the thing that really kind of blew this
Speaker 1: this whole thing up is Tupac said as much. He said,
Speaker 1: Haitian Jack cooperated with the police, This major actual gangster
Speaker 1: in New York cooperated with the police. In an interview
Speaker 1: with the New York Daily News, So the New York
Speaker 1: Daily News prints Tupac saying that, and that did not
Speaker 1: make Haitian Jack very happy. Those two separated immediately. They
Speaker 1: didn't talk anymore. They weren't friends anymore, they didn't hang out,
Speaker 1: and no, Tupac had essentially an enemy in Haitian Jack,
Speaker 1: which is from what I can tell, not what you
Speaker 1: want it.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. So the case is moving forward.
Speaker 2: At this point, Tupac is financially strapped because while he
Speaker 2: is making money, he's spending it faster than he's making it.
Speaker 2: He's also helping out friends and family with their finances.
Speaker 2: So there was an invitation from a guy named Jimmy
Speaker 2: Henchman Roseman. He knew Shawn Combs, he knew Haitian Jack,
Speaker 2: and he said, Hey, Tupac, why don't you do a
Speaker 2: guest spot for this rapper, Little Sean. He's in Biggie Circle.
Speaker 2: He's a guy with Shawn Combs as well. We'll pay
Speaker 2: seven grand. He needed the money, so he did it.
Speaker 2: He shows up at Times Square at Quad Recording Studios
Speaker 2: on November thirtieth along with three of his guys, and
Speaker 2: before getting on the elevator to go up and record,
Speaker 2: they were met by these other three guys who draw
Speaker 2: guns tell him to get down on the ground. Tupac
Speaker 2: draws his gun and he ends up being shot, ends
Speaker 2: up being robbed, He ends up being beaten pretty badly.
Speaker 2: And Combs and Biggie and Henchman Jimmy Henchman Roseman were
Speaker 2: up in the studio at the time. They were there,
Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, Tupac is getting wheeled out
Speaker 2: on a gurney sees those guys and he flips a
Speaker 2: bird at Biggie and his crew because he thought they
Speaker 2: were in on this attack. And that's when the beef
Speaker 2: like really started between these two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Biggie was like, I have no idea what
Speaker 1: he's talking about. And Tupac just decided that if Biggie
Speaker 1: Smalls hadn't set him up, he had at least turned
Speaker 1: his head and let all of this happen, like he
Speaker 1: knew that it was going to happen. He didn't warn him.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence whatsoever either one of those things happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Biggie Small's always is like, no, I like this
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. After Tupac died, he
Speaker 1: was obviously heartbroken and spoke in public about how sad
Speaker 1: he was that Tupac was dead. It seems like it was.
Speaker 1: He's a one sided beef, but the beef on Tupac's
Speaker 1: side was so energetic that you couldn't just ignore it.
Speaker 1: There was just a divide, and the divide was so
Speaker 1: great that Blood's hung out with one side, I think
Speaker 1: Tupac side, and Crips hung out with Biggie's side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have that kind of thing, like there's very
Speaker 1: little chance of like reconciling or accidentally hanging out because
Speaker 1: you ran into each other on the street and you
Speaker 1: kind of crush things up. That is not going to
Speaker 1: happen with you now hanging around with the Crips and
Speaker 1: the Bloods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and no one ever really got to the bottom
Speaker 2: of who was behind that shooting. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: disagreement and people pointing fingers and claiming.
Speaker 3: This and that.
Speaker 2: I guess we don't need to totally get into that.
Speaker 2: But after he was beaten and shot and robbed, he's
Speaker 2: bandaged up, he's in a wheelchair. He's still got this
Speaker 2: court case going on, and he has found guilty of
Speaker 2: sexual assault, he's acquitted on the other charges, and he
Speaker 2: sent its to eighteen months in prison and where his
Speaker 2: third album came out, Me Against the World, came out
Speaker 2: while he was in prison serving that sentence.
Speaker 1: Dude, if you want cred, release your rap album while
Speaker 1: you're in prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah, called Me against the World.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, while Tupac was in jail, I don't remember how
Speaker 1: long he was in for it, eighteen eighteen months, Okay.
