Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 320: Biggie and Tupac Part I - Sugar Bear

Episode Date: June 9, 2018

We're delving into the cases of two of the most famous "unsolved" murders of the 20th century: Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. On our first episode, we're going to give a short history of gangsta rap in order to track the path that led to the deaths of two of the biggest musical icons of the nineties. ​

Hey, what's up everyone? How are you? Last podcast on the left here with you. We have some big announcements about live shows. Many big announcements. Yes! Yes! We're going to be coming to many, many, many cities

around the United States this summer, including visiting a couple of the states that we were number one. Hey, y'all right. And that poll that was done not too long ago, and the first state that we're gonna be going to is Arizona. Awesome. Yeah.

We're gonna be coming to Phoenix, Arizona. We're gonna be playing the Van Buren. Tickets are on sale right now. That show is Thursday, June 28th. Then the very next day, we're gonna be flying to Boston, Massachusetts to do the Wilbur Theater. And then the day after that,

we're gonna be flying to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to do the Trocadero. So we're definitely just doing a triangle tour of America, which I don't know if we're calling it that, but we can't wait to fucking be there. I think we're gonna call it Hangover in the Sky tour. Yes. Yeah.

And then on July 6th, we're gonna be doing Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon. Finally gonna go back to Portland. Yes. And it won't be covered in snow this time. Very good. Love Portland, though. And then finally, our last big show,

our last big venue show is gonna be in San Diego, California at the Balboa Theater on July 20th. That's gonna be during San Diego Comic-Con. And we're also gonna be appearing at the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, Washington at the end of August. We hope to be adding a few more shows to this year. That's definitely not the end of it,

but that's what we got for the next couple of months. So go to lastpodcastontheleft.com to buy tickets to all of those shows. Come see our Wears and Sundries, and we hope that you are duly entertained. And if not, I don't know what to do. Hail yourselves, everyone, and enjoy this episode of the last podcast on the left.

Hail Satan! There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Man, oh man, it is hot out there. Oh yeah.

Man, I am in fucking... Weather talk. Let's do some weather talk. I tell you what, I am in a central Florida city right now. It is 102 outside. Wonderful. And it is slowly but surely becoming 102 inside.

I am in a bathing suit. I am slick. You are. To the touch. I can see that. Look at me shake my flaps. Wonderful. How was the Red Lobster?

Was the Red Lobster good? It had a police line around it, so I didn't go to it. All right. So I went to a place called Good Value Restaurant. Very good. Welcome to the last podcast. On the left, everyone.

I am Ben Kissel with Marcus Parks. Hello. We're here in New York City, and as Henry has already alluded to, he's in beautiful sunny Florida. I'm in the birthplace of Johnny Thunders. Oh, really? Oh, shit.

Yeah, and also, this is where the plane crash that killed fucking Ozzie's guitarists. Oh, Randy Rhodes? Wow. Yep. That's all they have to say about this place. Also,

A lot of music history. It has the watermelon festival. Each one keeps saying, like, yeah, God, I'd be here for the watermelon festival. And I was like, when is it? They're like, not anytime soon. Right. Oh, good.

Well, then I won't be here for it. Oh, right. Well, today's episode, this is a long time coming, and I am personally, like, extremely thrilled to learn more about the murder and the life of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. We're talking Tupac, and we're talking Biggie.

Yeah. So the 1996 murders of gangster rappers, Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace, AKA Biggie Smalls, AKA the notorious BIG, have generated conspiracy theories beyond imagine, blaming everyone from the reasonable to the ridiculous, the LAPD to Oprah. What?

And it's about time somebody brought fucking Oprah down, because when she orchestrated the murders of the notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur, she took a step too far as far as I'm concerned. She used to have little people on her show, bowling each other. Well, you know, Oprah's the only one that could get away with it.

That's what I would say. Well, the reason why these conspiracy theories exist in such a numerous fashions, because of two reasons. One, these two artists were beyond beloved in their time and have only gotten bigger since their deaths. So there's a lot of emotion here to deal with when it comes to fans.

There's a lot of conspiracies about the murder of Biggie and Tupac, mainly because, I mean, I'll be honest, you said, where we've seen in the past, where there's a lot of emotions, there's a lot of conspiracies, because people want to know why. Like, why did these people get murdered, these people I love? There's got to be some kind of thing that led up to this. And also, these guys are surrounded

by some of the biggest bullshitters that you've ever seen. Everybody knew Poc. Everybody, it's like every interview, every doc about them has the same. They're like, I knew Poc. I knew Poc. I held his guns in a basket for him one time in Sacramento. And you're like, you don't know anything about him.

Well, that would require a fair level of friendship there, if that did happen. Well, unlike, say, like the murder of John Lennon, the murders of Biggie and Tupac are officially still unsolved. But unofficially, what many people don't know is that it's more or less known who is behind each separate murder and who

pulled the trigger in each case. I heard it was Oprah. Yeah, she could get out for Munder Steadman. I got it, you fucking ass. Good job. You got it, you did it. In both cases, there was motive and there was means. But like the vast majority of things that end in murder

are, both are fantastically stupid. And maybe that's why people have been reluctant to accept the truth. We want the deaths of our heroes to mean something. But unfortunately, sometimes death comes just because you weren't paying attention to what was going on around you. And it seems like that's exactly what happened here.

You've got to be careful who you surround yourself with. I feel like one big lesson I've learned from this story is that you've got to pick your friends carefully and your enemies even more carefully. That's true. Yeah, I think I've made a horrendous mistake just judging by the glisten coming off your body right now that I'm forced to stare at as you wear a bathing suit

in a Florida hotel room. Yeah, man, I'm a great fucking enemy. Because no matter what, you toss it with me, you get the grease. Grease comes on you. I don't want the grease. But for those of you too young to remember, the early to mid-90s were partly defined in popular culture

by the East Coast, West Coast, gangsta rap rivalry. And also, there used to be a thing called the dial-up modem. Well, now hear me now. Listen, sit here. Put down your zip zapper. What is that called? Is that called a what you're twisting with your thumbs? What's that called?

iPhone. Dude, you're doing something with your phones. Back in the day, we only had one phone, and your mother used to beat you with it. And if she was on there looking for money from your father, you couldn't use the internet to see nude pictures of Psylocke. That's very true. So Biggie was East, and Tupac was West.

And the whole thing culminated with their murders. But despite what fronts these guys put up, at the end of the day, they were really just artists. Even though there were a few exceptions, a lot of the guys on the East and West Coast were pretty much playing a character. And they were damn good at it too. Well, I mean, you know, being from Wisconsin,

I understand regional feuds. I mean, those mother effers from Minnesota. Don't even get soda? Or you're going to call soda pop? Is that right? I don't think so, my friend. And also, it's a bubbler, not a water fountain. OK, we could do this all day.

I mean, I swear to God, if I'm around somebody who calls it pop instead of soda, I want to fucking shoot him in the face with my fucking gun. I understand. I don't fuck y'all talk about it. It's Coke. Coke is a flavor of soda. I mean, it's nothing.

Good Lord. Now, some of these artists sold dope when they were kids, but none of the big stars were truly living a life. As sticky fingers from Onyx put it, if he was actually a gangster, he'd be out there actually doing it instead of talking about it. They wouldn't have time to record rap albums. These men are poets.

Yeah. They are writers. They're artists. They make cool rhymes and dance rhythms. That's what they want to do. They want to make people dance. It's like when Ozzie said back in the day when they blamed him for the suicide of his fucking,

like, he's saying that he had backmasked suicide hypnotism into his albums. And he's like, why would I want to kill my fans? I'm trying to sell them records. Right, exactly. Yes, that's important to remember that, because it got totally blown out of proportion, especially for a young, naive boy in Wisconsin

such as myself. I mean, I did lose sight of the fact that these aren't just entertainers. Yeah. But because some of them needed to be next to that life, because their image and ego demanded that they needed to appear to be at least kind of criminal, and because some of them just liked it,

they surrounded themselves with actual criminals. And it was their association with these criminals that got them killed. But in order for us to really tell the story of Biggie and Tupac, we got to tell the story of just how the East Coast, West Coast rivalry came to be. All right. What I will say is my one experience on a Scorsese film

is that it's very similar to that. As they talked about, like, during Goodfellas and shit, all those mobsters hung out. The idea is that they all felt real cool. Like, De Niro got to go eat at Rayo's with the guys from the fucking Caprese family, and they would go. And it would just be like, oh, the espresso you haven't said is not something I want to negotiate with.

And they all have to go and get him new coffee and shit. That was the Wolf of Wall Street, of course, still a very good movie. Yes. But before we get into the history, let's acknowledge our sources today. OK. The first is Murder Wrap by Detective Greg Cating, who

is the lead detective in the Biggie Smalls case when it was reopened the late 2000s as, no shit, Operation Wrap It Up. No, I just, I do. It is on theme to be punny when investigating rap. I guess a little word play in there might be a suitable for the name of the investigation. But at the same time, leave the humor to the comics.

Operation Wrap It Up also sounds like one of those mobile DJ booths that goes to play at Bar Mitzvahs or something. Our other source today is the fantastic book Original Gangsters, The Untold Story of Dr. Dray, Easy Eat, Ice Cube, and Tupac Shakur and the Birth of West Coast Rap by Ben Westhoff, hailed throughout the hip hop world as painstakingly researched and accurate.

It's an awesome book. I keep getting sucked into stories that don't matter to the episode. Like, I was deep in it. It's great. You should check it out. Now, I will actually say reading this book made me a little less apprehensive about tackling

this subject matter. For an example, I will read a small excerpt. Dray's productivity had slowed to a trickle by 1995. He wasn't feeling the gangland vibe at Can-Am and produced only two of All Eyes on Me's more than two dozen songs. Still, those two are doozies. I can just imagine Ben Stein reading this book

and just being like, it is a little edgy. He uses the word sous-saint, the French word, like five or six times. And you're like, well, he is far outside. He does make me feel comfortable just being like, thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of the rap scene, Mr. Westhoff. And now I could show the whole gangland world,

my J crew, wonderful canvas shorts that ride a sous-saint amount above my knees. Yes, well, Dray did. As soon as he created those two tracks, he said, with any luck, they'll say they're doozies. So that's good. But all joking aside, this guy really knows what he's talking about.

He wrote the book over a period of five years and talked with everyone, from major players like Ice Cube and Dr. Dray to some of the more ancillary, but still important guys, like Tupac's stepbrother, Mo Prem. OK. And I am very thankful for this book, as this is admittedly a genre of music

that it could be said that we are not necessarily well-versed in. Speak for yourself. Yeah, I don't really speak the rhymes of the street. I feel them in my bones. And I do understand, because I'm from the dirty streets in New York City. I've saw the streets at notorious VIG wrapped about.

