When Tupac Shakur was gunned down only five months before Biggie, everybody thought Wallace and Combs were behind the murder. Now, when the other rap star is dead, people have started to come up with other solutions. People started to say that Biggie paid the Crips $1 million to get rid of his rival but has not paid the debt off to the Crips, so he paid his life for it.
It is so easy to make up stories like this and people said so probably because Suge Knight was a Bloods Gang member, so Tupac was closer to the Bloods and Biggie decided to use the opposite power to get rid of Pac, so he got in touch with the Crips.
To me this sounds like a story somebody randomly made up and spread around without any evidence supporting this theory. I think we should take a closer look to those two murder cases.
Also some fans think Biggie killed Tupac because he says it in some of his songs like for example 'Somebody's got to die' or 'Long kiss goodnight' from Biggie's second and last album, 'Life after death'.
I personally think we cannot judge someone by the lyrics of the song and especially mainstream artists such as Notorious B.I.G. or 2Pac because in this case, music is only business and way to make money. Anyway... compare the old 91-95 2Pac to the 1996 Death Row Tupac who changed from the modest, inspiring, good lyrical rapper to the man in the fast car who talks about partying, money, material things and women. These topics were used on 'All eyez on me' and look what happened... it sold 10 million copies, giving Tupac and Death Row a diamond status and Pac was sorted for the rest of his life!
This is why I believe people should not blame Biggie for murdering Tupac and base their evidence on the music. Anyway, let's have a look what B.I.G.'s childhood friend, Ebrahim has got to tell us about Christopher Wallace:
Biggie was going to release his second solo studio album, a follow up to his 'Ready to die' debut, titled 'Life after death'. In February 1997 he hit the roads to go on a tour to California to promote his new album.
On the 5th of March 1997 he even said in a radio interview in San Francisco that he travels with security around him from the FBI, because he gets death threats and especially when he goes to the West Side of the US where he is not welcome by Death Row fans.
On March 8, 1997 he presented an award to Toni Braxton at the 11th Annual Soul Train Music Award in Los Angeles and most of the audience booed at him. After the music award ceremony, Biggie and his label mates attended to an after party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
A few hours later, on the 9th of March 1997, at around 12:30 AM, Biggie and his crew decided to return to their hotel. Biggie travelled in the front passenger seat along his mates; D-Roc, Lil' Cease and driver, Gregory Young. P Diddy was travelling in a different car with three bodyguards.
At around 12:45 AM, the streets were full of people leaving the event. Biggie's car stopped for the red light about 50 yards away from the museum, a group of young women exchanged a few words with the rap star and suddenly a black Chevrolet Impala came from nowhere to the right side of Wallace's car, rolled down the window and opened fire at the rapper, hitting him four times in the chest!
Below is the real video of the whole scene, recorded by anonymous person:
Biggie was rushed to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre but passed away on the operating table at around 1:15 AM.
On Tupac's new 'All eyez on me' album he talked a lot about the feud with Wallace and Bad-Boy Records but also he mentioned stuff about his own death on songs such as: 'I ain't mad at cha' where he gets shot at the start of the video and then is presented as an angel in heaven, talking about him being dead.
What was Tupac trying to do? Prepare his fans for his early death or maybe bring another controversy, get media involved and make more money? I guess we might never know, but unfortunately seven months after the release of 'All eyes on me', Tupac Shakur passed away.
On the 7th of September 1996, Tupac Shakur and his Death Row Records mates, including Suge Knight attended to Mike Tyson's boxing match at MGM Grand in Las Vegas, as Shakur and Tyson were close friends. Here is a video from that night where Tyson and Shakur celebrate the won match:
When Tupac and the rest of the Death Row crew were heading to the exit of the MGM Grand, one of Death Row workers has spotted a Southside Crips gang member, Orlando Anderson who then got badly beaten up by Tupac and Tupac's crew joining him to kick Anderson while laying on the floor. The reason for Orlando Anderson's beating was because earlier in 1996, Anderson and a group of Crips stole some jewellery of Tupac. Here is the video of that fight:
When they came out of the MGM Grand, Knight and Shakur got inside Suge Knight's new BMW and headed to the Death Row owned club called 'Club 662'. Suge Knight was the driver and Shakur was sat in the passenger's seat on Knight's right side.