Speaker 1: While he was in jail, Biggie releases a track called
Speaker 1: who Shatcha, and Tupac interprets that as it was completely
Speaker 1: directed to him. It was essentially Biggie Small's gloating about
Speaker 1: having set up Tupac, and now Tupac was in jail
Speaker 1: and he'd been shot, and that seems to not be
Speaker 1: the case at all. Biggie Smalls apparently wrote that song
Speaker 1: before the Quad City shooting. And again, just from all evidence,
Speaker 1: it seems like Biggie had no problem with Tupac. This
Speaker 1: is all in Tupac's head. Like this whole East Coast
Speaker 1: West West Coast beef seems to have come from Tupac
Speaker 1: being paranoid, essentially, And I looked up why he might
Speaker 1: have been paranoid, and apparently there's pretty widespread acknowledgment or
Speaker 1: belief that he was suffering from substantial mental health issues
Speaker 1: while he was alive, and that that had a huge
Speaker 1: impact on the way that he interacted with people, the
Speaker 1: level of trust he would afford, even the closest people,
Speaker 1: Like I think it was very easy to fall out
Speaker 1: of his favor because you might do or say something
Speaker 1: that he suddenly found suspicious and now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like you were his enemy, like you would do something
Speaker 1: like set him up or rob him or pay for
Speaker 1: him to be killed or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wondered about that. I'm glad you looked into that.
Speaker 1: Thank you, I am too.
Speaker 3: You're welcome. Maybe we should take another break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, we'll take another break and we'll we'll
Speaker 2: get back to it right after this.
Speaker 1: As why why.
Speaker 4: SK as good.
Speaker 2: Tough?
Speaker 4: He should know?
Speaker 1: Definitely large house of h.
Speaker 4: Y s K.
Speaker 2: All right, So, uh, I don't need to go over
Speaker 2: what we've been talking about because everyone's listening. So at
Speaker 2: this point, the record labels that were handling this kind
Speaker 2: of music, it wasn't like the major label stuff at
Speaker 2: this time, like that would happen in the future, but
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 3: It was basically hip hop labels.
Speaker 2: You had bad Boy with Shawn Comb's death Row Records
Speaker 2: on the other side, that company was founded about the
Speaker 2: same time in nineteen ninety two by Doctor Dre and
Speaker 2: a few other guys, and one of those guys was
Speaker 2: his former bodyguard, Marion sug Knight.
Speaker 3: Spelled s u g e h.
Speaker 2: He was the CEO of death Row Records and he
Speaker 2: was a blood like he was you know, he was
Speaker 2: just a straight up blood for from South central Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's now the CEO of death Row Records, right,
Speaker 1: so that automatically makes death Row Records like another It's
Speaker 1: a legit music label as far as like the stuff
Speaker 1: that the artists on the label are rapping about. The
Speaker 1: CEO of the record label is a blood, not a
Speaker 1: form of blood, a blood.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we talked about how the Quad Studio shooting like
Speaker 1: really kind of started the beef. The thing that made
Speaker 1: that beef really genuinely public came at the award show
Speaker 1: for Source Magazine their annual awards this time this one
Speaker 1: was in nineteen ninety five, where sug Knight, who'd been
Speaker 1: visiting Tupac and Jail and apparently had bought into Tupac's
Speaker 1: theory that Seawn Combs and Biggie Smalls had set him
Speaker 1: up to be shot and robbed. Suge Knight was accepting
Speaker 1: an award and during his speech he invited any rapper
Speaker 1: who didn't want to worry about the executive producer trying
Speaker 1: to be in all the videos, which was a direct
Speaker 1: shot at Shawn Comb's. He said, come on over to
Speaker 1: death Row Records. And I mean, if you go back
Speaker 1: and look at like Biggie Small's videos and like basically
Speaker 1: any rapper on this label at the time, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Shawn Combs is probably going to pop up making a cameo,
Speaker 1: if not dance on it, usually with his shirt wide open.
Speaker 1: He really was not. He was not what they, like
Speaker 1: death Row Records was doing. And so, like Suge Knight
Speaker 1: made it a pretty good point, like if you were
Speaker 1: really actually looking for legit stuff, come over here. But
Speaker 1: saying it publicly and doing it by taking a shot
Speaker 1: at Sewan Comb's at the Source Awards while you're accepting
Speaker 1: an award. It was a big deal. That really kind
Speaker 1: of made that beef public and it turned into East
Speaker 1: Coast versus West Coast essentially immediately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I remember at the time thinking because
Speaker 2: I remember just and it wasn't just rappers like they
Speaker 2: had like some R and B acts And I feel like,
Speaker 2: I feel like Combs was always in those videos just
Speaker 2: like like you said, either dancing or just like yeah
Speaker 2: yeah in the background.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I remember thinking about the time at the time,
Speaker 2: and this wasn't like my hip hop was all like
Speaker 2: earlier stuff and tribe call quests and that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: and you know, Doctor Dray and Snoop. I was into
Speaker 2: that at first, but this generally wasn't my thing. But
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, like, this guy's like he sucks, like
Speaker 2: he's not he's not a talented artist, no, because he wasn't.
