RedHanded - Episode 300 - Tupac & Biggie: ‘2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted’ - Part 1

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Stories of death, drugs, and gang violence were inextricably linked, in the 90s media, to the nation’s biggest rap stars. Tupac Shakur was one of the decade’s biggest and most admired music icons – until his life was cut tragically short in 1996. By the time he died, he’d been involved in three high-profile shootings, done time for sexual assault, and been associated with serious career criminals. So what happened?Get the 4-1-1 on two of hip-hop’s biggest stars as we celebrate our 300th episode in the only way appropriate - a Tupac and Biggie Two-ParterFollow us on social media:InstagramTwitterVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you I'm Hannah. I'm Suriti. And welcome to Red Handed, episode 300. It is indeed. I am amazed I remembered that because I didn't put it at the top of the script by accident. I remember we were, we just do all of our scheduling, like in the calendar it doesn't

say when you're coming up for any particular milestone. And then I was sat there one day, like counting the weeks, and I was like, by some miracle, some podcasting synchronicity miracle, kismet, if you will, this ended up being our 300th episode. Yes. I wish anything we did was deliberate. I know, just once. Yes, this is a biggin and I'm scared because a lot of people have a lot of very strong opinions. Sure. And, you know, I'm all for a conspiracy as much as the next tarot card reader, but this one, I just don't think it is. Yeah. I was going to say, I don't have particularly strong feelings, but I'm excited.

Yeah, well, get to know. Let's do it. But yeah, 300 episodes. I wonder how many hours we have been on mic, in front of mic, just near mic. Yeah, well, we don't speak to each other off the clock. You've got to save it for this. The sound you just heard is what you would hear if you logged on to the Death Row Records website in 2001. The webpage read,

2001 is the year of fear. All dogs, 2Gs, run and hide. Shge is coming home. It's not very subtle. No. In 2001, Suge Knight was about to get out of prison after a parole violation charge for literally kicking a man while he was down. The barking, gunshots and whimpering that we just played you were a direct threat on the life of rap legend and murder charge escapee which everyone forgets about snoop dogg he actually tripled his security budget when this happened he was scared yeah i mean i would be i would be fucking terrified i'd throw all the protection dollars i could at it yep Yep, yep, yep. So what's this threat all about?

We're going to tell you over the next two episodes of 300-Year-Old Red-Handed. We are going to find out why. And we're also going to take you through the most famous murders in the history of hip-hop, and possibly the history of music. It is, of course, long overdue that we tackled the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Naturally, this is a story of two parts. This week, we're going to be focusing on Tupac, and next week on Biggie, purely because that is the order in which they died. Yes, because when you say it, you want to say Biggie and Tupac because that's alphabetical,

right? And obviously, this has been covered by a lot of shows. I'm not claiming that this one is going to be particularly different but not many people do them one by one because obviously it's so intertwined but here we go. So yeah, you can't tell their stories entirely separately but we are going to give it a damn good go. Now for the blissfully ignorant among you, Tupac and Biggie were the biggest stars in the hip-hop game and despite their infamous feud, they in the hip-hop game.

And despite their infamous feud, they did start out as good friends. Biggie used to open for Tupac. They sold tens of millions of records each. But we can't get to them before we meet Eazy-E and Dr. Dre. These two teamed up when Eazy got sick of the drug game. Yeah, he was never really, basically what happened was he inherited a large amount from a family member who went to prison or something like that. And he was like, well, I might as well shift this. But never, never really was that. No, not committed to the game. So Dr. Dre was making money moves on the Compton music

scene since he was a teenager. Yeah, they all like grow up together, which is very sweet and it's such a shame that they fall out later on. And if you want to see the story of the kids who became NWA and eventually made millions, watch the Defiant Ones documentary on Netflix. It's so good. One of the most like endearing things in it. I think it's like four or five episodes, maybe six. It's really interesting. But one of the most sweet things is that obviously EZE is dead now some people think

it was Shug Knight but Dr. Dre tells this story where like the first verse they recorded EZE had to make everyone turn around and not look at him because he was so nervous yeah yeah and that was Boys in the Hood yeah it is it's like the start of all of their stories is very innocent. Yeah, almost wholesome, honestly. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, they were very good friends. I think people either forget or don't realize. Yeah, like we said, Biggie and Tupac particularly were very, very close.

They hit it off like straight away, apparently, when they met and were really good friends before everything else happened. Do you know how much money Dre sold Beats to Apple for? I feel like I did know this when the deal happened. Fucking buzzquillions. Like, yes, four billion. So Dre gets his money in the end. So yes, all that Beats money, all the rest of the monies that all of them got, and the empire that was built does, of course, have a body count.

But like we said, it started off innocently enough in the beginning. Dre used to do DJ sets in hospital scrubs and sequins with his first group, Wrecking Crew. It's very sweet. Again, in the Defiant Ones, there's a lot of footage of like really early Dre. And he really leans on the doctor part of it. You've got to have a brand. Ice-T, of course, leans on the doctor part of it. You gotta have a brand. Ice-T of course was also on the scene and believe it or not his initial works were very anti-gang. He had grown up in Compton and he'd seen it all. He claimed to be an artist observer. A line that we are going to hear

a lot of over the next two weeks. Lots and and lots and lots very few of the big hip-hop rap gangster rap stars were ever gangsters oh yeah ice tea i don't know if we're gonna talk about this later but i do enjoy that he has made a sharp move into the world of true crime yeah yeah yeah in ice cold blood in ice cold blood it's in its like fourth season or some shit. No, he is the king of the rebrand. It's all iced tea. Crucially, though, the early works of Easy and Dre weren't overly successful. They were kind of more parodies than anything else. It's kind of like there's this one that's it's kind of like Monster Mash.