At about 10:55 PM some photographer took the last ever photo of Tupac Shakur. At about 11:00 PM their BMW was stopped by the police because their music was playing too loud. About 5 minutes after, Tupac exchanged a few words with two young, attractive women who walked past and invited them to the Club 662 party.
At about 11:15 PM, Suge's BMW stopped at the red light and a white four-door Cadillac pulled up to the sedan's right side, rolled down one of the windows and opened fire at Tupac Shakur. The rapper got shot in the chest, pelvis, his right hand and thigh! Unfortunately one of the bullets reached Tupac's right lung which caused terrible bleeding!
Frank Alexander, Tupac's bodyguard did not know what to do, first he thought they are both dead but then the BMW set off and rushed the injured rapper to the hospital as Suge Knight has not received any injuries.
Alexander then decided to follow them with the hope they only tried to test him.
On their way to the hospital a police car stopped the BMW with Suge Knight and bleeding Shakur inside and told them to come out the car. Knight refused and told them what happened but they kept asking them to get out. While this incident, Tupac lost a lot of blood. He then got put into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. Here is a short video of how the shooting looked like:
At the hospital Tupac Shakur had his right lung removed to stop the bleeding and got put on a life support machine. His condition was critical but stable, however on September 13th 1996 the great Hip-Hop legend, Tupac Amaru Shakur passed away. The reason for his death was the incorrect working of the life support machine!
What happened then?
The world of Hip-Hop was shocked by the death of one of the top rapper, Tupac Shakur.
The fans gathered at the hospital where the rap star passed away and respected the memory of their idol. After the silence, people started thinking who killed the rapper; whether gang wars or maybe the West Side V East Coast feud? Of course the first people who got blamed for Shakur's assassination where people from Bad-Boy Records with Christopher Wallace and Sean Combs at the front.
People first thought Biggie paid someone to kill Tupac to eliminate his main rival and the person who caused the divorce of Wallace and Faith Evans!
While Tupac fans blamed their idol's greatest rival from the other side of the US, Biggie Smalls himself started to receive death threats through phone calls from the unknown!
This song will tell you how Wallace reacted to the phone calls. The intro is a recording of one of the calls too! Check out!
Anyway, Tupac fans did not care about B.I.G. too much and most of them probably did not even know about Wallace's death threats and kept accusing Biggie for killing Tupac. However...
So, Biggie remains cool to Tupac and mentions that he was shocked by the death of his main rival and says he feels sorry for Pac's family too. Again, seems like Biggie had nothing to do with the murder of Shakur.
Unfortunately the situation got out of control because the feud of two men has quickly turned into the whole West Side and East Coast feud with other rappers and of course fans involved! Look what happens in this video below:
Death Row records receives an award somewhere in New York City and the fans start booing at Suge Knight and his artists. This video is a great example of how serious the West Side V East Coast business was!
However, everybody has their own opinions, some people were saying Biggie and P Diddy really have organised the shooting of Tupac in 1994 and are on Tupac's side and also there were people who thought Tupac went crazy or wanted media attention and said what he said, but all these are fans and media opinions.
Now let's see what family members of Biggie and Tupac had to say about the whole situation.
Below is a video of B.I.G.'s mother, Ms Violetta Wallace sharing her personal opinion about the whole feud:
So it comes out that Ms Violetta Wallace thinks the whole East V West feud was caused by Suge Knight and Sean 'P Diddy' Combs and it was theirs and only theirs problem that got their best rappers involved and of course caught media attention.
After the 30th November 1994 shooting, Shakur's father Bill Garland has visited Tupac at the hospital. This was the first time they met since 1978!
And even Tupac's father seems to agree with Ms Wallace! He even said that Biggie visited him and Tupac at the hospital and offered help. This is another evidence that Biggie probably had nothing to do with the shooting and the whole East Coast V West Side beef was a lot of misunderstanding caused by Suge Knight's and P Diddy's stupidity, as Ms Wallace said.
Other side of the coin...
Yes, we can call the whole situation stupidity but if you think about it, Knight and Combs knew exactly what they were doing. Evil, stupidity and controversy sells best and this is exactly what happened!
On February 13th, Tupac's first album released on Death Row records titled 'All eyez on me', flowed to the stores and sold in 10 million copies in the US, giving Tupac and Death Row a diamond status! This was the best selling Hip-Hop album in the 90's and still remains as one of the best selling! This way, Shakur became a millionaire and gained a lot of fans and reputation.
Bad-Boy records also did quite well at that time as the debut Junior Mafia 'Conspiracy' album received a gold status.