Speaker 3: I guess you know.
Speaker 2: He was a like you said, an executive and a producer,
Speaker 2: and I was I remember thinking, they're like, why is
Speaker 2: he always throwing himself in there in front of the camera,
Speaker 2: like he sucks?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he was dorky even compared to who were
Speaker 1: essentially mainstream rap artists like Tupac and Biggie Smalls. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: shade on them, but there were way more underground rappers
Speaker 1: at the time putting out really good stuff. Tribe called
Speaker 1: Quest is a really good example of that that when
Speaker 1: you compared them to them, he became even more cringey.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, for sure he was.
Speaker 1: It was and he definitely like kind of brought down
Speaker 1: the credibility of the label and all the artists on
Speaker 1: it for sure. Like Biggie Smalls was exponentially too good
Speaker 1: for Sean Combs. Seawan Combs just kind of had him
Speaker 1: under his thumb.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, which is sad.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, Biggie Smalls is. Biggie Smalls and Tupac
Speaker 1: usually kind of battle for first or second place on
Speaker 1: most lists of the greatest rapper of all time. My
Speaker 1: money's on Biggie Smalls.
Speaker 3: What about you as the greatest rapper of all time?
Speaker 1: Well, it's between Tupac and Biggie how about that?
Speaker 3: Oh okay?
Speaker 2: Because Chuck d like dead in the bullseye for me,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I was always a public enemy
Speaker 2: guy like that started in high school.
Speaker 1: I like them too, but I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: I don't like the I don't like the instrumental track
Speaker 1: to a lot of their stuff. It's too hard edgy
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I liked it, I mean, trust me, I was
Speaker 2: way more into like, uh, the tribe called Quest and
Speaker 2: Far Side and Jungle Brothers and like that kind of style.
Speaker 2: Uh so public Enemy me being into Public Enemy in
Speaker 2: high school is definitely kind of a weird thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But as I was listening to the Smiths and
Speaker 3: The Cure, It's.
Speaker 1: Right, no, I'm with you. I was listening to Smith's
Speaker 1: and The Cure, but also like boot Camp Click, like
Speaker 1: Smith and Wesson, Nah's Wu Tang Gangs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see. I never I like Gangstar, but I
Speaker 3: never got into Wu Tang.
Speaker 1: They were pretty good. They were they were better solo.
Speaker 1: I think most of like method Man and Rizza were
Speaker 1: better solo than Wu Tang together.
Speaker 3: But whatever, and this is two middle aged white guys
Speaker 3: that's their hip hop pass.
Speaker 1: I do have to say that Doctor Dre's The Chronic
Speaker 1: was literally life changing, oh for sure. And it's not
Speaker 1: just me that that happened to. I think that changed
Speaker 1: a lot of people's trajection.
Speaker 3: I was one of them.
Speaker 2: Man, that thing by heart and inside and out. It's
Speaker 2: a fun listen when I put it on a lot
Speaker 2: of nostalgia, Let's back it is.
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing would be for Doggie Style
Speaker 1: Snoop's debut solo album, It's not It does not hold up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's not like it wasn't as good as
Speaker 3: the Chronic, not a mile.
Speaker 1: But I liked it as much as the Chronic at
Speaker 1: the time, and I don't anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 2: And part of that may have to do with the
Speaker 2: fact that Snoop Dogg has I don't know, become the
Speaker 2: Snoop Dogg of today.
Speaker 1: Man, he's amazing. He's now the owner of the Thrower Records.
Speaker 2: No, he's awesome, but I just feel like he's he's
Speaker 2: a bit over exposed for my taste.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, he's like the the Peyton Manning of
Speaker 1: the hip hop world. He's the Pedro Pascal of rap.
Speaker 3: Okay, even better said, but he's.
Speaker 1: An American treasure though. I mean like he's an Olympic
Speaker 1: mascot along with Flavor Flav.