I walk those streets. I put on my little pump-up shoes in those streets. And so it's nice to be back in it, man. No, you're from Queens. Biggie was from Bedside, Brooklyn. That's like a 45-minute drive away, if not an hour. It's just you just take their stores and you flip them to the other side.

That's what I would say, and that's what I was. We had a lot of just fat guys washing porches, just different skin color. Different things that are happening. Tupac's changes, very significant in my life. Dear Mama, wonderful song. I had the best of. And indeed, it was very good.

Oh, yeah, best of, super fan had the best of. Yes, yes, that's right. And I put it in my Discman, my CD changer. And it could play in my Thunderbird, because it had shock absorber. It had a shock absorbent technology. That was pretty cool. I mean, personally, I listen to all this stuff obsessively

when I was a kid in the 90s, but it's not something that I know a ton about. I had to do a lot more research on this one, to figure out the history that I did for, say, the Kurt Cobain episode, which I already knew a ton about. It's such a compelling story, though. And getting back into it, you realize, and there's something about reading

about the context of all the music makes the music so much better. I've been listening to Tori SBIG all fucking week. And it's great, because you feel his history in it. That's the one beautiful thing about hip hop, I think, is that it has, you can feel the history. You can feel them kind of braily, because every song's like a story half the time.

And so you see little slices of their life, and you get it a little bit more. And not to harp on this too much, but this music was really considered dangerous. Very dangerous. My friend got kicked out of the house after he bought Snoop Dogg's Doggy Style. He was just gone, as if he came home, and it was like,

whatever. I believe in the devil now, and his father was a pastor, and he's like, you're gone. That's how serious people took this music. And Tipper Gore was out there in front of Congress, being like, we need parental advisories. This really sent a shock wave through the Midwest. Not just Tipper Gore.

Not just Tipper Gore, Dan Quayle was on the campaign trail, like quoting iced tea lyrics. I mean, and it was all of the news stories were the same. It's like, you may never heard of these artists, but it's guaranteed your kids have. And then it would just go on from there, and talk about how all of them were psychopaths. It was a musical version of Reef or Madness.

It really was like crazy. Anyway. I was definitely forced by my huge friend growing up, Nicholas Finesia, to sing the chorus to Gangster's Paradise at the elementary school talent show. Oh yeah, my older brother did get grounded for a month for owning the Naughty by Nature album. That was very tame, though, really.

Very tame. And you know, I'm just going to say this. Most people are Naughty by Nurture. Nurture versus nature, ladies and gentlemen. No one's bored, Naughty. Nurture or Kissel, please. It is a mixture. OK.

So as always, we're going to do our best to do the history justice. But please, buy and read original gangsters. Because this right here, what we're going to do, this is going to be a simplified tip top skim of the history of gangster rap. And also, go buy Murder Rap as well. That's more the second episode.

But both of these books are fucking great. But specifically, original gangsters is amazing. And basically, we're telling the story, this big, the history. So you could really see how it built up and explain why the conspiracies about Biggie and Tupac's murder, they kind of get deflated. And because you have to understand a whole story just to get to what the fuck happened between the two of them.

Right. Now, this story is really about record labels and the people behind them. Specifically, two of them. Bad Boy Records run by Sean Combs, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, a.k.a. Puffy, a.k.a. P. Diddy, and Death Row Records, run by hip hop's greatest villain, Marion Knight, a.k.a. Shug. God, he sends shivers down my spine, just hearing the name.

He's scary. Good Lord. You know what he reminds me of? A smarter version of, you remember the Asian guy with metal teeth and James Bond? John, wasn't it Jaws? Yeah. I think that was his name.

Dangerous guy, though. This guy, he was so big, he would like pop through your television screen. Yeah. But before we get to them, we've got to talk about the label that brought gangsta rap to the world, Roofless Records. Roofless Records was started by Eric Wright, a.k.a. EZE, and Andre Young, a.k.a. Dr. Dre. Now, even though Dre had grown up in a rough neighborhood,

for the most part, he'd stayed away from any kind of street crime. He was a music nerd. Yeah, he was a music nerd who he loved P. Funk. Like P. Funk was his favorite. His mom was a music nerd, so he'd spend all of his time in his garage like learning how to DJ. Again, they are artists. Of course.

Honestly, the story he was talking about, so much fun about how we got into music where he went to go see P. Funk and he was like when the mothership came down. Oh, no. And he was just blew his fucking mind. I was like, yeah, I get it. Yeah, I get it. EZE, on the other hand, was a different story, although it seems like his heart was never really in the drug game.

He only got to selling drugs after inheriting a large stash from a relative who was shot and killed. He's like, I've got all these drugs. Might as well sell them. I am surprised the government didn't come and take 40% of those drugs and an inheritance tax just being like, I'm sorry, we will need 40% of that. That's a very hot take on inheritance tax, Castle, and I really appreciate it. Thank you.

And when that stash ran out, EZE continued to hustle. But without a big pile of free drugs to back him up, EZE found the business was a bit more of a life-threatening hassle than he was willing to put up with. He was also tiny, man. Yeah. And when you're tiny, you've got to be so much tougher than everybody else. And it's just not the same.

You guys don't understand what kind of fucking tornado, how I have to wild out any time I want to get anything done in this life. Wild out, like when all those teenagers made you impersonate Chris Farley before you could get on the train here in New York and you did it. I used my skills as a performer. I used my skills as a performer to do that. OK. And that's more of a testament to my talent and quick thinking.

Right. Which also EZE had to have in order to survive the hard streets. Yes, he did. And yes, being a drug dealer, it's not very lucrative. It's a lot of work. It's weird hours. And you're just around horrible people. Yeah.

So instead of selling drugs, EZE decided to go with his real passion, hip hop, and the perfect person to pair himself with was Dr. Dre. Who was already starting to make waves as an innovative producer, even as a teenager, although it must be said that early West Coast hip hop was a hell of a lot more innocent and goofy in its infancy. This is an excerpt from an early Dre produced track called Monster Rappin. Oh. It's kind of cute.

It's awesome. Why did music end with that song and begin with that song? That is a great tune. But what really surprised me upon reading the book was that how a lot of gangster rap started with parody rap. Yeah. And then it was all boosted by Weird Al. Weird Al, and Weird Al's success with another one rides the bus

was a part of the thing that helped make gangster rap happen. Yeah, I love it. Because Weird Al was, he was from right north of South Central LA. He was like from Linwood, or right north of Compton. So Weird Al was kind of a neighborhood guy. So another one rides the bus came up. And so they started the another one of the really weird ones was called Rap and Duke.

And it was a guy rapping as John Wayne. Hey, you all right? And actually that song was name checked in Biggie Song Juicy as like talking about like, look at how far we've come. We went from Rap and Duke to this. That's so funny. Because all songs about like rags to riches. That's why it's such a great fucking song.

Great. I like that. Man, that monster song is in my head. Oh, yeah. Dracula and Frankenstein will always be friends. I will keep that in my heart forever. Yeah, absolutely. Monster brings it makes you think a monster squad.

That great children's film. Yeah. And that's not the extent of Dre's goofiness. Before gangster rap was electro rap. What we just listened to was more like electro rap. And Dre went all in with his first group, world class Wrecking Crew, nice. Their first photo shoot featured

Dre wearing eyeliner and a sequined form fitting cream colored jumpsuit complete with a stethoscope to really drive the Dr. Dre point home. I get it. It was during glam time as well. So it's like the 80s glam rock was also big. Right. So everybody was doing makeup.

And so his buddy kind of convinced him to put on this outfit. They made this like doctor's uniform for him to wear. And the whole time is like, I don't like this. He's like, no, everybody's into this shit, man. Meanwhile, he comes out of the dressing room in a full lace fucking like suit and Dre's like we're going to get fucking murdered when people see this shit.

They looked pretty good though. Well, the style in LA back then was much different because dudes from New York would come to play in LA like Run DMC would come. And you know, it's Run DMC. And then they'd show up in LA and they'd go to the clubs in LA. And everyone was wearing like these form fitting like suits.

Everyone looked like an extra from New Jack City. OK. Like so they were like they dress like super nice. And New Yorkers just like, I don't know about this. Well, New York had the fucking Gilgans hat, big glasses, and dookie ropes. Because the big thing was like the dookie rope is what made him like a very specific New York style.

Those are the big gold chain necklaces that you're talking about that look like WWE ropes. Yeah, it's called dookie rope. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that either. Yep. Is this is a Browsky joke? No.

No, it is not. It is in the book. It's called they call them dookie ropes. All right. I laughed quite a bit when I looked up how to purchase a dookie rope for myself. And they are still for purchase. But the problem is I have so much back and chest hair

that chains always get caught in them. The Polish problem. Well, while Monster Rap is obviously a joke song, that same dude, Leila Goodman, put out some legitimately good tracks as well. He was also a drug dealer and helped to finance EZ and Dre's early pursuits. And that is when O'Shea Jackson, a.k.a. Ice Cube,

came into the mix. Now, despite Cube being one of the most intense rappers in history, and possibly my personal favorite, there's not an ounce of serious criminality in Ice Cube. Never has been. Ice Cube was an artist writing about what he saw going on around him. But ironically, even though these guys popularized

the gangster lifestyle with their music, their early work was largely anti-gang. It was a little bit like the Burger King Kids Club. It was all just like gangs of a chumps. Yes. Right, right. Well, obviously, so but they weren't being, how successful were they with this more innocent rap?

Not. Not successful. OK, so. Definitely not. No. The market wasn't there. At the time, they kind of had to work clean because they were working out of roller skate

rinks and all these kid clubs because they were saying how the roller skate rink was kind of like the first way that kids could go and hang out with a group of their peers without their being booze and drugs and shit. So they would have to be kind of innocent. But they said that shit would get wild. They were like, all of a sudden, 2,000 kids would show up and one owner of a roller skate rink told Dr. Dre like,

you better understand that if you don't rock this fucking joint tonight, these children are going to rip this place apart. And he'd be like, OK, and all of a sudden, it's a mob of kids staring at him, being like, make us dance or we'll kill everyone. That is the toughest crowd I could ever imagine, for sure. Well, things didn't really change until Tracy Morrow,

a.k.a. Ice-T, now known more for playing Detective Finn Tutuowa on Law and Order SVU, released a song called Six in the Morning. Now, I just can't stop thinking of Dr. Dre just in front of children of the corn. And he'd stare at him with white eyes and he's just like, monster rap.