Like it's kind of this like monster voice. It's just quite like try and stuff out yes exactly and that's exactly what happened easy and dre bound it together and made the group nwa along with ice cube ice cube and ice tea are confusing they are different people but i definitely like you know when you go down a script rabbit hole and i'm like maybe they are the same person maybe i've had it wrong this whole time and ice tea and ice cube are the same no ice tea is busy making in ice cold blood and ice cube is busy starring in um slightly offbeat kooky romantic comedies you asked you know what that's a good way to remember it so once they formed nwa they turned away from the almost comical stuff they were doing

and started telling the story of the neighborhoods around around them. Eazy took most of the money from NWA and their label Ruthless Records because very early on in his career, he teamed up with music manager and industry myth man Jerry Heller. So Eazy, right from the gate, was making sure he was getting the 70%, the 65%. Like, Taylor's oldest time, everyone's first album ever, but he gets ahead of it. He was getting the best cut which was fine at the beginning but it became pretty not fine quite quickly as things often do yeah my um I think I've told this to you before but like my family's like good family

friends they run their own business and I like go to them often for like business advice and they were like people don't fall out when there's no money in a business. People fall out when there's money in the business. And that's exactly what happened. However, this is probably how he qualified it in the beginning. Boys in the Hood was paid for by Eazy-E's drug money. So he's the seed investor. And of course, Boys in the Hood was a smash hit. And also my favorite meme of all time is probing the bitches abducting the host anyway

all mine's the one of kermit jumping off a building that's my i i like that one very much oh my god or on fire elmo i like him solid all of this musical mayhem was happening against the backdrop of the crips versus bloods gang war of the early 90s and sort of late-ish 80s in Los Angeles. We'll probably do a shorthand on it. So, gangster rap, as the genre would become known, was associated with the people Hillary Clinton described as the super predators of South Central Los Angeles. Oh my God.

Hillary. Can we just insert a super cuts here of her just saying super predators over and over and over and over and over again? They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators. No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way. But first, we have to bring them to heel. And the president has asked the FBI to launch a very concerted effort against gangs everywhere. Exactly. So she said super predator with her mouth, but what she meant with her brain was young, poor and black. But actually, Hillary, white people were the ones who bought this super predator music the most. By like quite a significant margin. Oh, I believe it wholeheartedly. And white people bought the shit out of iced tea in particular.

Hence the swift change into true crime. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge,

but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.

Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life.

I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. ISD was straight out of the armed forces when he released Six in the Morning in 1986, which is widely accepted to be the first gangster rap song ever.

But it wasn't. Nope, it's not. Schoolie D. Six in the Morning is about the early hours drug raids that LAPD would carry out religiously in Compton, looking for trap houses to bust. Now, the song wasn't a nationwide success, but the anti-police rhetoric in it certainly caught the attention of many in LA, including the LAPD. But it's no surprise that it caught the attention of everyone who was listening who

was living in LA, because police brutality at the time in the 80s and 90s was rife, especially in the majority black neighbourhoods in the City of the Angels. The most famous example being the beating of Rodney King in 91. Rodney King was an unarmed black man, brutally beaten by the LAPD for resisting arrest. The attack was filmed from a nearby balcony and sent to a news station. The footage was broadcast shortly after and caused widespread public outcry. And it got worse because all four of the officers involved in the attack were acquitted at trial. Within hours of that decision,

riots raged across Los Angeles. Things got so bad that Rodney King himself made a television plea to end the riots. These riots were violent. Over 50 people died and there were about 2,000 injuries. So yes, violent, scary, terrifying. But they did mark a very seminal moment in hip-hop history. The unification of the civil rights activists and the musicians in the United States. Ice Cube was interviewed by many outlets during the riots and kind of by accident he became the face of the violence. And here's what he had to say. He told the LA Times, America looks at black men in two ways.

You have the nice black man like Bill Cosby, that didn't age well, and you have the bad black man, the person you see going to jail at night on the news. If Rodney King was seen as a good black, then the officers would have been found guilty. But all through the trial, they kept saying that he was a monster, a wild animal. Plus, he had a past criminal record. To the jurors, he was just a bad black. So anything done to him was justified. So that's Ice Cube. Ice-T had his little bit to add to the hip-hop versus law enforcement battle as well. In 1992, he released Cop Killer as part of his heavy metal band, Body Count. I always forget that he also had a heavy metal band.

Yeah, I did not remember that. So there you go. Everybody on the fucking nostalgia train, yeah? People went absolutely nuts for it. So much so that George H.W. vehemently denounced the record, calling it obscene and accusing Time Warner, the records distributor, of shirking their corporate responsibility. Police unions across the country, not just in California, and the NRA, naturally, called for a boycott of Time Warner. And just to put it all into perspective, Vice President of the United States of America at the time, Dan Quayle, gave a speech at a police conference in which he declared that just because

it was free speech doesn't make it right. Let's sit with that for a minute. Now Time Warner, in the face of this boycott and all of this public pressure, stood their ground for a while, calling Cop Killer a protest anthem. Which it is. But after a shareholders meeting went terribly badly for them, they quickly changed their tune. How the worm turns.

I mean, money talks. So Body Count's eponymous album was re-released without the song Cop Killer, and Ice-T signed a new deal with Priority Records. It's the same thing that we've seen time and again. Before it was video games and Marilyn Manson, it was rappers shining a light on police brutality that were corrupting the minds of our children.

The same year the riots swept LA, all the way up in New York, Sean Combs was also making music moves. And you probably know him by his many, many stage names. Do you think we can list all of them? Off the top of our heads? Off the top of our heads, yeah. All right. I don't know.

I don't think I can do all of them and I certainly don't think I can do them in order. Let me see if I can find a list. Okay. I don't know how many there are. Yeah. And I also don't know if this is going to be in the correct order but he's Sean Combs that's his name that's his his government name and then I think it would have been Puff Daddy yeah first after that yeah now I'm not going to hold myself to this doing it chronologically after this and then i think he became maybe just puff puffy puff i'm not sure of the order i generally people when covering cases like this everyone refers to him as puffy i'm not going to do that because i don't like him no so i'm going to government name him the whole way through okay i think it's sean combs puff daddy puffy yeah p diddy diddy yeah there's one more ah i've never heard okay then i don't know

just love oh apparently i don't know whether it's puffy love diddy love that's a failed rebrand yeah exactly no we know we're shawning him i'm afraid why did he change his name so many times so hopefully people would forget what a piece of shit he is and he could go out as Jennifer Lopez. He went out as Jennifer Lopez? Yes, for ages. And she gave an interview. She was like, it's the only time anyone has ever cheated on me. Oh, J-Lo.