Speaker 2: Now I'm picturing Snoop Dogg, Pedro Pascal, and Peyton Manning
Speaker 2: and just sitting at lunch just saying, like, guys, this
Speaker 2: is great.
Speaker 1: I could see that talking about mutual funds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should do something together because we're done out there.
Speaker 1: Enough, right, it'll blow everyone's mind.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: So we are in September nineteen ninety five, At this point,
Speaker 2: sug Knight has dropped the dropped the bomb at the
Speaker 2: Source Awards, which I'm sure did not sit well with
Speaker 2: Shawn Combs. And Tupac is in prison at this point,
Speaker 2: and Knight and Comb's go to the same party here
Speaker 2: in Atlanta at what was called the Platinum House. It's
Speaker 2: a strip bar over on Piedmont Road near the Colonnade.
Speaker 3: Which you love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a fight breaks out and a guy named Jake
Speaker 2: Roebles it was a death Row employee and he was
Speaker 2: a blood and a close friend of sug Knight. He
Speaker 2: was shot and killed and witnesses were like, Seawan Combs's
Speaker 2: bodyguard is the one who did.
Speaker 1: It, right, So this is not good. This has not
Speaker 1: helped this rivalry at all. And eventually, I guess over
Speaker 1: the same time, Tupac is still in prison, but sug
Speaker 1: Knight is still visiting Tupac there, and like they're becoming
Speaker 1: closer and closer because not only is Suge Night going
Speaker 1: out of his way to go visit Tupac in prison,
Speaker 1: he's also helping him financially, helped him post bail to
Speaker 1: get out on an appeal. And when Tupac gets out
Speaker 1: of prison, again. He's now deeply indebted to sug Knight,
Speaker 1: but apparently they have become real friends. He releases his
Speaker 1: fourth album, All Eyes on Me. I think it was
Speaker 1: in February of nineteen ninety six, like immediately when double Platinum.
Speaker 1: I think it went to number one on the charts.
Speaker 2: So at this time, Death Row is at CANAM Studios
Speaker 2: outside La That's what they're working out of, and people,
Speaker 2: you know at the time were like, you know, the
Speaker 2: real stuff is going down. There's a big gangster culture
Speaker 2: in and around that studio. Sug Knight is a real heavy.
Speaker 2: He's threatening people right and left if they don't, you know,
Speaker 2: aren't on his good side. And people are hanging out
Speaker 2: there with gang members who are their security. So there's
Speaker 2: you know, there might be bloods there one day, there
Speaker 2: might be crips there one day. There might be a
Speaker 2: huge singer there one day recording. But all of this
Speaker 2: is sort of happening around can M Studios.
Speaker 1: Right. So twopuckets out of prison, and remember like this
Speaker 1: guy's like essentially a heat seeking missile focused on Biggie Smalls.
Speaker 1: Like I get the impression that he just sat in
Speaker 1: prison like ruminating about Biggie Smalls and getting back at him.
Speaker 1: So one of the first things he does was hire
Speaker 1: Biggie Small's wife, Faith Evans, who was herself a pretty
Speaker 1: popular recording artist at the time. He offered her twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars to be on one of his records,
Speaker 1: a track for his album All Eyes on Me, and
Speaker 1: she did. She's like, sure, twenty five grand I'll do it.
Speaker 1: And I guess after she performed or laid down the track,
Speaker 1: I guess what it's called. He was like, I got
Speaker 1: my check at the hotel room. You got to come
Speaker 1: over to my hotel room to get it.
Speaker 3: The red flag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she went. Both of them say that he
Speaker 1: propositioned her. He says that they had sex. She has
Speaker 1: repeatedly denied and emphatically denied that they did. But just
Speaker 1: the fact that they were in a hotel room together
Speaker 1: gave tupac even if it wasn't true that they had sex,
Speaker 1: gave him plenty of grounds to tell everybody that they
Speaker 1: did have sex to at least gnaw at Biggie Small's
Speaker 1: with questions, you know in this yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is his wife, so like it's on
Speaker 2: for real. At this point, There's no coming back. At
Speaker 2: the Sole Train Award show, this in March of ninety six,
Speaker 2: Tupac and Biggie both won award, so they were there.
Speaker 2: That was the first time they had been together since
Speaker 2: that Quad Studio shooting, which is where it all started.