Well, do monster rap again. I've got it. Like, what a nightmare. Oh, for grown men to have to entertain children as well. Oh, motherfucking Dracula. You know I smoke a lot of crackula. You better take two steps backula or I'll smackula. And everyone's like, oh, shit.

There it is. The song Six in the Morning was so named because Six in the Morning was the time that big fucking tanks driven by LAPD officers would routinely break down the doors of houses suspected to be drug dens. Now, Six in the Morning wasn't the first gangster rap song that honor went to school ED,

but it was the one people paid attention to, particularly in Los Angeles. And that's the thing to remember. Even though these guys weren't living the lifestyle completely, it was still a part of their everyday life. They may not have been selling, but they could still very easily get killed in the crossfire. Yeah, or be sprinkled with drugs

and put under arrest anyway and all that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, because the LAPD had a unit at this time. They called it the crash unit, and it was an anti-gang unit. And the officers freely admitted to carrying around spare guns and drugs because they said, well, they're doing it anyway just because we can't find it on them doesn't mean they're not guilty. Yeah, great, great police work.

Really good police work, yeah. See, the younger folks out there may not remember the blood wars of the 90s as well as we do, even though we just know it through rap music. And again, Minnesota, you're telling me that that is a water fountain? I highly doubt it. Also, back in the day, you'd have to take,

I remember, you know, if you had a father, you'd get 575 from him and go down to the corner store and get him a pack of Marlboro lights because it was okay to do when you were eight years old and it was 1992. Well, to give you perspective on this, for people who weren't alive or don't remember it, I was a kid in Rochester, Texas,

a town of less than 400 people, middle of fucking nowhere. I was 10 years old, and I knew about the bloods in the crypts. Right. You know, I knew all about this war. This shit was absolutely everywhere. They pumped it up as well. The media took a hold of it because it was

a really simple narrative to say to warn about the inner cities, both to bring attention to it, also to kind of in a sideways way, say this is why it's okay for us to neglect them and for them to have no resources because it's essentially like a war-torn country that we would be occupying. We would have to go and really deal

with changing the infrastructure of these cities and they didn't want to. So instead, they used the sensationalist stories about all these rival gangs where it's like, then you realize, oh, this shit was happening everywhere, not just in LA. Like, it happened in New York and it was happening in Atlanta, it happened in fucking Houston,

it happened in all those places, but they used LA as the example. Yeah, you had this situation where it was politicized, so you had the war on drugs, the 93 crime bill, all that super predator nonsense, the three strikes and you're out, and then you also had the television news being like, this is great ratings.

So you just had this two-prong effect and then you had the music for the young kids. I didn't realize it was, I didn't realize how real it was. You know, you watch it on TV and all of our friends went through phases, wearing like whatever, you know, but you didn't quite comprehend the actual devastation. You didn't take it seriously.

And that's the thing is that, you know, we as white fellas, we were buying the majority of gangster rap. Like, that was the majority of their sales were white people, specifically suburban kids. And sadly, I didn't realize that monster rap was what I wanted the whole time. Everyone wanted to live vicariously

through these individuals and they don't want to hear about monster rap. They want to hear about their vision of the inner city. They want to feel cool, right? You know, and this shit made you feel so cool. Well, back then, the Crips, whose gang color was blue, were at war with the Bloods, who were red. They had chapters all over the country,

but the fighting was the worst where the whole thing began in South Central LA and the adjacent city of Compton. And this war actually had a slow build because before the 80s, urban street gangs were more like a protection thing, as in the cops aren't going to come and help us, so we've got to help ourselves. I mean, it definitely resulted in some crime

as most gang activity does, but it wasn't an epidemic. Then crack came along and everything changed. After crack, bloody turf wars became the norm and murder became a part of everyday life. And besides that, families were destroyed by both addiction and overly harsh sentencing for possession of crack specifically. There's also a lot of conjecture about whether or not

the crack problem was just so bad or if it was just another scapegoat story that they put on these communities. I mean, a part of it is, what do we know now? The conspiracy theories that we know to be true is the fact that the CIA helped, well, they turned a blind eye towards crack sales in certain parts of the country, specifically in LA.

If you look at the story of Freeway Rick and you see his whole shit about how they were using that drug money to buy arms to sell to Iran to give money to the fucking Contras, the whole Iran-Contra shit. So it's like, there's a lot of ways the story can be framed about what crack did. But one thing about it is that it was easy to sell,

which is why they did it, because it was easier to measure than cocaine, because cocaine would literally fall off the table if you sneezed. That's true, and five times more sentence, so everyone got theirs here. Yeah, and crack is highly addictive. You can become instantly addicted to crack.

It's the perfect drug, as far as selling goes. And even if you didn't wanna be a part of the drug trade in these neighborhoods, a lot of these kids growing up, they didn't really have a choice. I mean, if one or both of your parents are locked up, I mean, how else are you gonna survive, especially if you have to take care of younger brothers or sisters

or other members of the family? Like, just for an example of how violent this really was, there were 85 murders in Compton in 1987, a town with a population of only about 93,000. To put that into perspective, if New York City had that same murder rate, we'd be looking at 7,200 bodies, three times what we were at our very worst in 1990.

So this is going, the epidemic is in full swing here. But at the same time, Compton at night was different than Compton during the day. Like what a lot of people said, like Compton during day looked like a family neighborhood. Shit would kind of change as the nighttime came. So it was an interesting kind of juxtaposition. In 1949, George Bush Sr. and his wife,

young and new-bile Barbara Bush, lived in Compton in order to, what were they doing, Marcus? I think, he was working for an oil company. Yeah, he was working for an oil company. He used to be like a fancy neighborhood. Well, when things fell apart, it's in that environment that Dre, Cube, Easy, and a couple of other guys named MC Renn and DJ Yella started a group called NWA

in order to talk about all this shit in a real meaningful way that people could relate to. See, before this, musicians and gangs were totally separate. Like for example, one story told in original gangsters had a gang actually calling a timeout during a backyard brawl so the DJ could go home. And both sides stopped fighting and they helped him load his DJ equipment

into his car together. And then as soon as he was gone, boom, fights back on. Just cut to the DJ. Just guys, guys, guys, guys, just one. These records are very fragile. I understand there's a lot of beef being slung around, but can we take a pause in the Taco Bell moment here and let me get my stuff?

And everyone goes like, hold up, hold up, because it was in the street rules that you don't fuck with the DJ. Yeah, it's so much fun. That's fun. That's a fun side story to it and a very sad story. Yeah, that's always so weird to me when they just stop, stare at each other.

I mean, it's cartoonish. It's like that cartoon with the cartoon dog and they chase each other around and then they clock out and they punch out into their friends. But I don't think they were friends after they punched out here. Yeah, but they were neighbors though, right? Who, the dog and the?

No, the Crips and the Bloods. I mean, this was a relatively small community. Yes, so they lived by each other. Yeah, they were all right next to each other. It was all sectioned off. But the musicians and the gangsters being separate, NWA changed all that. The DJs and rappers in Los Angeles,

they weren't on the outside anymore. Now they were telling stories about what life was actually like on the ground where they lived. So when NWA released the single The Boys in the Hood in 1987, people took notice. And it also didn't hurt cred that Easy paid for the first pressing with the last of his drug money. Then when their first album straight out of Compton hit,

Rufus became one of the most successful indie labels in history. Rufus released platinum record after platinum record and kept adding people to their roster. One of these guys was a young kid out of Dallas named the DOC. Although the DOC was signed to Rufus, he was managed by a relative newcomer to the scene,

former Bobby Brown bodyguard, Shug Knight. Ooh. You know what's scariest about Shug? Is how quiet he is. Yes. I think when a big man is quiet, because he does the thing of like, maybe we can talk about this situation in another room.

Like he does that bit all the time with people and you're like, I prefer to do it here in the dining room, sir, with everyone watching. And also like, because Kissel, like Kissel's a big man, but Kissel's a loud big man, which means you see him coming. And that technically makes you like less dangerous because you can get away,

if you decide to do your fucking tornado, this swing would take out a room because that's your goon squad move. The streets of rage. That's the streets of rage move. It's final fight. Final fight. And that's a great move.

Yeah, and that guy was the mayor. Was he really? Look at that. You know, so these guys, I mean, they were real entrepreneurs though. Yes. Right. Like the fact that, how many people did EZ have employed at this point, like in his early 20s?

Well, EZ also got help from Jerry Heller. Okay. But still, I mean, these guys were entrepreneurs. Absolutely. And EZE though at the time was like, we'll find out EZE took care of himself more than anybody else. And he got the majority of the money,

which kind of was like one of the first things that fucked up all of their relationships. Cause EZE, like they all signed these old like temptations deals like from like the 1950s, where they signed away all their rights and nobody made any fucking money. But EZE hooked up with fucking Jerry Heller early and figured out how to get like,

he gets the 75% chunk. Wait, wait. Are you telling me like money problems, affected friendships? Yes. Are you telling me that? Now I've heard it all. Well, back to Shug.

Shug, so-named because his childhood nickname was Sugar Bear, was- That's a nice way to put demonstrative monster. Get enough of that sugar, Chris. Shug was another guy who grew up in Compton, but wasn't involved in any gang activity. He was a star defensive end, good enough to play two games to the Rams

as a scab during the player strike. But this is also telling to the type of person Shug is, the reason why he stopped being a fucking LA Ram was because he skipped training camp in order to go stalk his ex-girlfriend. He like, he let his weird rage, let him lose his whole fucking career that he spent his whole life trying to get.

Now, if you couldn't tell from his work history, Shug Knight was and is a fucking huge, intimidating dude. Six foot, two inches tall, going about 260 pounds. I like him. I like you, Shug. I've never, I've always supported you. He's the Mike Myers of rap producers. Yes, just constantly lurking behind a tree

and you feel his presence, but you never see him. Now Shug regularly used his size to his advantage throughout his career, with one of the most famous incidents happening right at the beginning. In 1989, Shug started a music publishing company that helped to secure royalties for artists. One of his first clients was Mario Johnson,

AKA Chocolate, who worked out of Texas. Chocolate was the one who actually wrote Ice, Ice Baby, performed by Rob Van Winkle, AKA Vanilla Ice. Oh yes, Vanilla Ice. I remember him. When the name broke, Rob Van Winkle, that really hurt. I was like, that's the name? Oh man.

Also, I mean, Vanilla Ice now more famously from his new home improvement show that he has. And I am happy that he made it through that really dark depression. He was just entertaining us like anybody else. He tried to fuck over everyone that he could as hard as he could, as often as he could. No, no, Vanilla Ice of the Vanilla Ice project.