You can't cheat on Jennifer Lopez. J-Lo, you could do so much better. She has. She's with Ben now. Oh, Ben. They love each other. Ben Affleck is the fucking warm, wet tea towel of Hollywood. But the warm, wet tea towel, like, accidentally falling on your hand in the kitchen.

Oh, God. That's what I think of when I think of him. But anyway, he's not got anything to do with this story. No, no, no. In 1992, Sean Combs founded the record label bad boy records which i think is a terrible name it is the worst name in this entire story truly every other record label name you have one job come up with a good record label name and there are so many that are in this story that's the worst and he had to start bad boy records because he got sacked from his job at Uptown Records for pushing one particular artist a bit too hard.

And that artist was none other than Christopher Wallace, Biggie Smalls. Later known, I didn't know this, due to a legal dispute as Notorious B.I.G. Someone sued him for Biggie Smalls. Because they were like, that's my name. And he was like, I'm so famous. You've lost it anyway. But he had to change it to Notorious B.I.G. after that. But everyone calls him Biggie for his whole book.

Well, look, then there you go. The one good thing Sean P. Diddy Puff Daddy Puffy McPuff Love did was push Biggie's balls. The only other good thing he did was I Need a Girl. That was a great song. Banger. Anyway, back to this. We'll be learning and hearing a lot more about those two over the next two weeks. But for now, let's get back to this week's main event, Tupac Shakur. Although he would spend his adult life violently

repping the West Coast, Tupac was actually born on the East Side. As a child, Tupac lived in New York City and Baltimore. He himself would describe his childhood as difficult, and that is putting it quite lightly. It's some real shit. Like, a hardened gangster he may not be, but a troubled child, big time. Yep. So Tupac's mother, Athene, was a Black Panther. And whilst that would give Tupac some street cred later on, it also meant that he was actually born

while his mum was in prison for conspiracy to commit terrorism. I'm going to say, that's pretty much as bad a start as you can get. Truly. She was under suspicion for planning a bunch of bombings

in New York, and she got caught for it and went away. So once Afeni got out of prison, she and her son moved around a lot, spending time in homeless shelters, eventually settling in Baltimore. And there, Afeni, like so many others, as The Wire will tell you, got firmly addicted to crack. Yeah, she's in a really bad way. Baltimore wasn't all bad, though. Tupac Shakur enrolled in the local performing arts college, and he really shone for his Shakespearean interpretations and his uncanny Rick James impression.

Tupac was a lot of things, many of them not very nice. He makes some terrible decisions, but he was undeniably charismatic, and that charisma would take him really far. Actually, it would take him all the way to the top in his extremely early 20s. On his way up, just like Dre, Ice-T, and Easy, Tupac was a lot more wholesome. For example, you probably can't think of Tupac without picturing his iconic Thug Life tattoo, but it doesn't actually mean what you might think it does. Thug Life was actually a code of conduct for gang members to abide by during community events during the 1992 truce

picnic. The truce picnic was not adhered to by all gang members, but it has been associated with the decline of gang violence in LA during the 90s and the 2000s. Thug life is a code of 26 points penned by Tupac and his stepbrother and they include slinging to children is against the code, having children slinging is against the code, concerts and parties are neutral territories, no shooting and those are all fine. I agree with all of those and they're also like no selling drugs to pregnant women like all of that but then it's also like snitches out of here like once a rat always a rat

like that's in there too so it's not all like super play fun time but as I said Tupac very very briefly sold drugs with his cousin but it was a very short-lived career choice because he wanted to be a star.

So Tupac started out as a roadie and then eventual backup dancer for Digital Underground who let him have his first verse. Then he was picked up by Indiscope and the rest is history. Well almost. Tupac's first works released by Indiscope were poetic but a lot more downbeat and less hooky than his later stuff i've heard it described as like bob dylan-y that's what i actually do think of when i think of tupac when people compare tupac and biggie i would say and this is just my opinion i'm more of a biggie fan me too i'm like biggie's more fun and he's more like when you see him like freestyle if you watch YouTube videos of him like freestyle rapping on the streets of Bed-Stuy it's like

what the fuck. Tupac is more deep more poetic he's more like emo rap. Yes true and I also just think Biggie was a nicer person but we'll find out. We'll get to that. So Tupac got himself into gun trouble fairly early on in his career. And by gun trouble, I mean that Tupac dropped a gun at an event that went off and killed six-year-old Quade Walker Teal in 1992. That's as bad as it can get. No one really talks about that. But he did, however accidentally, kill a six-year-old kid. And he's just not good at gun. He doesn't gun well, as we will find.

I mean, if you're dropping a gun, and just to be clear when I'm saying that sentence in case somebody was like, oh, is that some sort of saying for like shooting? No, he literally physically drops a gun on the floor and it goes off and kills a six-year-old. And possibly the reason that nothing happens because of this is A, Tupac goes on to become incredibly famous. And also, he did give half a million dollars to the little boy's family.

Obviously, that is never going to replace their child. But, you know, at that point, he's already dead. And maybe they were like, well, we just take this money and move on. It was an accident. But also, don't have a gun if you... Don't take a gun to an event. Yeah. Tupac also got into an altercation with two police officers,

one of whom was shot in the butt. However, Tupac was found to be acting in self-defence, and again, he wasn't convicted. That one to me is far, far, far far far far far more shocking that nothing came of that he shot a fucking police officer probably by accident and not very well because he shot him in the fucking ass but the fact that he was even found to be acting in self-defense when he shot a fucking cop is in atlanta that is. But he somehow manages to Houdini his way out of it. And then in 1992, Tupac made a feature film called Juice. It was his debut and he played

a character called Bishop, who was a murder-hungry Harlem youth. The film wasn't great, but he did get good reviews as an actor. And after Tupac saw himself in the hard man role that he had always kind of wanted, he didn't see his image as a game anymore. He meant business. Serious gangster business. His violent reputation was helped along not only by his poor gun handling skills, killing a child and injuring a police officer, but by a murder committed on April 11, 1992,

miles away from Tupac himself, in Aetna, Texas. Ronald Ray Howard, a drug dealer driving a stolen car, was pulled over by much-loved local cop and president of the Little League, Bill Davidson. Howard shot Bill Davidson in the neck, and Bill died three days later. So what does this have to do with Tupac, you might be asking? Well, when Howard was pulled over, he do with Tupac, you might be asking? Well, when Howard was pulled over, he was playing Tupocalypse Now, Shakur's first album. And Howard's defence lawyer claimed that it was the violent lyrics on the record that propelled Howard to shoot Officer

Bill Davidson. This piss-poor defence didn't work, Howard got the death penalty, but it did mean that Tupac was now firmly associated with the gangster rappers ruining our children and killing police. And he wasn't the only one. NWA received letters from the FBI about Fuck the Police when Straight Outta Compton was released. Police departments then sent the lyrics to each other, and the outrage spread. NWA claimed that music about drugs, guns, gangs and cop killers was a fairly harmless retaliation for decades of racist abuse.