Speaker 3: And they both had their guys with them. They both
Speaker 3: had their entourages.
Speaker 2: Tupac had the Bloods, Biggie had the South Side Crips
Speaker 2: on his side, and there was a guy named Keith
Speaker 2: d and he was a crip, so he is with Biggie.
Speaker 2: And outside of this, at the Soul Train Award show,
Speaker 2: they got into a fight.
Speaker 3: Basically.
Speaker 2: Witnesses said that Tupac is shouting, shouting down biggiees groups,
Speaker 2: sort of inciting them. They all brandish guns, but nothing
Speaker 2: happens at this point, just a lot of sort of
Speaker 2: back and forth and like, you know, I've got my gun,
Speaker 2: so shut up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's astounding Crips and Bloods with their guns drawn
Speaker 1: in the same spot and no one shot anybody. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: So Tupac released Hit Him Up, which is considered one
Speaker 1: of the best diss tracks of all time. He actually
Speaker 1: specifically names Biggie Bye Well by name He also talks
Speaker 1: about how he slept with Biggie's wife, Faith Evans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and while this is also going on, there's like a
Speaker 1: lot of money to that people have figured out we
Speaker 1: can make from this, right, like this beef and like say,
Speaker 1: you know, some street skirmishes or whatever. This stuff makes news, right, Like,
Speaker 1: people know about this and this is before I think
Speaker 1: cell phones were still kind of bricky at the time,
Speaker 1: long before the Internet, like, and people still knew about
Speaker 1: this stuff. It was just a big deal. And that
Speaker 1: helps sell records like crazy. It also helps sell magazines.
Speaker 1: There's a Vibe magazine from September nineteen ninety five, and
Speaker 1: on the covers Biggie Smalls and Sean Combs and it
Speaker 1: talks about East versus West. Some people put their finger
Speaker 1: on that Vibe issue and point to it as like
Speaker 1: fanning the flames of this beef and essentially making these
Speaker 1: these two groups like have to hate each other even
Speaker 1: more or else they're going to seem weak or like,
Speaker 1: you know, fake whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, And while the this is all going on,
Speaker 2: Tupac is becoming a little more paranoid about death Row
Speaker 2: records and sug Knight and basically like suge Knight's kind
Speaker 2: of controlling the money, saying that you know you're gonna
Speaker 2: blow all your money unless I'm in control. He didn't
Speaker 2: think he was getting the proper royalties. He thought, you're
Speaker 2: holding me back in Hollywood, and I'm trying to get
Speaker 2: my movie career going. So like trouble is sort of
Speaker 2: brewing on the inside there, which finally would culminate. On
Speaker 2: September seventh, nineteen ninety six, a lot of people connected
Speaker 2: with death Row records, Tupac, you know as one of them,
Speaker 2: went to the Mike Tyson fight against Bruce Selden in
Speaker 2: Las Vegas, and after the fight, one of the Death
Speaker 2: Row group members, he was a blood named Trevon Lane,
Speaker 2: saw a guy who said, hey, he stole a death
Speaker 2: Row necklace from me a few months ago. That guy's
Speaker 2: name was Orlando Anderson. He was a crip and a
Speaker 2: nephew of Keith d and Tupac. Sug Knight and other
Speaker 2: people jump Anderson rough him up pretty good and a
Speaker 2: few hours later, Suge Knight and Tupac are at a
Speaker 2: STOPLIGHTE Cadillac pulls up next to them and the car
Speaker 2: is shot up in Tupac.
Speaker 3: Is dead six days later at the age of twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently he was like making jokes and everything as
Speaker 1: he was being put onto the gurney after the shooting.
Speaker 1: But he just went downhill really quick from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people are like, this is Biggie,
Speaker 1: this is Sean Combs. They had they said they had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it, but this, this, this did
Speaker 1: kind of give Biggie Smalls like a wide opening to
Speaker 1: be like, this stuff has to stop. These this East
Speaker 1: coast West coast thing has gotten out of hand. And
Speaker 1: it seemed pretty cut and dry that really it was
Speaker 1: them beating up Orlando Anderson and him and other crips
Speaker 1: being in town who targeted and carried out this drive by.
