The murder of Death Row Records rapper Tupac Shakur sent shockwaves through the world of hip-hop, and represented the climax of the notorious East-West coastal feud which had engulfed rap culture during the mid-1990s.
On September 7, 1996, Shakur was in Las Vegas, Nevada, where, alongside his label boss Suge Knight and their entourage, he watched Mike Tyson beat Bruce Seldon for the heavyweight boxing title. After the fight, the rapper and his companions got into an altercation with a group of South Side gangsters, who had previously attacked a friend of Knight’s and tried to steal a Dream Row chain and medallion. Security footage shows Shakur and Knight repeatedly kicking a man named Orlando Anderson as he lay on the floor. Hours later, the pair were driving in Knight’s black BMW when a Cadillac pulled up beside them and fired twelve or more shots into the car, injuring Knight, who was driving, and fatally wounding Shakur, who died six days later at the University Medical Center.
It took 27 years for the identity of Shakur’s alleged killer to come to light. In 2023, Duane Davis, a former gangster and the uncle of Anderson, was indicted following several media appearances in which he confirmed his involvement in supplying the murder weapon and claimed his nephew pulled the trigger. According to Davis, the killing was more than just simple revenge, claiming that a bounty of $1 million had been put on the heads of Shakur and Knight by Sean “Diddy” Combs, their East Coast rival.
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