And actually, all the FBI outrage did was sell more records. Yeah, Dre's literally like, cheers, lads. You've made this much better for me. Oh, absolutely. Can you oh absolutely can you imagine can you imagine putting out an album and the fbi are like this is too dangerous because what is it that teenagers and young people hate oh they hate danger they hate anything that might possibly be dangerous fucking out it's so stupid infamy sells just as much as sex does, possibly more. Yeah.

And Tupac enjoyed his infamy. He did a film with Janet Jackson and dated Madonna. And whilst researching his role in the film Above the Rim, he started to hang out with the real bad guys. The baddest of all, being a man by the name of Haitian Jack. Haitian Jack was not playing a gangster. He was one. Worse than that, he was trying to break into the music business.

Now Tupac was warned by many not to fuck around with Haitian Jack or even to be basically anywhere near him. But intoxicated by the game, Tupac didn't listen. Even Biggie, who first met Tupac in 93, warned him to stay away from Haitian Jack. Biggie and Tupac were friends at this stage. Tupac was even kind of a mentor. He encouraged Biggie to stay at Bad Boy Records with Sean Combs because he was convinced that Sean Combs would, quote,

make Biggie a star. Biggie and Tupac used to hang out reasonably often before things turned sour. They used to play with guns and eat steak together at Tupac's and when Tupac went up to New York he would go to Bed-Stuy and play games with Biggie and his mates in the street. But it was not to last. Having evaded the law for long enough, when 1995 came around Tupac was in real trouble. He was charged with sexual assault and sodomy. Having always been vocal about his love for his mother and having written odes to women and the pro-choice movement, this seemed a little bit out of character. But perhaps it was just the next step in his

gangster evolution. So here's the story. Ayanna Jackson said that when she and Tupac had met in a club in Manhattan, they'd kissed on the dance floor. And then she had gone back to his hotel suite where they had sex. Four days later, Ayanna Jackson returned to Tupac's hotel. They were hanging out when a group of other men came into the room, including Bad News Haitian Jack. She, Ayanna Jackson, claimed that Tupac said to her, they're not gonna hurt you. What you do for me, you do for them. Then the group of men ripped

Ayanna's tights and dress off and gang raped her. Whilst defending himself at a press conference, Tupac denied everything and said that his biggest crime was talking loud. Is it? I think it's the police officer you shot in the butt or maybe the dead six-year-old. Yeah. And although later he would admit that the rape did happen, he said that he just wasn't involved because he was in the next room. When it came down to it, Haitian Jack was given a lesser charge than Tupac was, which made Tupac believe that Haitian Jack was given a lesser charge than Tupac was,

which made Tupac believe that Haitian Jack had cooperated with police and set him up. Now, before the case went to trial, Tupac called Haitian Jack a hanger-on in the press and ignored him at a party held by Sean Combs in New York. For Haitian Jack, a New Yorker, this showed enormous disrespect. But Tupac felt betrayed. He didn't care what Haitian Jack thought. But he couldn't stay away from New York forever. He really, really needed money. So he agreed to appear on a Lil Sean track and return for $7,000. And that $7,000 would go straight to his defense lawyer for the sexual assault trial. And that is how Tupac Shakur found himself at Quad Studios on the 30th of November 1994. Tupac was approached by a group of men wearing camo.

He assumed that they were with Biggie because that's generally what Biggie's lot wore. It was very mid-90s Brooklyn. And these men, these camouflaged men, pulled a gun. Tupac would always claim that they shot him five times. However, other people who were there, linked in show notes below, say what actually happened was that Tupac tried to pull his own weapon and shot himself in the leg. He's got form. He does, you know. So any wounds other than the gunshot wound to his leg that he sustained were actually from being pistol whipped. They didn't shoot him.

They claim. I know who I believe. Anyway, after they beat the shit out of him, they robbed him. And interestingly enough, they took all of his jewelry except his Rolex. Because that Rolex was a gift from Haitian Jack. So it's a calling card. But when the men left, Tupac, shot five times or not, was in a terrible way.

He stumbled into the lift and headed up a floor. When the lift door opened, Tupac saw Biggie, Sean Combs and an affiliate of Haitian Jack's staring at him, looking, in Tupac's words, surprised and guilty. Tupac made it to hospital, where he underwent an operation to repair a damaged blood vessel in his leg. But he had no time to recover properly because he was straight back in court the next day,

where he was convicted of sexual assault and sent to prison. Haitian Jack, on the other hand, just got probation. Yeah. So you understand where Tupac's suspicion around Haitian Jack comes from. Now, Tupac was convinced that Biggie and Sean Combs were behind his shooting. And this is where the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop rivalry, which previously was a big deal but certainly not a violent one when it came to rappers, really started. And Tupac only became more certain of the conspiracy against him when he was in prison.

He was told by multiple people on the inside that Biggie was behind his humiliation at Chord Studios. These prison yard whisperings were not helped by the fact that whilst Tupac was incarcerated, Biggie released a record called Who Shot Ya? Biggie, stop it. And in this song, Biggie casts himself in the role of Shooter. Tupac saw this release as absolute confirmation that Biggie, Sean Combs and, by default default Bad Boy Records had orchestrated a hit on him. I mean, look, I'm all for striking while the iron's hot.

You know, running with what's relevant, etc, etc. But, yeah. Ouch. I mean, it depends how badly you want to sell records, really. Yeah. And if the answer is badly, you release a song called Who Shot Ya? Uh-huh. Casting yourself as the shooter.