Speaker 1: You know, that seems like almost certainly the explanation for
Speaker 1: the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's who the cops thought from the
Speaker 2: very beginning. It was the guy that was jumped and
Speaker 2: beat up. They didn't arrest him. He died a couple
Speaker 2: of years later in a shooting in Compton. Fast forward
Speaker 2: all the way to twenty nineteen. In a memoir where
Speaker 2: Keith d admitted that he was in that Cadillac. He said,
Speaker 2: I gave the gun to Anderson. He was in the
Speaker 2: back seat. There were two other guys in the car.
Speaker 2: Some people say it was a guy named DeAndre Smith
Speaker 2: who was the actual trigger man. But basically everyone in
Speaker 2: that car ended up being killed except for Keith D.
Speaker 2: And in September twenty twenty three, he was arrested and
Speaker 2: charged with Tupac's murder. And that trial is going to
Speaker 2: happen all these years later, coming up this summer in
Speaker 2: August of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Keith D and later on a Bad Boy
Speaker 1: co founder named Kirk Burrows and others. After all these
Speaker 1: allegations in revelations about what Sean Combs has been up
Speaker 1: to came out, They've come forward him and like we
Speaker 1: think he actually did have something to do with this.
Speaker 1: Seems like a pretty quick turnaround to me. I think
Speaker 1: it was just crips retaliating for a beatdown. So Tupac
Speaker 1: is gone now, like you said, age twenty five, and
Speaker 1: if you want, you can go. You know where Clarkston is, Chuck?
Speaker 3: Uh? Sure? That was a rival high school of Ridan.
Speaker 1: There is a Tupac statue in memorial in Clarkston.
Speaker 3: Did you know that I did? I've never seen it though.
Speaker 1: We went there, You mean, I went there, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty it's pretty amazing, and it's just in the middle
Speaker 1: of this little RinkyDink suburb of Atlanta. Strange, but yeah cool.
Speaker 2: That was kind of my stomping grounds. Was that area
Speaker 2: of Memorial Drive where Clarkston was z owned?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Well we'll have to go to the
Speaker 1: Tupac statue together.
Speaker 3: I'll go check it out.
Speaker 1: So I think what Chuck like, less than six months no,
Speaker 1: right at about six months after Tupac was killed, Biggie
Speaker 1: Small's was murdered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was March nineteen ninety seven. He was in
Speaker 2: a car, riding in a car leaving a party a
Speaker 2: Vibe magazine in La pronounced dead at the hospital. He
Speaker 2: was but twenty four years old. And immediately everyone was like,
Speaker 2: this is Shuge Knight, who by the way, people blamed
Speaker 2: Tupac shooting initially on Shuge Knight. Yeah, but he was
Speaker 2: shot as well. He was just grazed, but that seems
Speaker 2: obviously to have not been the case. But everyone immediately
Speaker 2: was like, no, Suge Knight. It definitely was in on
Speaker 2: Biggie's murder.
Speaker 1: In retaliation for Tupac shooting, right. Yeah, It's also entirely
Speaker 1: possible that Shawn Combs did this too, but it certainly
Speaker 1: seems to have been a contract hit. Like the people
Speaker 1: who killed Biggie Small's shot and shot into his car.
Speaker 1: They were lying in wait. They were essentially parked at
Speaker 1: this intersection, waiting for them to stop. They stopped. Shawn
Speaker 1: Comb's car ran a red light and Biggie's car stopped
Speaker 1: at it. So Shawn Combs wasn't near the shooting when
Speaker 1: it happened. There was an FBI agent who came forward
Speaker 1: or actually I guess created a whole report on this,
Speaker 1: who was like this. It was essentially the LAPD hiring
Speaker 1: a hit man at the behest of either Suge Knight
Speaker 1: or Sean Combs. And if so, it was not Tupac's
Speaker 1: probably was not a conspiracy. Biggie Small's murder was almost
Speaker 1: certainly a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know Suge Knight would have done all
Speaker 2: this from jail. He was in jail at the time.
Speaker 2: He is in jail. He's in prison now. Again, this
Speaker 2: is from This is a twenty eight year sentence, so
Speaker 2: this is a big one. And this is for the
Speaker 2: death of a Compton businessman from twenty fifteen. He was
Speaker 2: never charged in Biggie's killing. But Biggie's last record or
Speaker 2: last you know, sort of official release. I know they
Speaker 2: both put out a lot of stuff posthumously. But his
Speaker 2: next like real drop was Life After Death. Was called
Speaker 2: that before he was murdered. But that sold more than
Speaker 2: ten million copies and certified diamond.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess not as Tupac released nine posthumous albums,
Speaker 1: seven of them went platinum. Yeah. Did you know sug
Speaker 1: Knight has a podcast from jail called collect Call uh Hit.