No, Vanilla Ice when he made his heavy metal album, what was this called? That's right. Oh, I remember that. Hard to swallow? Was it called Hard to Swallow? Yes. That's unfortunate.

That's an unfortunate name, okay. Yeah, so Shug was representing Chocolate. And Chocolate said, hey, I actually wrote Ice, Ice, Baby. I've got the handwritten lyrics right here, but Vanilla Ice said it's like, no, I wrote the whole album when I was 16. I don't wanna make a weight joke about Shug again, Mr. Knight, I have nothing to say bad about you,

but Chocolate and Vanilla, did he name them? Because I do have a- Also, yes. I do feel like, yes, Vanilla also stole the name from Chocolate. He's like, okay, Ice, Ice, Baby, about Chocolate. That's not a good name for me at all, son. No, no, what do I look?

Mm, mm, mm, looks into the mirror. I see. Pasty Ice. No, no, what if we go Vanilla? Okay. Ah, yes, yes. So Vanilla Ice was claiming all the credit. He was keeping all the royalties,

and he wasn't paying up at all, which isn't surprising, considering how he also claimed he owed no royalties to Queen for using the baseline from under pressure, because his baseline had one extra note. Yes. You remember that clue? No, no, no, no, no, yeah, you know, man,

you see, their song is dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and my song is dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, see, it's totally different, baby. Totally different. He said that with a straight face during a television interview. That was behind the music they were talking. That was a great series on VH1.

Behind the music was so awesome before we were saturated with all this stuff we get now. So the story goes that Shug Knight and a couple of dudes broken to Vanilla Ice's hotel room took him out to the balcony and dangled him over the edge by his ankles until Vanilla agreed to pay up. But according to Vanilla Ice, that's not how it happened.

Shug only roughed up his security guards and threatened to throw Vanilla Ice off a 15-story balcony. That's it. He didn't actually do it. Oh. He just kind of threatened to do it and he isolated him at a restaurant. Oh, yeah, well, that was the truth.

He said Vanilla Ice would be sitting there eating whatever he fucking eats, which I imagine is just like a prime rib and orange soda, like, you know, like whatever Vanilla Ice, I think that's called a Vanilla Ice. Yeah, that sounds good, actually. And so he'd sit, like, eating dinner and he said Shug showed up

and he was like, cause Vanilla Ice also had a bunch of bodyguards. And he was like, I was sitting there with my bodyguards and then they disappeared. And then I looked up and Shug was there with a whole replacement of other bodyguards. And I'd say, I don't know if I owe you this money, Shug. And he's like, we'll see.

And then he found him again the next day where he said he literally watched, he's sitting there with his, cause now he's scared. He knows Shug has come up for him. So he sit at the table, his security guard is like in front of him, sees a hand just on his security guard's shoulder. The security guard looks up because all of Shug,

including himself and his people are all bigger than the entire security team for Vanilla Ice. And so they just all like, well, Mr. Ice, we will be excused. It seems the guests you've been waiting for has arrived and Shug is like, you know what I heard that they got a pretty marvelous ice cream bar out on the balcony if you want to come outside for dessert. And he's like, I love dessert.

Horrifying. So Vanilla Ice paid to the tune of $4 million. Well, he gave chocolate points and those points on Ice Ice Baby eventually ended up being worth $4 million. He deserves it. He wrote the damn thing. He absolutely deserved it. And Shug gained a reputation as a guy who got shit done

no matter what, which made him perfectly suited to be a manager in the music business. We need a fucking Shug, man. I want one. I don't know if we now, first of all, we need a manager that isn't blind because I heard Shug Knight was blind according to his last appearance. What if we got Shug?

He's in prison for murder. Yeah. That's going to, so he's being on the podcast. So Shug Knight snatched up the DOC, got him signed to Roofless Records, and pretty soon Shug found himself firmly embedded in the Roofless Records crew right around the time that the relationship between Dr. Dre

and Easy E started to sour. Shug had been paying attention during his time at Roofless and figured he had at least a working knowledge of how to start a label. All he needed was a star, and he found a willing partnership, at least at first, in Dr. Dre. So in order to get out of his contract, Dre set up his old friend, Easy E.

Dre is a controversial figure. Yes. Dr. Dre is a dude that, I mean, like, he has a really bad past with domestic assault. He is, he's rough with women. He's bad at business. His big thing with business, which just gets you in a lot of fucking trouble, which is all he wanted to do

was pay attention to the music. And so he didn't want to deal with business at all. So when he met Shug, he was so excited to meet somebody that would do whatever it takes, no matter what, and I didn't have to quote-a-quote hear about it. But then all of a sudden, immediately, Dre is being involved directly in the strong arm tactics, and Dre is kind of like getting into it.

Yeah. This is still just the same guy who wore that sequence outfit with the stethoscope and things like that. He's been playing a character all this time. And but Dre definitely wised up after Death Row. Yes. I mean, he had Aftermath Records, which is one of the most successful hip hop labels

of all time. And don't forget, he sold Beats to Apple for $4 billion. $4 billion. He did good. Wow. Jeez. So Dre called Easy, and said it was time for them to meet up and hash out all these arguments they've

been having about money. Easy agreed, but when Easy showed up at the address, a studio called Galaxy, it was Shug night waiting, flanked by three dudes with lead pipes, not Dr. Dre. Shug and his henchmen led EasyE to a soundproof room, sat him down, and brought up a rumor Shug had heard that Easy was planning to take him out. And there is actually some truth to this one.

Again and again, throughout Shug's career, more people than just Easy were scared enough by what Shug night was capable of to kind of toy around with the idea of, what if we just killed him? I'll tell you, man, if you are not a licensed plumber and you have a lead pipe, that's scary. Lead pipes are very scary. Because first of all, how'd you get it?

Yeah, how'd you get it? How'd you get in a lead pipe? Because I don't know where you just loose find a lead pipe. Also, are you not afraid of the poisoning? Think about it. Because it can make you very sick. We can. And none of these guys are thinking about their retirement.

That's one thing I will say about getting Serapis head. No one's thinking about a 401K. No one's talking about health insurance. And I think they should have. Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, lead pipe, I just immediately think of my knees just shattering. Yeah, and it seems pretty brutal.

It's immediately terrifying. That's the effect of it. That's why you have one. So largely, what you hope is, I'd like to think with a lot of these guys is, you do this so that you don't have to use them. You just be really scary so somebody will do what you say without having to murder them.

Well, whether EZ actually planned to kill Shug Knight or not, it was more of just, it was a brainstorming idea. EZ wanted to kill Dre. Shug Knight. Oh, he wanted to kill Shug Knight. Yes. Oh my goodness. Shug was the problem.

Yeah. Because Shug was the one with all the good. Shug grew up with a group called the MOBs, and the Piru fucking, I believe that they were bloods? No, the Piru were. The Piru is just another word for blood. It's the same blood, blood just won the brand war. They're just different.

Yeah, the Piru and all that kind of shit, they all have a lot of different names. There's many splinter groups in the gang life. It's very, there's a lot of different affiliations and shit. So Shug actually had people. And EZ knew that and got very scared. And so if you want to, he's the dangerous one. You've got to get rid of Shug to get rid of the problem.

OK. Well, either way, EZE told Shug to fuck off. So when Shug's opening gambit didn't work, Shug showed EZE either a slip of paper with his mother's address written on it or a picture of her house, depending on who's telling the story. And understandably, EZE immediately gave in

and signed away Dre and two other artists on the spot. Because Shug was just like, you want us to go pay her a visit? Yeah, because he used his mom's address as the original return label and all the original straight out of Compton Records for the record company. So they knew exactly where to find her. But then there's a whole side story here that we can never cover, which is EZE hiring the fucking

Mossad to guard himself against Shug. There's like a whole like six month saga of EZE with these Israeli assassins and Shug's people like having little mini wars. Crazy. Yeah, that's why you got to read Original Gangsters. Because it's full of these amazing side stories. And the full story of EZE, which is just

an absolutely tragic one. And it sounds like a story of a great amazing mother as well. Just being there taking, she got all this mail from Death Row and stuff. She'd be like, here you go, honey. We got a lot of mail today. She's like, what's happening? Someone sent panties from their shorty.

I have a whole pile of shorties panties. Tell that short woman, whoever she is, I hope her vagina isn't cold. So now Shug Knight, he had Dr. Dre, he had the DOC, and I believe Lady of Rage. And so he had a solid stable of talent. Now all he needed was the money. That was procured from an LA drug dealer named Michael Harris,

AKA Harry O. He was doing 28 years in prison for trafficking and attempted murder, but still had business dealings in the entertainment world, even producing a Broadway play before going to jail. Oh, all right. Yeah, it was Denzel Washington's Broadway debuts called Checkmates. No kidding.

I mean, a lot of rap at the time was funded from drug money, but this was like Shug really getting in bed with criminals in order to get his enterprise going. Because this fucker was like the real deal, and he's sitting on Death Row, and he still fucked him over. Yeah. I remember that, though, when Stephen Sondheim was involved in the drug business as well.

It happened to a lot of people. So Harry O put up $1.5 million for a 50-50 partnership in Death Row Records, fronting the capital for what is arguably one of the most successful and well respected hip-hop labels of all time, if not one of the most short-lived. Controversial. Very controversial. Now besides just showing up with Dre,

Death Row also took a chance on a 19-year-old kid named Calvin Broadus, a.k.a. Snoop Doggy Dog, as he was known at that time. In short order, Death Row released the chronic and doggy style to the best rap albums ever released. 19. Smoke weed every day. That was later.

That was like two albums later. Nah, man. He's still 19 years old. I still can't wrap my head around it. He was so young, and he just made that. Like, doggy style is just so incredible. And it holds up. Like, it's still one of the best ever.

Oh, yeah. I've been listening to those albums recently, like, over the last few days. And they're so good. And also, Dr. Drela created a new style of production for those albums. He created G-Funk, which was pretty much just, yeah, using Funky, used the Funky Worm from an Ohio player song.

What was the name of the, there was a specific name. I thought the Funky Worm was also the name for the sound that Dre created. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's the Funky Worm. Yeah, the reeeeeww. That is a Funky Worm. My god.

I'll never forget. You know what's also fun? A theremin. That's what I would have put in. We went to Germany when I was in seventh grade, and they were playing Snoop Dogg's Doggy Style, the video where they were all playing beach volleyball. And for some reason, the girls didn't have any tops on.

But in America, they blurred it. But in Germany, they didn't. And that was fun. I think that was the video for nothing but a G thing. Could be. If I'm remembering correctly, that was the one that they did together that was kind of made Snoop a bit of a breakout hit.