But actually, Who Shot Ya? had been recorded months before the attack at Quad Studios. Details. And Biggie and Combs were only at Quad Studio that day because Biggie was also recording tracks with his outfit Junior Mafia. They had reason to be there, you know. And also, if I organised a hit on somebody, I would do that so that I could make sure I wasn't anywhere near the place

where the shooting was going down. Yeah. So that I could say, I had nothing to do with it. I certainly wouldn't be one floor up. No. And I think, I don't think this is a controversial statement.

Everyone is in agreement that Haitian Jack set this up. But he used an affiliate of his called Jimmy Henchman to like organise it. Jimmy Henchman. Look, branding, branding. But what have we learned so far in this episode? Branding matters. Exactly. We don't think that anyone has a brilliant time in prison, but Tupac had a particularly horrible one. Not only was his paranoia becoming unmanageable, he kept saying things to the press like, if I die, I want people to know what really happened. His previously positive view of women was totally destroyed

by doing time for an assault he claimed he never did. And on top of all of that, the correctional officers hated him. He's a cop killer. Or a cop R-shooter. Yeah, exactly. And there were also pretty powerful rumours that Tupac was raped in prison. They are rumours. We haven't confirmed them anyway. Tupac wanted out. Bad.

The prison he was in was so far in upstate New York, the quickest way to get there was to fly to Canada and drive an hour. Oh, wow. So he's really out in the middle of nowhere. And miserable. Enter Suge Knight, with an offer that Tupac couldn't refuse. Now, we haven't properly met Suge Knight yet. And I thoroughly hope that we never, ever, ever do. Yeah. But let's find out about this major player in the East vs West war. Now Shug is

not his real name. It comes from his childhood nickname Sugar Bear which is pretty ironic considering what he would go on to be. But not as funny as his real name. Do you want to guess what it is? Shug Knight's real name is it

like just his first name? Yeah yeah i feel like i'm gonna offend somebody if i if i guess a really lame name it's marion marion night yes oh i was gonna say like is it like leslie no but yeah good uh i was gonna say like of all of the names of people in this shug knight is my favorite name it's a good name It's a good name. It's a good name. Better than Marion. No offense if you're called Marion. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard

and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud.

In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on So Suge, like so many of our characters this week, was from Compton. But unlike Easy E and Snoop Dogg, Suge was associated with a subsect of the Bloods

called the Mob Pyrus. He didn't grow up in the drug game, though. He was actually a promising American hand egg player and played two games for the Rams, although it was during a player strike, so it kind of makes him not only a murderer, spoilers, but also a scab. Bad guy, bad guy. I will stand by anyone's right to strike, even the NFL. So Suge Knight managed to miss an NFL training camp because he went off to stalk

his ex-girlfriend instead. So yeah, not quite showing the discipline that's maybe required of a top-tier athlete. So basically after this, his hand-egg career was over and extremely short-lived. So Suge Knight turned himself to music publishing, mainly securing royalties for artists on his roster. One such artist under Suge's wing went by the stage name Chocolate, and Chocolate wrote the Vanilla Ice hit and Queen rip-off Ice Ice Baby. Rob Van Winkle, which is Vanilla Ice's real name, kept all of the royalties from Ice Ice Baby and the rest of his debut album, claiming that he wrote the whole thing totally unaided. Well, Sugar Bear was not having any of that.

This is allegedly. Shug took an entourage to a hotel where Vanilla Ice was staying and they dangled him over the balcony by his ankles until he agreed to give chocolate a fair share of the royalties. I believe it. I do. Naturally, there are a few versions of this story. Shug claimed that he only threatened to throw Van Winkle over the balcony. But yeah, I know who I believe.

Anyway, it worked. Chocolate got his royalties and Suge Knight got a reputation for violently making things happen. At just about the time, Eazy-E and Dr. Dre were starting to fall out over the extortionate cuts that Eazy-E was taking from Ruthless Records and NWA's work. Dre was done with Ruthless Records and with NWA. He wanted to be a star in his own right, and that meant that he had to cut ties with his old friend, Eazy-E. So Dre sent in ankle-dangler Suge Knight. And Suge Knight took with him three guys with lead pipes.

Initially, Easy told Suge and his pipe-wielders to fuck off, but soon changed his tune when Suge presented Easy with a picture of his mother's house. The message being, in case you need me to spell it out for you, pay, Dre, or we will go and find your mother and take our lead pipes with us. So Easy released Dre and two other artists on the spot from their Ruthless Records contracts. Suge Knight was on the crest of the real start of his music career.

He had artists including the legendary Dr. Dre. Now he needed cash money so he could start his own label. Another great name, Death Row Records. Death Row Records is a good name. It's a great name. It's a fucking bad name. I know. So Shug got 1.5 million from a friend of his who was in prison on drug charges and so couldn't

do shit with his money, in return for a 50% shareholding in the record label. And Death Row was born. Snoop Dogg was one of the first to come on board. The gangland life was never that far away, though. Both Bloods and Crips were regulars at the Death Row offices, so much so that the LAPD had multiple complaints from neighbours of gang activity at the Record Labels building. Naturally, no-one at Death Row had any intention of cooperating with the police

even before their little house calls. So there was basically no investigation into the Quad Studios shooting at all. Police put this down to zero cooperation from those involved, but I really don't think they were that bothered that Tupac, a vocal critic of the LAPD, had been shot and was in prison. And so he's away, who cares? Well, Suge Knight and Dr Drake had. They wanted to sign Tupac to Death Row Records while he was rotting away in prison, and so he's away, who cares? Well, Suge Knight and Dr. Drake had. They wanted to sign Tupac to Death Row Records while he was rotting away in prison. So Suge took himself

to upstate New York to visit Tupac, and made him a deal. Death Row would pay the three million dollars bail required to get Tupac out if he agreed to sign Suge as his manager and release three albums with Death Row. Three million and three albums might sound like a good deal, but it absolutely was not. The three million wasn't free, it was a loan. Tupac would have to pay it back with the money his own records made. So all the deal actually meant was that Suge Knight owned him. But Tupac was in Max with no money and no mates, so he agreed.