Tupac was released from prison earlier than everyone expected because the founder of the most powerful Hip-Hop recording label, Suge Knight paid for releasing Tupac from prison earlier. However Knight's condition was signing a contract by Shakur with his label, Death Row.
Death Row was already massive in the 90's in the United States for releasing albums such as 'The Chronic' in 1992 by the past N.W.A. member, Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg's 'Doggystyle'!
A few months after the November 1994 shooting, Tupac and Death Row decided to start a real feud with Notorious B.I.G. and the whole Bad-Boy Records! They decided to make a how rappers call it 'a diss song', lyrically attacking Biggie, P Diddy and other Bad-Boy artists! The song is titled 'Hit 'em up', it was released in June 1996 as one of Tupac's first releases for Death Row Records, featuring Shakur's new rap ground called 'The Outlaws'.
This diss track shook the whole Hip-Hop world and by many is treated as the strongest diss song of all time! However, Biggie and Bad-Boy did not respond to this release for a long time, even if in the first few bars of the track Tupac says: "First off, **** your ***** and the click you claim, Westside when we ride come equipped with game, you claim to be a player but I ****ed your wife, we bust on Bad Boy *****z ****ed for life..."
Biggie did not respond to this track for a while but the first few lines made him wonder what Tupac was talking about having sex with his wife, Faith Evans who is an R&B singer, past Bad-Boy Records artist, until he found a photo of Tupac and Faith Evans in some music magazine:
- Tupac and Faith Evans, Biggie's wife!
Wallace was very angry about this and he even accused his wife for having sex with Tupac, even if she contradicted. She said they only took this picture and that was it! No matter what Evans said, Biggie still was mad at her and was making huge scenes. This even brought the couple to the stage of breaking up!
Let's see what was B.I.G.'s comment on Shakur's shooting prosecutions and lyrical attacks was:
So from this interview we can see that Biggie remained cool with Tupac and chilled with the whole situation because he believed Tupac was still in a shock after the November 1994 shooting and seems like Biggie wanted to give some time for Shakur to calm down.
On the 30th of November 1994 Tupac headed to Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan, New York to record another track with Biggie and other Bad Boy Records artists. As he entered the building, two armed men in army fatigues shot him five times; twice in head, twice in the groin and once in the arm and robbed his jewellery worth a lot of money! Tupac was taken to the Bellevue Hospital where he was operated and three hours later, against doctor's advice, he left the hospital. Shakur accused Wallace and Combs for setting up the shooting, as they were upstairs in the building.
- Tupac released from the hospital
A few months after the shooting, Tupac Shakur got arrested and put in jail, as he was accused for sexual abuse. Let's listen to what Tupac himself though of the November 1994 shooting:
So it comes out that Tupac was serious with his theory that Biggie and P Diddy organised the shooting to rid of him, however no serious evidence was provided and the police did not intervene for Shakur's accuses.
Biggie even tried to calm Tupac down and tell the fans about this situation with his song 'Who shot ya?' released in 1995:
Unfortunately the song brought a lot of controversy and even warmed the whole situation up, as some fans took is as an offence to Tupac and thought it is a diss song!
Every fan of Tupac and/or Biggie know about the feud of those two Rap stars, however not as many people know Tupac and Biggie used to be good friends before!
Tupac and Biggie met in 1992 at one of the first serious performances of Biggie at some show for underground rappers. Biggie was performing his underground hit song called 'Party and bulls**t' and Tupac came around to see how the underground is doing. Tupac liked Biggie's rapping and had a nice chat with him and gave Wallace some advices. Since then they became good friends!
Here is a funny rare video recording of Tupac and Biggie together:
They also planned to release a song together for 2Pac's 1994 album titled "Thug Life - Volume 1", titled 'Running from the police' that featured 2Pac, Dramacydal, Big Stretch and Biggie.
The song has been recorded but unfortunately it was not included to the album's track-list because the rappers' friendship ended soon. However, the song was released in 2003on 2Pac's posthumous album, 'Resurrection', remixed by Eminem with Tupac and Biggie verses only!
When Tupac Shakur was gunned down only five months before Biggie, everybody thought Wallace and Combs were behind the murder. Now, when the other rap star is dead, people have started to come up with other solutions. People started to say that Biggie paid the Crips $1 million to get rid of his rival but has not paid the debt off to the Crips, so he paid his life for it.