And Snoop Dogg's Doggy Style was, I think, still holds the record for Fast to Selling debut album. Because he was already a star before the album even came out. Yeah, wow. Yeah, dude, that's it. And that's why our boys fought in the war. Absolutely. So we can see them titties jumping up and down

where they're playing volleyball. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate our boys' Memorial Day wasn't that long ago. Absolutely. I just want to say thank you for your service. Absolutely. And fairly good at volleyball, too.

Yeah, pretty good. Yeah. In the same year that saw the release of Doggy Style, also saw the founding of the Yin to Death Rose Yang. That was the year that Sean Combs, AKA Puff Daddy, founded Bad Boy Records here in New York City. New York! There it is.

It's closer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, all right. Cheesecake. Yes, cheesecake. I'm going to be on it, man. Forever.

When he made the band, go get him Junior's Cheesecake. I'm West Coast now, though, so I can't really represent as hard. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, yes. We must be represented in the East Coast by a guy from Wisconsin and a guy from Texas.

I like Biggie. Yep. Puffy is, as Ben Westoff points out, a complicated character. Even though he eventually became cuddly enough to co-host on Regis and Kathy Lee, he grew up the son of a Harlem drug kingpin named Frank Lucas. However, Puffy wasn't into the criminal life himself.

He was a music guy, most notably working as a backup dancer for Heavy D and the Boys in the 80s. Oh, they were great. Yeah. But he was still an organizer from a young age, but even his early work actually resulted in tragedy. In 1991, Puffy organized a charity basketball game at Cooney, featuring Heavy D, Run DMC, and Boys

to Men as the stars, among others. They even had a guy from Bell Biv DeVoe. Really? And they were playing basketball. Yeah, charity basketball game. No kidding. So the venue held 2,700 people, but when the day of the event came, 5,000 showed up.

Boys to Men are there. Yeah. Yeah. In the ensuing chaos. That was my first record. Boys to Men was great. Boys to Men, really? Boys to Men was great.

That was my first album I ever purchased, Boys to Men. Because I like seductive songs. So for some reason, as a little boy, my favorite songs were The Lady in Red and With the Down on Bended Knee. Like that song quite a bit. Oh, of course. Like Soft R&B hits.

I would listen to a lot of that while I'm splashing my body with Jupe right before class. Yeah. Oh, man, Jupe. Jupe takes me back, man. Great cologne. So in the ensuing chaos that echoed tragedies like the great Cincinnati Who disaster, which resulted in the deaths

of 11 people, nine died at Puffy's event and 29 were injured. Oh, man. Regardless, Puffy stayed in the music industry and got a job at Uptown Records, but was fired for being difficult and for pushing a certain gangster rap artist a little too hard, which gangster rap wasn't Uptown's bag, so they gave him the boot. But that rapper was a new artist from Bed-Stuy Brooklyn named

Christopher Wallace, soon to be known as Biggie Smalls, then soon to be known after a lawsuit, as the notorious B.I.G. Oh, right, the introduction. And Biggie was yet another guy who had gotten into a little trouble growing up, getting arrested for selling drugs in North Carolina after his mom had thrown him out.

But by the time Biggie Smalls was 18, he had mostly put all that shit behind him. Like, he actually grew up relatively comfortable with a very loving mother, far from the one room shack with no food that he'd later rap about in The Rags to Rich's Anthem Juicy. Now, according to his mother, Biggie Smalls was just his son, Christopher's alter ego.

But he was damn good at playing it. She at one point, I was watching an interview with her where she was like, I don't know if you can tell by looking at Christopher, but we never really didn't have food in the house. That is hilarious. She's like the sweetest Caribbean woman in the world. Yeah.

Yeah, Valetta Wallace. Yeah, her interviews are fantastic. She really is just a sweet, sweet woman. And she did not deserve any of the shit that she had to put up with. So Puffy started Big Boy, released Biggie's debut album Ready to Die, and pretty soon, Death Row Records had very real competition in the gangster rap market.

But that's not to say that these two labels were the only ones putting out quality hip hop at the time. Every year of the early 90s saw a slew of landmark hip hop albums. They called the Golden Age of Hip Hop. In 1994 alone, we got classic albums from Nas, OutKast, Warren G, Red Man, Method Man, Spice One, The Beastie Boys, and my personal favorite

from that year, Gravediggers. Very on brand, Marcus. Yes. But it's really good. Very, very on brand. It's funny. I know, but it's also it's got Gravediggers in the title of it, which is what you like.

That is a dream profession of yours. It speaks to me. Yes, naturally. But out of all these artists, the one that was arguably getting the most respect was Tupac Shakur. Tupac was, to say the least, a complicated character, and that's putting it nicely.

He is very, very complicated. He did a lot of bad shit, but then he did a lot of good shit. Yeah. In conjunction with Shoghnight, nobody did more to stoke the East Coast, West Coast fires more than Tupac, even though he was the first to die. And just like John Lennon, Tupac was concurrently a great artist and, at times, a fucking terrible person.

Right. Now, in contrast to Biggie, who lived most of his childhood in the same Bed-Stuy brownstone with a stable, loving mother, Tupac's formative years were dirt poor, nomadic, and filled with hardship. Tupac's mother, Afini, was a leader in the Black Panther Party in the 60s from the Bronx. His mom was a fucking badass.

The way it started, her story, she was deeply, deeply involved with the Black Panthers in a hardcore way, like planning bombings and shit. Yeah, she got pregnant with Tupac while she was out on bail from conspiracy charges, stemming from a supposed plot to blow up department stores and police stations. But then I remember there's BS on all sides.

Again, with every one of these stories in terms of, because the Black Panther Party was named by Jay at Groover as the biggest threat to American society in the 50s, which it wasn't, because also remember, at the same time, our government was the middle of the MK Ultra program and Operation Paper Club, like all that shit where it's like, you are your good work, good way to throw the spotlight

onto other bullshit. Right, no, it was significant, though. The Black Panther Party is the reason why they have such strict gun laws in California. Governor Reagan, despite his Republican credentials, as soon as they got the guns or the wrong people have them, we better take them away. But right after Afini got pregnant with Tupac,

her bail was revoked and she spent most of the pregnancy in jail and was released only a month before Tupac was born. And after that, Tupac's godmother was found guilty of murdering a New Jersey state trooper, but broke out of prison and fled to Cuba before her sentencing. Wow.

And Afini ended up marrying that woman's brother, Matulu Shakur, and they lived happily as a family until 1981, when Matulu was sent away for participating in the attempted armed robbery of an armored car that resulted in the deaths of two cops and a security guard. Okay. And after that, the family moved to Baltimore.

And then Afini turned to crack and Tupac's life fell apart. But eventually, though, Tupac found solace in poetry and theater and attended the Baltimore School of Arts, which Afini said actually saved his life. Nice. I will say that the Nick Broomfield documentary, Biggie and Tupac, has been largely torn apart. It's like completely bunked.

And also fucking Nick Broomfield is an asshole. I hate Nick. What happened? What did he say in there? I hate Nick. He's the same guy that did the bogus curtain Courtney documentary. He did those two Eileen Warnows documentaries.

He's exploitative. He's pushy. He lies. He just omits things that don't fit his narrative all the time. Exactly. He's just a less charming Louis Thoreau. Like that's his biggest crime for me, is that he tries to do the Louis Thoreau fucking model,

but he can't do it. But he does have an interview with Tupac's drama teacher at the Baltimore School of Arts. And what I do like about is seeing the other side of like, how Tupac was a fucking theater kid at that time. And like the drama teacher just being like, Poc smile could light up the Eiffel Tower. No one had a frown when Tupac was around,

with his lovely dancing and his beautiful singing and his wonderful poems. That's so funny. Yeah. But near the end of high school, the Shakur family moved to California. And Tupac hooked up with his stepbrother Maurice, later known as Mo Pream and Oakland.

And there, Tupac dabbled in the gang lifestyle, briefly selling drugs. But he never really got a taste for it. And in fact, like Tupac and Mo Pream, like they actually came up with like kind of a drug, like an ethics code for drug dealers. That's what Thug Life was all about. Oh, right.

Yeah. Thug Life, which actually I didn't know. Yeah. That Thug Life was about a truce between all the gangs. And it was about setting up rules so that people don't get caught in crossfires anymore. And they wanted to create a quote unquote safe space for squares.

Yeah. Yeah. And they wanted to make sure that they didn't sell it to the wrong people. Because Tupac could see in his mother, it's like this crack shit destroys lives. So come on, guys. Let's be ethical about this.

Yeah, he lived it. They can't even do it to the fucking pharmaceutical companies. And they managed to do it to these crack dealers for about three years. Well, instead of going all in on the drug game, Tupac went all in on his music career and ended up working as a roadie for digital underground, fronted by the Humpty Hum, the guy with the big fake nose.

Uh-huh, you know them. And eventually, Tupac worked his way up to backup dancer, then finally performer. And Tupac's very first recorded verse was on what else? But the track Same Song famously featured in the digital underground's cameo and Dan Aykroyd's directorial masterpiece, Nothing but Trouble.

So it was like he was looking to start a rap career and a dance career, but when he went looking for it, all that he found. Oh, man. Nothing but trouble? Was nothing but trouble? Nothing but trouble? Wow.

That is unbelievable. Now, although Tupac's verse isn't featured in the truncated movie version of the song, you can actually see Tupac being convincingly impressed by the organ playing of The Judge, played by Dan Aykroyd. He does, naturally. He does do good surprise dance. Yeah.

Oh, wow. And the music video that Marcus sent us is a superb because Dan Aykroyd, he is in that thing. Oh yeah, for some bonus Nothing but Trouble material, check out the video for Same Song, which is set at a drive-in screening of Nothing but Trouble and features cameos from Dr. Dre and EZE alongside Dan Aykroyd, who inexplicably

plays a member of NWA. I'm not exaggerating. No, you have to. I'm telling you, you have got to just YouTube it, pause the episode, watch that video. It's one of the best things I've ever seen. It's him dressed as EZE, which is controversial. And then that whole thing where they're all

dressed as stereotypical Asians. Yes, there's a lot of interesting scenes in that. He's not dressed as EZE because EZE is standing right next to him. He's just dressed. Man, Dan Aykroyd. He's just dressed because NWA kind of had a bit of a uniform.

They did the whole black and white thing. And then later on in the song, because the chorus, the hook of the song is Whole Wide World, Same Song. And so everybody, they're going all around the world. Tupac like his verse is done, like African dress. Of course, they do the aforementioned rice paddy hats. And then they show Dan Aykroyd, who's dressed as a bagpipe player.