Biggie never responded publicly to Tupac's prison interviews, accusing him of having him jumped. According to those around Biggie, he was upset, but decided to stay away from the whole thing. Initially, he steered clear and stayed focused on his own music but he did say in a 1995 issue of Vibe magazine that he wanted an apology from Tupac he would never get one Source magazine was a hip-hop culture publication just like Vibe and in August 1995 they held the Source Awards which is kind of like the anti-Grammys because the real Grammys only really had time for Tupac's long-term love rival, Will Smith, and God forbid, Sir Mix-a-Lot. As if Sir Mix-a-Lot won a Grammy. Take me home. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be here. So the Sauce Awards were about real hip-hop. They were held in New York, but Suge and Death Row weren't scared.

They hadn't come to play nicely with the other children. Snoop Dogg went as far as wearing a crip bandana, and Suge, whilst accepting an award, publicly called out Bad Boy Records, and specifically Sean Combs, and his penchant for appearing in the music videos of all of his acts. Which, like, he did. He does.

He did. Oh, dude. And I love the idea of, like, Suge publicly calling out Bad Boy Records. I hope he was just like, it's a bad name. And stop appearing in all the fucking videos, you loser. Yeah, we're going to play you what he said. First of all, I'd like to thank God. Second of all, I'd like to thank my whole entire Delfo family on both sides.

You know what I'm saying? I'd like to tell Tupac to keep his guards up. We ride with him. And one other thing I'd like to say. Any artists out there who want to be an artist and want to stay a star and don't want to have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the video, all on the record, dancing, come to Death Row. So yes, aggressive, aggressive things are happening.

Death Row also took a cardboard cutout of Tupac with them on stage, but nobody really noticed. Everyone just sort of ignores it. But that cardboard cutout was proof that the deal with the still incarcerated Tupac had been done. He was going to Death row when he got out. But Bad Boy Records didn't take the bait. There was no violence, even at the after parties of the Source Awards that night.

Now two months after the Source Awards, Tupac was out of prison, with a big old debt to pay off. He was in the studio relentlessly, perhaps because he was angry, with a point to prove. Or maybe because he wanted to pay off that debt as quickly as possible so that he could be free. That's what I think it is. People are often like, oh, like he was just such a like driven artist and he just had to do that and he had a shower installed in the studio. I was like, he needs to pay that three million back and get

the fuck out. He's not dumb. He's a lot of things of things but he's not stupid no and um if you want to put into context just how much tupac was in the studio recording he recorded 67 tracks in 11 months now shirk may have owned tupac's soul but they still rolled deep tupac was more obsessed than ever with his bad boy image and was more than happy to act as a heavy along with Suge and his pals. On one particularly famous occasion Tupac, Suge and others assaulted bad boy associate slash record promoter Mark Bell and made him drink Suge's urine allegedly. From a champagne flute no less.. Oh, well, there you go. And apparently they also asked for Sean Combs' home address, which is, of course, a clear threat.

Evidently, post-prison, Tupac was a different man. But Shug Knight really brought out the worst in him. Once a poet and pro-choice lyricist, new Tupac constantly spat at paparazzi and caused various amounts of trouble. And this angry little man, because he was quite little, really, truly thought that Biggie had tried to have him killed. Whether Suge Knight thought that or not is a bit of a mystery. I don't think he thought that. I don't think he did either. I think he thought, this rivalry is good for business and I'd rather have this angry young man to be able to control rather than somebody who's like oh so that's what happened let me move on. He sure was going to make

the most of it either way. Suge wanted to bring down bad boy records any way he could and he really meant business after a very close friend of his called Jake Robles was shot at a party in Atlanta and later died. Again, it was rumoured that Combe's entourage were to blame for his death. And with the death of Jake Robles, the East versus West rap rivalry had its first martyr. This is death number one. And yet again, the police did absolutely jack shit about it. And it was actually the murder of Jake Robles that prompted Tupac to release Hit Em Up, which is, as diss tracks go, pretty savage. Oh yes. Diss tracks obviously aren't new. It's part of hip hop culture to be battling and etc. But open threats of murder hadn't really happened before and obviously the

very famous line from hit him up was uh tupac saying i fucked your bitch you fat motherfucker very obviously aimed at biggie smalls that's why he says his name like a few times in the song as well very very obvious who he's talking about and even more obvious because the video for hit him up included someone very clearly dressed up as biggie so it's obvious it's obvious who it was for and the threats of murder were pretty scary nobody was sure whether tupac was being serious or not like obviously insulting people as part of the culture but it did seem to be going an extra step further and sean combs was not about to take a chance on whether Tupac was actually serious or not. And he started hanging out with a top level crip called Keefy D whenever Sean Combs was in LA. Remember Keefy D, you will need him next week a lot. So if you don't know,

now you know that whilst Tupac was fuming and going to these piss champagne parties, Biggie was on the up in a big way. And so was his estranged wife, Faith Evans. They'd been living together, but had split. Tupac made it his mission to sleep with Faith. He walked down a red carpet with her, which was very clearly staking a claim. So much so that Whitney Houston noticed. According to Faith Evans, Tupac offered her $25,000 to collaborate on a song with him. She went to the studio, did her thing, and then he told her that he would give her the money

at his hotel. When they got to the hotel, Tupac told Faith Evans, the first woman ever to be signed to Bad Boy Records, if I give it to you, then you're my bitch, and suggested that she perform oral sex on him. Faith has always said that she left the hotel room without the money. Tupac told a very different story, as evidenced by the lyrics of Hit Em Up. But still, all Biggie said in the press about the Tupac feud was that he thought it was foul, the way Tupac spoke about faith. And that's what makes me like him.

Like, he gives this interview and he was like, if you're sleeping with her, why are you talking about her like that? Yeah. Biggie did, however, make a call to a local New York radio station about something else, though. That something else was when Death Row came to New York to shoot a music video. That on its own was provocative, but the song that they were filming the video for was also made with a beat that Biggie had already used. So Biggie called into a local radio station and said,

how are we going to allow this to happen? Whether he meant it to be or not, someone somewhere took this as a call to arms. Shots were fired at the trailers housing the Death Row artists shooting their music video. No one was hurt, but yet again, no one was charged. Tupac's album All Eyes On Me shot to the top of the Billboard charts, and Biggie's Hypnotize was the biggest banger of the 90s. And they were in the same room at the Soul Train Awards in LA in March 1996. Both of them won awards that night but when Tupac accepted his he took the opportunity to tell the East Coast to go and fuck themselves. Biggie doesn't. Biggie's just like like he just his face just looks like a sigh like during this whole time.