Speaker 3: That's a pretty good name. It's a great podcast from prison.
Speaker 1: Agreed. Yeah, you want to know what ended the East
Speaker 1: Coast West Coast beef?
Speaker 3: Oh was that still not happening?
Speaker 1: No? No, it ended fairly soon after this rat became
Speaker 1: more decentralized in groups like Outcast came out. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the whether you were from the East Coast or the
Speaker 1: West Coast was watered down. It didn't matter nearly as much.
Speaker 1: So you can thank Outcasts for ending the East Coast
Speaker 1: West Coast rivalry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because people are like, no one's got a beef
Speaker 3: with Big Boy and Andre.
Speaker 1: No, everybody loves them for sure, Like I know we've
Speaker 1: some maybe facetious. We are not being.
Speaker 3: Facetious right now. No, hell abotcast.
Speaker 1: One last thing. Apparently Michael Jackson assaulted Tupac once in
Speaker 1: a studio when Tupac insulted Quincy Jones's daughter.
Speaker 3: Oh h, Rashida or another one.
Speaker 1: Another one, not Rashida. I don't think it was Rashida.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I went. I wonder how. I wonder how that fight went.
Speaker 1: It's a widespread rumor. And apparently also, you know, Biggie
Speaker 1: was on one of Michael Jackson's songs like doing his thing,
Speaker 1: like legit doing his thing. It wasn't watered down for
Speaker 1: the radio or anything like that. And apparently Michael Jackson
Speaker 1: threw his lot in with Biggie and was not a
Speaker 1: big fan of Tupac and snubbed him once. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: and apparently in addition to beating him up.
Speaker 2: And everyone said, no one cares put side here on
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson. You don't have that kind of cred.
Speaker 1: No, but it is a like Biggie does a pretty
Speaker 1: good job on that song.
Speaker 3: I'll have to check it out.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that's it, Chuck man.
Speaker 3: We did it.
Speaker 1: We did it. We made it through. Hopefully we didn't
Speaker 1: sound too ridiculous and dorky at any point, but we'll
Speaker 1: find out. Yeah, Chuck said, yeah, it means it's time
Speaker 1: for listener now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is just kind of a nice email with
Speaker 3: some good suggestions. Hey guys, my name is Josiah Brown.
Speaker 3: I live in Tennessee.
Speaker 2: I've been a devoted fan since I was about ten
Speaker 2: years old and I'm twenty now. My mom put me
Speaker 2: on you guys, and I basically never stopped.
Speaker 3: So thanks Mom.
Speaker 1: Thanks Mom.
Speaker 3: I've been binge listening recently. I do that every so often.
Speaker 2: I've just been reminded of how wonderful the show is,
Speaker 2: and I just want to reach out and say thanks
Speaker 2: for providing some wonderful content and bringing the same big
Speaker 2: old smile to my face all these years.
Speaker 3: Keep up the good workfellas, and that is Josiah Bee.
Speaker 3: And Josiah had a lot.
Speaker 2: Of good ideas, including Ann Frank, Oscar Schindler. Motown Okay,
Speaker 2: I want to do Motown for sure, mister Rogers, I
Speaker 2: can't believe we haven't done that one yet.
Speaker 1: We were going to, and then that Tom Hanks movie
Speaker 1: came out and kind of ruined it for a little while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I finally saw that on a plane recently.
Speaker 1: Would you think did you see it?
Speaker 3: Uh? It was? Okay yep.
Speaker 2: And the Hindenburg, and that the Hindenburg is going to
Speaker 2: be coming at some point in the not too distant
Speaker 2: future because we commissioned that article and it's it's in
Speaker 2: the folder on the computer, so I definitely know we're
Speaker 2: going to get to that one.
Speaker 1: Okay, boo, Yeah, who is that again, Josiah, Josiah, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, Josiah. That was a very nice email, and
Speaker 1: thanks for all the great ideas. If we do any
Speaker 1: of them, hopefully will remember to credit you with them, right.
Speaker 3: That's right, except for the Hindenburg. Yeah, it's already in
Speaker 3: the bad Okay.
Speaker 1: If you want to be like Josiah and email in,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from you. You can send
Speaker 1: it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.