Dan Aykroyd. Which I guess is his world contribution. Dan Aykroyd had power for one year. And he could do whatever he wanted with it. And that's what happened. That's how you spend it. He loves music. I will say, Dan Aykroyd loved music.

And he liked being on the forefront of music, because that's what the whole Blues Brothers thing was, is that he was trying to bring Blues back. And then John Belushi and him shared like really edgy tastes where John Belushi was really into punk music and all that shit. So this was Dan Aykroyd being like, I can hit pop as well. You should have seen me dancing back as Elwood Blues.

And my old Blues Brothers days. Some of you are just going to just imagine that the face is some EZE and dry. Honestly, I wish he would just, he's got to direct to nothing but trouble too at this point. I wish he that he would. Still his only movie. Which by the way, we've caused the Ron Tomatoes rating

to go down. Yeah, the point was to push it. And then we had more attention brought to it. And then I guess democracy does work. It's at 5% now. It started at 8% before we started talking about it. Now it's gone down. So we are sorry, Dan.

Yes. Unaccomplished mission. You tried. So based on the strength of Tupac's verse and same song, and that song by the way, is much better when it's stripped of the nothing but trouble context. Tupac's. It's great though, it's a great song.

It is a great song. It's a great song. And Tupac's verse specifically like ties the whole song together, it's fucking great. But after that, Tupac struck out as a solo artist and signed with Interscope Records in 1991. And with Tupac's first two records, he established himself as what Ben Westhoff classifies

as more of a Bob Dylan type. Westhoff said that Tupac, he wasn't the most technically talented, but he could communicate experience and feeling like nobody else. And in Tupac's case, that experience was, as is described by Westhoff, being desperate, black, and poor. And while Dre and Snoop could be almost cartoonish at times,

Tupac's music was brutally real. In other words, there was no like $20 sack pyramid or like W Balls sketches on Tupac's albums. Oh, W Balls. I think that's the one that got my friend kicked out of the house. If you're licking, it's a W Balls. W Balls, W Balls.

W Balls. That doggy style was hilarious. It was so funny. It was so funny. No one under, I totally, that is like kind of lost on that whole thing. That kind of happened because of the blowback that they got from NWA.

When Straight Outta Compton first came, it was so fucking controversial, and it caused them so much trouble that they went away from being political. Like that's where Ice Cube, when he left, he went to go be political to NWA and all that, but kind of like became party boys. But then their shit also was also

about being as disgusting as humanly possible. Yeah. And easy, specifically. Yes. Yeah. They were going for it. Oh yeah, well, but we may talk about gimme dat nut later. It's a song.

Dogmeat, we will. You and I will. Well, of course we will. Too real. That's where they came from, man, Straight Outta Compton, man. If it's a song sung by cartoon squirrels, that could be kind of, if you think about the squirrels, eat nuts.

Oh, so it's about like a squirrel, like face fucking another squirrel? Oh, no, I wouldn't. Ooh. I did see a squirrel eating a graham cracker yesterday, and that was adorable. That's really fun. Was there come on the graham cracker?

Well, I didn't want to know if there was not, Henry. Good Lord. Well, back to Tupac. With the exception of the later hit, California Love, Tupac's music wasn't necessarily what you would call fun. Yeah. Tupac would never be good with the photographer after he took of a bunch of pictures, and he said, OK,

with this one, have fun with it. I don't think that would ever pan out. Yeah, I suppose so. Yeah, it was fantastic. But you're not going to put on Dear Mama at a party, you know? But you're going to put on Den and Juice. Right, yeah, good point. I put Dear Mama on at a party, I guess,

but it would have to be like a funeral party for my mother. Yeah, it's a little sad. Yeah. Although change works at parties. Yeah, yeah. For the introspective moment, every party has to have one introspective moment. I suppose so, but maybe we'll go with like barbecue.

Yeah. Like, you're not going to, I don't know if you're going to put on Tupac at a barbecue necessarily. Sure, sure. Yeah, but you can definitely put on nothing but a D thing. Sure. Everyone's going to have a great time. Absolutely.

But even though Tupac was without a doubt the most poetic of them all, his rap sheet was also longer than anyone else's, at least among the stars. In 1992, Tupac drew a legally registered gun during a fan meet and greet following a convention. Think about this though, honestly. These people paid to meet you. It's like, we're going to be doing some VIP meet and greets,

and it's going to be really hard because you're like, hey, listen, Poc, thanks so much for having the meet and greet. But I paid $150. I'm going to want to see your gun. Yeah, I can imagine he was quite uncomfortable here. I mean, these aren't. He was at a music festival. He was at an outside music festival.

He's just going up, just talking to fans, signing autographs. A guy starts talking shit. Confrontation happens. Tupac pulled out his gun. Oh, I thought it was him just showing him the gun. I thought it was him like, and this is my special gun. And they're all like, oh, no. No, no, no, no.

That was like Tupac drew his gun, looking to fire it, or at the very least, looking to intimidate the guy. I understand that's not the right thing to do, but why is this guy being a schmuck? I mean, why aren't you going to pull a gun? And also, Tupac, as we'll see in another example later, Tupac had slippery fingers when it came to guns. He wasn't very good at handling them,

because in this case, he ended up dropping the gun. And when one of his entourage picked it up, the gun went off, and it shot a six-year-old boy in the head. Fucking killed him instantly. No charges were filed, but Tupac did pay the family a half-million-dollar settlement. Very sad. And about eight months later, Tupac took a baseball bat

to a guy named Chauncey Nguyen during a concert in Michigan and did 10 days in jail. Then, a few months after that, he got into a gun battle with a couple of off-duty cops and shot one of them in the ass, although that story seems like everyone was at fault. Everyone was kind of acting like an asshole in that one. Then, he beat up a limo driver outside of a taping of in-living color after the driver complained

about Tupac smoking weed, although he was never charged for that crime. Because it turned out it was just Jim Carrey playing a fun character. Mm-hmm. Thing was, though, Tupac hadn't always been like that. Tupac's friends to the change came not too long after the premiere of Juice, which was Tupac's acting debut, Nothing but Trouble

Not Withstanding. OK. In the movie, Tupac played a Harlem youth addicted to the thrill of killing following a botched robbery. And as soon as Tupac left the theater, after seeing himself play the character of Bishop on the big screen, it said that he was never the same. I can see why, though.

When you're a scared kid, he was a kid that had a really fucked up childhood. He was bounced back and forth. He had a lot of anger problems. He was desperate for attention. The music side of shit, because what do you see just on the small level of work that we do, or when you see friends really become

famous in the entertainment industry? A part of what happens is that you do believe up to a point where money will solve all my problems. It's like, what I need is money and fame and all this shit, and I will be totally fulfilled. When sometimes when that shit gets delivered, you realize, oh, I didn't actually get the void filled. Like, I didn't become the strong man I always

thought I would be. Like, the thing that I was searching for, the energy I'm trying to connect to that would make me feel whole. When he saw himself fill the loop of being a real criminal, I think that that made him, it's somewhere deep inside, be like, that will make me feel real. That will make me feel whole. Now I can walk the walk, and everyone

can be afraid of me like I used to be afraid of everybody else. And he got a lot of validation for that role as well. So perhaps in search of identity, that was a good way to go for him. Yeah. And now, after coming out of the movie, Tupac wanted to be bishop. So he started hanging out with gang members whenever he could,

and he started acting accordingly. Meanwhile, back over at Death Road, the gangs were starting to take over there as well. Both blood and Crip gang members became regular fixtures at the Death Row offices, the latter acting more as Snoop Dogg hangers on, while the former were there at the behest of Shug Knight. Like, they were hanging out somewhat like people would take

the stairs to avoid the Death Row offices. Makes sense. Because they would just hang out in the lobby. And so they would come in, like, lifting a furniture and shit. They were saying, like, all these people from, like, the people that do all of the, what's the term? The people that do their A&R? The people do their A&R, and the people

that did their distribution, the nerds from downstairs, would come up, and they'd see, like, fucking gang bangers taking a furniture out. And they'd be like, hey, you should put that furniture down. And then they would say shit, being like, if you don't make a problem, there won't be a problem. And so they'd just be like, we're just going to skip the lobby.

Yeah. We don't need to come back here anymore. Sure, sure. And Dr. Dre was starting to get sick of this shit. Because Dre never wanted to be an actual gangster. All Dre ever wanted was to make money doing music. You know, relax every now and again in the lobby on a chair or a couch, a colleague in a water machine, something like that.

Maybe a nice pot of plant. Yeah, and Dre, he'd actually, he'd played his part well. But when the actual gangster started showing up, Dre wanted no part of it. But that's not to say he didn't contribute to the turn of the worm when it came to violence and hip hop, even if it was indirectly. The turn of the worm.

Yeah. The turn of the worm. Yeah, when the worm turns. When the worm turns. Now, this is a sentence that's never been said before. So I don't know where that came from. Now, following Dre's split from Ruthless, a rivalry naturally developed between Dre and EZE.

There's a lot of bad blood there. But it wasn't easy that started it. It was Dre. Dre absolutely eviscerated EZE on the chronic second single Dre Day. And seemingly, he did it for no reason at all. But didn't EZE take all that money from him? EZE did take all the money.

So that's a reason, right? That's a reason. But come on, man. That's money. He's threatening a guy's mother. Yeah. Money is money will get you killed. So you don't mess with money.

I think once he's threatened a guy's mom, like, that's when, like, I think that's when the slates wipe clean there. All right. But Dre should have known better, because even though EZE wasn't super hardcore, he was still a hell of a lot more real than Dre. For example, after NWA broke up, EZE started selling dope again just because he was bored.

Hey, my dad worked for Wacken Hut. What? After the NYPD. Wacken. Because he just had to get back in the game. What the hell is this public masturbation business? Wacken Hut? You heard of Wacken Hut.

I never heard of Wacken Hut. I literally done this joke conversation before. No, honestly, you have never mentioned Wacken Hut before. No, you've never mentioned Wacken Hut. If you have mentioned Wacken Hut, I don't remember it. What is it? It's a place that your dad takes you when you've been bad in order to jerk out all the bad sauce.

All right, we don't need to go into that. Well, EZE, after Dre Day, his feelings were legitimately hurt, and not just by Dre, because Ice Cube had piled on him as well with possibly the best diss track of all time, Novaseline, but Novaseline was against every former member of NWA, but EZE got it pretty hard. That's pretty brutal there, yeah.

I mean, it's important to remember, once again, these are very sensitive artists. Yeah, oh yeah, and EZE was very sensitive. Despite the hard artifice. Novaseline, what was that about? I don't want to. It's about the Wacken Hut. It's actually a very similar story, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But EZE, he didn't take out his hurt feelings on Cube, because, I don't know, Ice Cube's kind of untouchable. It's like once Ice Cube took you down, it's fucking done. Like, you can't come back from that. So instead, EZE took it all out on Dre. EZE responded to Dre Day with damn near a whole EP called It's On Dr. Dre 187m Killa, and it's fucking awesome.

It's one of my favorites. It's so good. So he wrote an entire album just because Dr. Dre hurt his feelings. Yeah, it revitalized his career. Yes, yeah. Yeah, man, it's like him and fucking Alanis Morissette. Yeah.

It's just, it's angry albums sometimes save you. So Dr. Dre is the Dave Cooliata EZE, as he was to Alanis? Very quick side note, Tupac and Alanis Morissette almost opened a restaurant together. Really? Oh, I wouldn't quit.

Oh, man. And one more, and one more fun fact about Tupac, he read for the part of Bubba in Forrest Gump. Yeah, who else read for that? You mentioned some of the... Dave Chappelle. Dave Chappelle also read for that. I think they cast properly.

I cannot see Tupac as Bubba because I don't think that he would have gone along with a lot of what Forrest Gump was saying. So... Yeah, and EZE went even further than the song. Well, I think like two of the songs, like Real Motherfucking G's and It's On, I think those are the two that were like

specifically towards Dre. The rest of them were fucking great. Give me that nut had nothing to do with Dre. That just had to do with... Cartoon squirrels. Fucking. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fucking. I don't.

Did they ever do a Kidz Bop? I think Kidz Bop did do some rap music once anyway. It doesn't matter. But he, even though like there was only a couple of songs dedicated to it, he dedicated the liner notes to embarrassing Dr. Dre. Because EZE found one of the publicity photos from Dre's early days

and put the picture of Dre in the cream-colored suit dancing with the makeup on in the liner notes. They just roast, they were in roast mode. Yeah, oh, they were in roast mode. You know what also I learned a lot about from this book was how these albums are put together. Where like this next bit about how like if they needed, like they would ghost write some of this up.

Cause EZE wasn't like an artist. Like he was a drug dealer that Dre made into a rapper by taking him line by line, which you see in the movie Straight Outta Compton. And it's interesting how like this next bits about how like they'd have to go get some real rappers that were actual criminals in order to add flavor to all their fucking albums.

Well no, EZE by this point was absolutely a real rapper. Like he was like, by that point, by that point, like he had a, you know, I mean, he'd had at least one platinum album. Like he was absolutely into his own. Like what he did is he brought in like feature rappers. And, but what he made sure to do was like counter like Dr. Dre's, you know, I guess like weakness.

EZE brought in actual criminals. He brought in two Nutty Block Crips from the Watts Jordan Downs Projects named Dresta and Knockout. Both the dudes fresh out of prison. Then EZE went on Arsenio Hall and called Dre out naming him as a studio gangster. Even though most of them outside of EZE

could be called the same. But to say it in public, well, that was a big diss. And this was all taken so seriously. We can't stress enough. Media was salivating over this stuff. And it was really, it was like life and death. Cause that's how it ended. Yeah. Yeah. Cause as fun as all this seems, like this feud.

That's the whole, the whole time in the back of my head, this is kind of fun. And then it's just, then you remember how serious it was. Yeah. Cause I actually remember when I was a kid, like being like really confused. So like, but I thought EZE and Dre were friends. I know it was very hard to understand. And your, your mom must be like, sometimes,

you know how sometimes you go outside little Marcus and the coyotes don't come to you like they used to. You're like, yes, mother, yes, I missed the dirt dogs. He's like, no, no, sometimes friends fall apart, much like EZE and Dre. Yeah, it was confusing. Cause I thought anyone that I saw on television was basically buddies.

Yeah. Or right about, you know. Cause that, that was true until like 1967 because of the Tonight Show. Right. Yeah. Well, as fun as all this seems, like this feud had very real consequences. Now, as Westhoff points out, rat beefs weren't new by any measure,

but they had mostly been friendly. And most of them just had to do with like, who is the better rapper? Right. But now it was personal. Now it had to do with street cred. And now actual violence could break out. And it did.

At a golf course of all places, during the filming of the Montell Jordan video, something forward to honeys. I liked Montell. He's six foot eight. Really? Yes. He sings about it. This is how we do it.

Exactly. This is how we do it. Yeah. We kind of punch over every time we have to go through the doors and when we were on round planes, we do it very uncomfortably. Yes. Now there is a dispute as to who started this fight,

but long story short, the reckless and death row guys were yelling gang affiliations at each other. Someone's foot got run over by a golf cart and a brawl ensued. And again, it's caddy shot, but everyone is armed and they're very serious. Yeah. And you know, apparently the video,

like I couldn't find the video, but apparently there's video footage of it and it looks very goofy. Right. And you know, nobody died and nobody even got seriously hurt. And to the best of my knowledge, like this was the extent

of any sort of physical confrontations between reckless records and death row records, but it set a precedent. Absolutely. It's not like the cartoons where you grab your cartoon cat foot and it's flat and it's throbbing and it's red and then you're angry and you see a temperature thing

go up, up, up, up, and then it breaks. And then, you know, you kind of figure it out that way, but. Yeah. I mean, now this shit talking could actually reach out and touch real life. But the guys who would be touched the hardest actually started off as friends.

Tupac and Biggie. They first met each other in 1993 before Biggie's first album, but after Tupac had already become a star. Biggie flew to California for two reasons. One, get some of that sweet Caliweed. Oh, right. Not bad.

You, you. And two, to meet Tupac. Because Tupac was one of the most respected guys around and Biggie was starting to get a name. No one really knew him outside of Brooklyn, but he figured he had enough cred where he could go and meet the guy. And so he went, he talked to a dealer.

It turns out the dealer knew Tupac. Tupac invited Biggie over to his house where they played with unloaded machine guns and hand guns while Tupac cooked steaks in the kitchen. That's extremely fun. That's so much fun. What a nice afternoon that is. And after that, every time Biggie went to LA

he'd sleep on Tupac's couch. And every time Tupac went to New York he'd take a limousine to Bed-Stuy and shoot craps with all the neighborhood guys. Tupac even mentored Biggie, letting him perform at concerts and giving him advice in the music business. In fact, it was Tupac who was responsible for Biggie

staying at Bad Boy Records. Because Biggie wanted Tupac as his manager, but Tupac declined saying Puffy was gonna make him a star. And he did. Yeah, he did. But meanwhile, Tupac was falling deeper into the criminal world, blurring the lines between playing gangster

and acting gangster. In 1994, Tupac went to New York to shoot the basketball movie above the rim in which Tupac played a drug dealer. Great movie. To research the role, Tupac hooked up with the New York music promoter and all around scumbag, Haitian Jack.

Oh man, all I know about Haiti is I learned from Kevin Barnett from Round Table of Gentlemen. Yeah, I mean Haitian Jack, I mean this guy was fucking serious. He robbed drug dealers. That's not safe. No, that's not safe.

That's not what you do. He robbed drug dealers and survived. Yeah. Now even, and like even Biggie said, do not hang out with Haitian Jack. Right. Stay away from Haitian Jack. It's just unfortunate that I never gave Tupac a role.

It's like a stay at home dad. You know, because I just feel like he was kind of emulating whatever role was given to him. Well, that's what they say is that like, eventually if Ice Cube would have died and Tupac would have lived, they would have the exact same career. Eventually Tupac would have been and are we there yet?

Yeah. I think Tupac could have done a lot better if he'd hung out with Margaritaville Jim. Because he's a very sensible businessman. And Haiti is a beautiful place, of course. They were devastated by that earthquake. Of course. Of course.

But Tupac didn't listen to Biggie or anyone else. And it was with Haitian Jack that Tupac was charged with committing the worst act of his life. In October of that year, 1994, a woman named Ayanna Jackson accused Tupac, Haitian Jack, and other members of their entourage of gang raping her in Tupac's hotel room. Tupac denied being involved to the end, although he did later admit to being in the next room

and blamed himself for not doing anything about it. But a New York jury thought otherwise, found him culpable, and Tupac was sentenced to one and a half to four and a half years in prison. But in the interval between the crime and the sentencing, events would transpire that would be the unofficial kickoff to the East Coast, West Coast rap war.

See, even though Tupac was facing full charges, Haitian Jack pled out on two misdemeanors. And in Tupac's mind, this meant that Haitian Jack had to have been a snitch and was setting up Tupac to take the fall for the crime. And this wasn't something he just kind of like told his buddy in conversation. He made his feelings known across the pages of the Daily

News. And as Westhoff writes, calling out a man like Haitian Jack in the press is not a sensible move. But Tupac thought he was invincible, an actual gangster. But Haitian Jack was about to show Tupac just how wrong he was. Yikes. Unfortunately, though, the site of that lesson

happened to be Quad Recording Studios in Times Square, where Biggie and Puffy just happened to be recording that day as well on a different floor. Tupac showed up to the recording studio that day to record a guest verse for a guy named Little Sean. Just before he was about to get on the elevator, he was approached by a trio of guys wearing army fatigues. And since that was the Brooklyn style at the time,

Tupac assumed these guys were with Biggie. But just as the elevator doors open, the guys pulled out guns. Tupac went for his gun, but in trying to pull it out of his waistband, he accidentally pulled the trigger and shot himself instead. Oh my god. This is why none of these guys have training.

That's what they were talking about with Easy E back of the day, too. He wanted all these AK-47s and shit, but he didn't have to use them. So he had to hire somebody from the fraternal order of police to come and teach him how to use everything. It's really quite embarrassing. That's the Plaxico Burris move there,

when he got sentenced for shooting himself. I feel like he already served the punishment for the crime. Happened very quickly for him. Yeah, so after Tupac shot himself, the guys beat the fuck out of him, stole his jewelry for good measure, and left. And by the way, Tupac always told everyone that he got shot five times.

He did not get shot five times. He shot himself once, and all the other wounds were from the three dudes pistol whipping him. And after he got his ass kicked, he stumbled into the elevator, took the elevator upstairs. When the doors opened, there stood Biggie, Puffy, and a friend of Haitian Jacks named Jimmy Hinchman-Rosemond. His name was literally Hinchman.

Hinchman. That was his nickname. I guess you'd better enjoy being a Hinchman and have no upward mobility with your career, because you can't be like CEO Hinchman. It doesn't happen that way. My one job is to get beat up by Batman. And that is it.

I do not get coffee. I do not go get lunches. I get beat up by Batman, and eventually I get drowned helping out the Riddler. Later, Tupac said when he looked in Biggie and Puffy's eyes, at that moment, they looked, quote, surprised and guilty. However, in 2011, a guy named Dexter Isaac fully admitted to being one of the guys who beat up Tupac.

He said it was specifically on the orders of none other than Hinchman, working on behalf of Haitian Jack. Oh, this is just a coincidence. It's just a coincidence. And it's damn near positive that Biggie and Puffy had nothing to do with this. Probably didn't even know about it. And even if they did know about it,

they weren't going to tell Tupac, because Tupac was going to go back home. And Biggie and Puffy, they still had to deal with Haitian Jack. Right. And Hinchman, the reason why he was there, was he was the manager of the guy Tupac was supposed to record with that day, Little Sean. And the bad boy crew, they were just friends with Little Sean.

So they were just hanging out. But Tupac didn't see it like that. Because he had also become so egomaniacal that everything had to be about him and not to be about him being the world's biggest criminal and all this kind of shit. But it's like, no, man, you threw your own future down the toilet. Those were your allies.

Biggie and Puffy, they would have helped you out. And things escalated even more when Tupac went to prison almost immediately after the assault. He said guys were constantly coming up to him, telling him, like, hey, her Biggie and Puffy shot you. They're doing it just to cause shit. Everybody's full of shit. No, all of these stories are half bunkum.

Half bunkum. Oh, yeah, bunkum. Whoa, half bunkum. Oh, we got a two out of three on the bunkum scale here. Are we going to go three for three? Wow. That's my bunkum bell. Every time I hear bunkum, I'm going to go ding, ding, ding,

ding, ding. Bunkum bell. That's why you got to stand up in the cafeteria and say, guys, I just want to let you know I've heard about the rumors. I'm good. No need to continue to come up to me and tell me this stuff. You know, I can really kind of see, like, what Tupac was thinking, because a little after the shooting,

Biggie released a song called Who Shot Ya? With lyrics that could be read as a failed admission of guilt, specifically, you rewind this, Big Boy's behind this. And this was all over the media. Yeah, but the problem was, Who Shot Ya was recorded months before Tupac was shot. It had nothing to do with him, because it's not like gangster rap songs about a dude getting shot are exactly rare.

All right. But you're saying that maybe Biggie could see the future. Is that possible? Biggie hanging out with John Titor. And he knew what was going to happen. And so he buried all those songs. That's why he recorded all those extra songs that have the five concurrent albums that

came out after his death. Or him and Tupac, they made friends, faked each other's death, another living in gay paradise and St. Martin's under other names and plastic surgery. I do want to believe that's true. That would be a fine conclusion to all this. It really does come down to a collective unconscious, though, and just sort of chaos magic.

All of this stuff just fits so perfectly with the way it concluded. Yeah, it really is. One of those things where it's almost destined to happen. So Tupac, he believed wholeheartedly that it was Puffy and Biggie behind it. And nothing anyone could say otherwise could sway him. So he just sat in prison and stewed.

But that was between answering letters from Jim Carrey and Tony Danza. Jim Carrey or Jim Carrey? Well, Jim Carrey, because, yeah, because Tupac was on In Living Color. Oh, yeah, they knew each other from back of the day. Yeah, I don't know how Tony Danza fits into it, though. This is what I'm going to say to you, Tupac.

I hope you're doing good in jail, because a lot of people ask me all the time, who's the boss, right? Who's the boss? I'm going to tell you what, you're the boss. Wow. OK, they need to tap dances. It's just a fucking cassette.

I am tap dancing and singing old jazz standards. I remember that when if you could tap dance, you were the next level entertainer. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Gregory Hines. Yeah, big deal. But Tupac, he wasn't going to get out of prison any time soon, not without help.

His bail had been set at $3 million. And even though his first two albums were extremely successful, the second one more than the first, Tupac didn't have anyone near that kind of money. Because you remember, he'd had a lot of legal troubles leading up to this. So he had a lot of bills to pay. The man who did have that money, though, was Shug Knight.

According to original gangsters, Tupac got a hold of Shug Knight first, asking for help, as he had no one else to turn to with that kind of money. And in this, Shug saw a fantastic opportunity. He already had the best producer on the West Coast and Dre. So if he were to add the best rapper in Tupac, Shug Knight would be set. And Death Row could be one of the biggest labels on Earth.

And so negotiations were made for Tupac to move from inner scope to death row, which actually was under the inner scope umbrella. So it wasn't really much of a problem anyway. The problem here was the deal. In exchange for death row legal services and bond, Tupac appointed Shug as his manager and signed on for three albums with Death Row records,

essentially selling himself to Shug Knight completely. Because now Shug Knight is both his manager and his label rep. And he's the one who bailed him out, right? And he's the one who. This is indentured servitude, isn't it? He's a little bit. I mean, Tupac was, he was getting kissed on in the downstairs, but other men's downstairs.

Possibly, that's a rumor. That's a rumor. He wasn't handling jail well. So he reached out to Shug. And Shug is like, he pulls out a fucking scroll. Like it's like the whole, like his signature burns on the paper, which is essentially this deals with what kind of dooms Tupac

and sends him on the collision course with Biggie. I didn't realize that Shug Knight sounded like sweet tooth from Twisted Metal. But. So like less than a month after Tupac agreed to this deal, the $1.4 million bond was paid, and Tupac was back out on the streets. But the thing was that 1.4 wasn't really paid by death row.

It was in advance on future royalties, which binded Tupac to Shug even closer. So it was alone. So death row wasn't really paying Tupac. Tupac was paying it. Tupac was paying it. Yeah. Not just on the back end.

Yeah, yeah, he was just paying it on the, he was just, it was pretty much like a no interest loan. And while Shug was there visiting Tupac in prison, he was told all about the supposed plot on Tupac's life on behalf of Biggie and Puffy. And Shug believed him wholeheartedly. Or at the very least, saw a hell of a business opportunity in front of him.

Yep. Oh, I thought you were going to say, or whole-buddedly. See, separate, Shug and Tupac were volatile, but not explosive. But when they joined forces, it was like setting a match to gasoline. And a lot of people, including Tupac and Biggie, were about to get burned to death as a result. A lot of people made a lot of money.

This is where this was like it transformed into something so much bigger than it was before. They'd already made a lot of money. But once Tupac signed on to death row, that is when death row really exploded. That's when things blew up for them. Because the chronic and doggie style were huge, gigantic hits, but none of them

compared to what Tupac sold. No. And Biggie was about to sell even more records as well. Yes. A hard lesson is about to be learned. But I'll tell you what, next week we're going to be getting some hardcore conspiracies. We're going to talk about the fact that fucking Tupac

is still alive. He's not. We're going to talk about it. I just saw him on a YouTube video. You see? We're going to talk about a lot of shit. Absolutely not. There's a very good reason why his posthumous material

is so large, which we'll get into next episode. Open the casket. I don't want to see his fucking bones. Everything about the Biggie and Tupac case is, I mean, it's a fascinating story. But the reasons behind them are reasonable. They're playing to see why people get, they're playing to see, and they're

going to get into it. Because a part of it was like, there was a $400 million lawsuit against the LAPD saying that they had fixed their murders, which is the part of the reason why the conspiracy theory got so big. But we're going to get into the reason then, which I also believe is just as crooked, why that conspiracy theory got

fucking popped. Yeah. So we'll get into all of that stuff here on the next episode. Great, great outline, though. Great base. Great amount of information there, so we can really get to them. So we can jump off of that for the next one. Allowed to original gangsters.

Like, it's such a fantastic, such a fantastic history. And yeah, well researched. I cannot recommend this book enough. So good, man. So good. Yeah, please. Please spike this man's sales this week. What's the name of the guy again?

The author? Ben Westhoff. Ben Westhoff. Yeah, check that out, look. What a great story, man. I fucking love this shit. This is the kind of story that you get really involved in, because you start like, you see the personalities.

And it's so human. Like, the way that they all, like, it's watching fame change these guys, and the idea of like, the idea of your fantasy of being a criminal, meeting the reality, and what that then has repercussions in real life. I love that shit. I know, and now it's so much sadder, too.

You know, just being in Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy was the first place I lived here. You know, you really get to humanize all this stuff as opposed to just being a chubby boy in Wisconsin. Yeah. And it's just, it is also kind of sad in hindsight, because these guys should have just been, they should just be plain police officers on law and order

as well, or whatever they wanted to do, you know? This story is just such a great example of, be careful who you pretend to be. Yeah. And especially Tupac, not necessarily Biggie. I would say, actually, especially Tupac and Puffy, because we'll get into next episode on how badly Puffy fucked up, and how it really, how it really

led to the disaster that came in 1996. All right. Good job, Marcos. Sveti, good job. Danko. Danko. Let's see here. So what do we want to do?

We have a bunch of live shows coming up, and we have to clarify one thing. Is it Ticketmaster? It's Ticketmaster. He's fucking stupid ass badly designed website. Yes. So we apologize for the confusion out there. We got some VIP tickets.

We're going to start doing that, because we couldn't see everyone that we wanted to see at the other live show. So this is just going to be a way to streamline it. But then we also just have the regular price tickets. And for some reason, when you went on there, the first thing you saw was $100 or $135. But that's not the price. So we're working on that the best we can.

I have no idea how to talk to these idiots over there. The vast, vast majority of the seats for our live shows, there are regular ticket price. The VIP is something new that we're trying out. Like it's like a meet and greet session afterwards. It's like a free poster, and like a lanyard. I know Henry loves lanyards. Who doesn't love a lanyard?

Everyone loves a lanyard. But yeah. I love lanyards. Yeah, it's something new that we're trying out. But we're definitely not punishing our everyday fans in any way whatsoever. Absolutely, absolutely not. So apologize for that kerfuffle.

As always, this is a learning process for us. We go through it just as you go through it. And yeah, so there you go. So we apologize for those. For a little confusion on that front. Thank you for Patreon, everyone. Thank you so much for giving to our Patreon. Henry and I will be resuming our interview series here

as soon as possible. Schedules have been absolutely crazy, because Henry is shooting in a feature film, and we've just been traveling around a bunch. So thank you all so much for giving to that. Without you, none of this is possible. But we actually have a bunch of fun shit already lined up for interview-wise, which I'm very excited for.

So stick around for that. Follow us on Twitter at Henry Loves You, at Marcus Parks at Ben Kissel. Follow us on Instagram at Dr. Fentasty, at Marcus Parks at Ben Kissel, the number one. And follow us on all of the stupid horseshit at LP on the left. That's right. All right, everyone.

Hail yourselves. Hail Satan! Again. Magoustillations. Hail me, butthole. I just said butthole. You said butthole. Is that what you're trying to?

I don't know, man. I don't know.