Tupac saying fuck the East Coast at the Soul Train Awards led to what may seem to be some low-level street retaliation in a footlocker in a mall near Long Beach. Mob Piru and Death Row affiliate Trayvon Lane was looking at shoes when he was rushed by a bunch of crips. And one of these said crips apparently grabbed Trayvon's Death Row medallion and made off with it. Now, the Death Row Records medallion is just as gaudy as it sounds. And if you snatch yourself one in a California footlocker, you can auction it off, apparently, for $18 million. Yeah. The Crip that ran off with the stolen medallion was called Orlando Anderson also known as Baby Lando and Baby Lando Orlando Anderson

just so happens to be the nephew of Keefy D who had been hanging around with Sean Combs and who we told you to remember for next week there's also rumours that Sean Combs had put the word out that if you could bring him a death row medallion he would give you $10,000 and I am not a Suge Knight fan but at least he says it to your face Sean Combs had put the word out that if you could bring him a death row medallion, he would give you $10,000. And I am not a Suge Knight fan, but at least he says it to your face.

Do you know what I mean? Like, Sean Combs is so behind your back and so like, bring me John the Baptist's head on a platter. Do you know what I mean? He's just so underhanded. I don't know if that's true. That is the rumor. So now, finally, we have come to the night that it all went down. Do you remember that time that Mike Tyson went to prison for raping an 18-year-old Desiree Johnson and only got three years for it and then we all let him go right back to boxing when he got out?

I do. I feel like nobody else does. Nobody else does. So now that's out of the way, let's zoom in on Tyson's third comeback fight. Orlando Anderson was there, and so would Death Row, at the MGM Casino in Las Vegas. The fight was over in less than three minutes, which I'd never considered about boxing before, but it is over very quickly. People fly thousands of miles for this bullshit, and it's over in like five minutes if you're lucky. Yeah, crazy. People were sure that this particular fight was a fix. People were angry. But Tyson had walked out to one of Tupac's verses. So Tupac was hype. He was very overexcited. And one of the mob Pairus present pointed Orlando Anderson out to Tupac

and presumably says, that's the one who took the medallion. Tupac almost immediately crossed the casino floor and knocked Orlando Anderson to the ground and then kicked him repeatedly. Suge Knight joined in. And we know all of this because the only thing more CCTV'd than London is a casino in Las Vegas. For Suge, in his big old rap sheet, the stomping of Orlando Anderson was an undeniable parole violation for which he was handed nine years inside.

Tupac, though, would pay the ultimate price. Although he wouldn't know it until he got into a black BMW with Suge Knight and headed to Club 662. Which, 662, is M-O-B on an old phone. So it's a mob-Piru-owned club. I see. So yeah, he's a mob Piru-owned club. I see. So yeah, he's going there for an after-party. And a white Cadillac caught up with them during this drive. And an arm with a Glock on the end of it

extended out of the window of the white Cadillac and fired 13 times into the black BMW. Both Tupac and Suge were caught by the bullets and sent to hospital. This wasn't Tupac and Suge were caught by the bullets and sent to hospital. This wasn't Tupac's first rodeo, as we well know. He was very calm and even said to Suge, you're the one who got shot in the head. I'm fine. And he was right. Suge's skull had been grazed with a bullet. But Tupac was not fine. He was taken to hospital and put in a medically induced coma. Literally no one thought Tupac would die.

But just six days later, he did. After his mother, Afeni, told doctors to stop trying. There's so many interviews, including with Biggie and Bad Boy Records people, where they were like, no one thought he was going to die. He'd been shot before. We were just like, oh, Pac's been shot. He's in hospital. He'll be fine.

Yeah. And in a pattern that we are all tired of by this stage of the episode, the LAPD didn't concern themselves, particularly with Tupac's murder. Shugnai, of course, refused to cooperate with the police, but always kept the air of someone who knew what really went down.

But as he put it, he wasn't paid to solve homicides. Yeah, he just, he has this like knowing look that he does in interviews. Quite a lot of them do it, to be honest, but he definitely plays it up. In the wake of Tupac Shakur's death, there was a spree of gang-related violence in Compton. And as I am sure you have heard, conspiracy theories abound. The first one being, who shot you? Who was behind the hit? And there are three major contenders. Let's start with Suge Knight.

We will go over this in more detail next week, but for now, here are the basics. At the time of the shooting in Las Vegas, it was rumoured that Tupac was owed somewhere in the region of $2 million by death row, and that he was making moves to get out of his contract, start a production company and concentrate on his film career. And, OK, why, if Suge Knight is organising this hit, would he do it on a car that he is also in? Yeah, and I'm also like, yes, I get it, Suge Knight wants to keep hold of Tupac because he doesn't want to lose his golden goose

to becoming a film man. But shooting him also doesn't solve that problem. No, it does not. And also it gets you shot because you're in the car at the same time. And you're sitting on 67 records in 11 months. So when I first started researching this, I was like, it was Suge.

It was 100% Suge. And I think I even said to you, and next week I'm going to have some different opinions, but I really don't think so. Yeah. So next up on the list of contenders, we have the LAPD. Now, there are a lot of accusations of police reaction times being slow, of police radios either not being used or not working.

But also some suggest that the hit was so well orchestrated it must have been carried out by people with training but like was it that well orchestrated i only think it was like a good shot compared to like how tupac shot people but also if you like pull up next to a car and fire 13 times like you're probably gonna kill somebody so i i don't know and it's also not like law enforcement are the only trained gun toting people out in the world yeah like yeah the nra don't like him either and finally the favorite theory my favorite because i think it's true orlando baby lando and Anderson was the man with the Glock who shot Tupac and drove away in a white Cadillac. And to understand why so many people, me included, think it was Orlando Anderson. Psych, come back next week. But to sweeten that

incredibly bitter pill for you, we've got some more conspiracy theories that you've probably been bored to death with by some drunk man at a party. The theories that Tupac never really died at all, and he's actually living it up in Cuba with his auntie who's been hiding out there from the FBI since 79. So why do people think that Tupac is still alive? A number of reasons. None of them are super convincing. But here we go anyway.

The picture that was taken inside the BMW in which Tupac was shot has the wrong date on it. It's like a day behind or a day before or something. And also there's no keys in the ignition. So people are like, he couldn't possibly have been driving. I'm like, but he definitely, loads of people saw him driving. And also, he was in a moving vehicle. The photo that was taken inside the BMW having the wrong date on it, like the camera could just have been set to the wrong date.

Exactly, because you had to set those cameras and no one bothered. We're not talking about like the fucking metadata of a mobile phone that you have now taking a picture. I remember having those cameras and if you set the date wrong, it showed you the wrong date. Again, so we've got more. Tupac's driver's license lists him as 168 pounds, but his coroner report lists him as 215.

If I had to put my weight on my driver's license, I would jump out a window. That's outrageous. Do we not have to do it in this country? No. Oh, right. God, no. No, we have to do it in this country? No. Oh, right. God, no. No, we'd be rioting in the streets.

No, it's just your driving license number, your name, your address. Okay. The type of vehicles that you are allowed to drive. Sure, sure, sure. That's it. More things, discrepancies that people point out is that the autopsy photographs of Tupac look quite similar to wounds that he had for a music video. Obviously, the idea there being that it's actually just a picture from

that music video. It's not the autopsy at all because he's not dead. Other people say that the autopsy photo that's been released was actually just lifted from the California Love remix video where Tupac's asleep. If I was going to fake my own death, I'd go to the effort of taking a new photo. It's not like when we get asked for photos from people to use with red hand i'm like use one of these three that we have i would go and take a new fucking headshot of me pretending to be dead people are more suspicious because shug knight claims that he paid three million dollars to have tupac cremated the day after his death but there were no witnesses and the man who allegedly did the cremation has never been seen again i don't know how one would confirm or deny that but that's just what you see on reddit they're like yep he'd vanished uh what's his name and

address nope no okay and also who is this freelance cremator you're paying three million dollars to i understand for an express cremation that the health system and therefore probably the death industry in the states is very different here but a three million dollar speed cremation does seem quite odd to me it does indeed and apparently tupac's social security number was not registered on the official death register which just seems like an administrative error to me normally i love this shit like i so want to believe that he faked his own death i honestly thought that's the rabbit hole we were going to go down but like I just don't think that's true. So people also

go nuts about the number 7. Tupac had a 7 year long career. He was shot on the 7th of September. There have been 7 albums released since his death and Tupac supposedly died at 4.03 in the morning and presumably

4 plus 0 plus three equals seven. Fuck off. What about literally, how old was he? Was he 77? Was he 17? No, he wasn't. Okay, that's one we can, how much did he weigh? Was it 77 pounds?

Probably not. We can shut that one in the bin. Like, shut the fuck up. Shut up. How many minutes in an hour? 77. But it doesn't matter. We've got more.

So many more. Because later on in his career, Tupac went by the stage name Machiavelli, based on the number one shithead who many people think faked his own death, Machiavelli. But he didn't. Not even close. He merely wrote about it in a like, hey, wouldn't that be cool if i did fake my own death kind of way yeah but he didn't he's literally just like what would be really cool is if you disappear at 24 and then reappear and fuck with your enemies he never actually faked his death so the way tupac

spelled machiavelli can be rearranged as and prepare yourselves as am'm alive. K. Just K. Just K. Oh, my God. Now, I've also seen people point to the album released after Tupac's death called the Don Chiluminati, the seven day theory album that features Tupac as Jesus on the cover, who rose from the dead after seven days. Read a fucking book. it's three days like honestly the amount of forums i've gone on and they're like well jesus jesus came back from the

dead after seven days and blood was like no he didn't did god create the world in seven days can we chuck that one in even though it's got nothing to do with anything oh no you had a day of rest so really six days yes there you go anyway here's another one this is my fucking favorite yeah so suge knight was not listed as the record's executive producer but someone called simon was so obviously this record we're talking about is the one that came out after tupac's death and the conspiracy nuts out there will claim that simon was the first disciple to see jesus after his resurrection also incorrect it was apparently andrew i mean first it's mary magdalene and then andrew is the first like you know of the 12 right you can't just say that simon was the first it's fucking nuts you know what and

i'm going i'm going full conspiracy here if they'd actually just left it as suge knight his name is marion which is kind of like mary magdalene god they missed a whole fucking trick fucking simon so anyway this is the last one this is the last one on the record Hail Mary, you can hear someone whisper, you think I'm dead. Followed by, wait seven years. We've had seven years. We've had seven years. Nothing's happened.

I love that. Maybe he was just like, I'll come back in like seven years or so. And then he was like, actually, I really like it in Cuba. Fuck that. Yeah. But anyway, it's also well known that tracks were added to that particular album after tupac's death so yeah again we know if those whisperings are there that it is because they know that infamy notoriety conspiracies sex and

rebranding sell so let's stick some fucking whispers in there that say all sorts of crazy shit exactly and it's not a secret that things were added to specifically to Hail Mary because it's the most famous one. Yeah, because it's Mary Marion. Fucking should not. So, yeah, none of them particularly convincing, I'm afraid. If you have a big banger, send it in. But I just don't think you do. I also don't think that Tupac was the best person in the world

but it doesn't take an idiot to figure out that a conspiracy and a fake death will sell a fuck lot more records than an untimely completely explainable tragic death. Yeah I mean that's the thing Tupac not the best guy but a real shame in that this feud, this squabble. I mean, I'm not saying it was like nothing. He got shot. But it seems very much to have been orchestrated by somebody in particular, Haitian Jack, and that it basically just like ruined his entire career and his entire life. Yeah, it's tragic.

You know, the world lost an incredible artist. But guess who was sitting on Tupac's incredibly valuable back catalogue? it Mary Magdalene it's Mary Magdalene exactly Suge Knight owns all of it but my question is if any of the like 777 or any of the album shit or any of the producer credits any of that is intentional I don't think Suge Knight is smart enough to pull that off so I think there's something else going on I don't think that it's Tup enough to pull that off. So I think there's something else going on. I don't think that it's Tupac is alive and living in Cuba. But I think there is some mastermind behind it that is not Suge Knight, in my opinion. But for more of my opinion, more of Cerruti's opinions and more of Mabel yawning,

you are going to have to come back next week for part two of our Biggie and Tupac series, colon Biggie. We'll see you then. Goodbye. Bye. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary.

That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah. Higher taxes. Carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry.

Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus.