The Killing of Tupac Shakur (14 page)

Tupac testified he’d been clutching the baseball bat, which he said he used as a prop at the concert. He told the court he didn’t hit or attempt to hit anyone and that the bat had simply scared the other rapper.

Tupac, 23 at the time, pleaded guilty on Wednesday, September 14, 1994, to a misdemeanor in exchange for prosecutors dropping felony assault charges. He returned for sentencing on Wednesday, October 26. He could have gotten up to 90
days in the East Lansing jail. Instead, he was sentenced to, and served, 10 days in jail, and ordered to perform 35 hours of community service.

It only got worse.

During a 1993 concert at a Pine Bluff, Arkansas, nightclub, a woman named Jacquelyn McNealey was hit by a stray bullet. The bullet seriously damaged her spinal cord, leaving her paralyzed below the chest. After Tupac’s death, she sued the nightclub and Tupac’s estate, claiming that Tupac “was taunting the crowd. He created a riot-like atmosphere which ended up in a shooting,” her lawyer argued. The judge granted full damages of $16.6 million after Tupac’s representatives failed to appear at the hearing. Richard Fischbein, attorney for Tupac’s mother and his estate, told The Associated Press that Tupac had not been notified of the lawsuit or the judgment. The nightclub settled for $500,000. At the same time, the gunman was prosecuted and sent to prison.

On Sunday, October 31, 1993, Tupac was charged in the shooting of two off-duty police officers in Atlanta. Witnesses testified that Tupac and his associates shot back at the plainclothes officers after they opened fire on Tupac’s car. The charges were eventually dropped when it was learned that the cops, who’d been drinking, had initiated the shooting. The prosecution’s own witness testified that the gun used by an officer to threaten Tupac had earlier been seized in a drug bust and was missing from a police evidence locker. It was damning evidence against the cops, enough to exonerate Tupac.

Tupac also served jail time for an altercation on the set of a music video. The fight involved Tupac and the video’s directors, Albert and Allen Hughes. The brothers had fired Tupac from the cast of
Menace II Society
six months earlier because of Tupac’s violent temper.

Tupac told his side of the story to
Vibe
magazine. “[The Hughes brothers] was doin’ all my videos,” he said. “After I did
Juice,
they said, ‘Can we use your name to get this movie deal?’ I said, ‘Hell, yeah.’ When I got with John Singleton, he told me he wanted to be ‘Scorsese to your DeNiro. For starring
roles I just want you to work with me.’ So I told the Hughes brothers I only wanted a little role. But I didn’t tell them I wanted a sucker role. We was arguing about that in rehearsal. They said to me, ‘Ever since you got with John Singleton’s shit, you changed.' They was trippin’ ‘cuz they got this thing with John Singleton. They feel like they competing with him.”

A few months after the firing, Tupac ran into the Hughes brothers at a video taping. The three argued. “That’s a fair fight, am I right? Two niggas against me?” Tupac later asked
Vibe.

Tupac eventually was charged with carrying a loaded concealed weapon. He faced the possibility of a year in jail and a $3,000 fine. He was convicted of misdemeanor assault and battery on Thursday, February 10, 1994, and sentenced in March to 15 days in Los Angeles County Jail and 15 days on a California Department of Transportation road crew, which he reluctantly served. He later said he hated being jailed; he felt smothered. Rumors that Tupac had been raped by fellow inmates while incarcerated have never been substantiated. His friends adamantly say it never happened.

Tupac’s most notorious criminal rap came when he was accused of sexually abusing a female fan. The woman alleged that Tupac and two pals had held her down while a fourth man sodomized her in a hotel room.

Tupac claimed it was a set-up. It all started when Tupac began hanging out with a Haitian-born music promoter named Jacques Agnant. On the night of Sunday, November 14, 1993, Agnant had taken Tupac to Nell’s, a high-brow downtown New York nightclub, and introduced him to Ay-anna Jackson, a 19-year-old Manhattan woman. As the story goes, Ayanna, on the dance floor, allegedly performed oral sex on Tupac, with more sex later that night in his hotel room.

Four days later, Ayanna returned to Tupac’s hotel room at the Parker Meridien, a posh Manhattan hotel, to collect belongings she had left behind after the encounter. The two ended up, again, in the bedroom. Ayanna testified during Tupac’s trial that as she and Tupac were kissing, three men
burst into the room, and Tupac and the men stripped off her underwear, then sodomized and sexually abused her. After she left the hotel, she filed a police report accusing the four of gang-raping her.

Jackson testified that Jacques Agnant and a friend of his, along with Charles Fuller and Tupac, were in the room when she was gang-raped. Tupac, Agnant, and Fuller were arrested and charged with sexual assault. Agnant’s friend had left the room earlier (he was not charged with a crime). A prosecutor told the court that Tupac liked the woman so much, “he decided to share her as a reward for his boys.”

All three beat the rape charges, although to different degrees: Agnant copped a plea to a misdemeanor, while Tupac and Fuller each were convicted of three counts of first-degree sexual abuse, meaning they groped and touched the victim without her consent. Tupac and Fuller were sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. Tupac and Fuller were acquitted of weapons charges; police had found two unlicensed handguns in the men’s hotel suite. Tupac’s lawyer, Michael Warren, successfully argued that the weapons didn’t belong to the pair. They also were cleared of sodomy charges, which, if convicted, would have required a prison term of up to 25 years. A jury rejected the woman’s claim that Tupac had forced group sex on her. But they convicted him of the lesser sex-abuse charge. It meant prison time.

Tupac Shakur, inmate No. 96A1140, at 22, was sent to Riker’s Island, a county jail, then to Down State Correctional Facility, a holding center near New York City, from February 28 to March 8, 1995, for a medical evaluation. Then he was bused to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora in upstate New York, 320 miles north of Manhattan. Considering he was not convicted of rape, Tupac’s attorneys were stunned that the judge had shipped him to Clinton, nicknamed “Little Siberia,” a maximum-security prison for men. (On June 3, 1845, Clinton’s first 50 prisoners arrived in shackles, ankle-chains, and stripes. It was where New York sent its worst offenders.)

Meanwhile, in a highly unconventional ruling, at least at face value, a judge agreed to sever Jacques Agnant’s case from Tupac and Charles Fuller’s. Tupac later became convinced that Agnant was a government informer who’d set him up.

The verdict came a day after Tupac was shot five times in the lobby of a Times Square recording studio. He was in Bellevue Hospital when the verdict was to be read; he insisted on being released so he could face the jury. He wanted them to look him in the eye as they read the verdict. He went in a wheelchair, because he was shot the day before at Quad Studios but had to leave early because he felt too sick.

• • •

For all his earlier legal troubles, it was the first shooting that became Tupac’s most infamous event.

While Tupac was recuperating from the attack in a New York hospital, Billy Garland, his biological father, paid him a visit. Garland told writer Kevin Powell, “I had to be there. He’s my son. I’ve never asked him for anything—not money or nothing. I just wanted to let him know that I cared. He thought I was dead or that I didn’t want to see him. How could I feel like that? He’s my flesh and blood. Look at me. He looks just like me. People who I had never seen before immediately knew I was his father.”

Tupac did 11 months of hard time at the Clinton Correctional Facility before Suge Knight posted bond, pending an appeal for the conviction. While incarcerated, Tupac married his girlfriend, Keisha Morris, an education student he’d dated for six months before being jailed. They met in June of 1994 at the Chippendale’s club, now Capitolin New York. They spent time together in Tupac’s bachelor pad—a large house outfitted with a swimming pool, big-screen TV, and pool table—in a pricey secluded area of Atlanta, Georgia. For her birthday, that November 10th, Keisha told
Sister 2 Sister
magazine, Tupac gave her a BMW 735. Later, he bought
matching Gucci watches. He also gave her a large diamond in a platinum setting.

A female chaplain married them on April 29, 1995, in a prison ceremony. The marriage was annulled shortly after Tupac was released. Tupac later said it was a marriage of convenience that had seemed right while he was in prison. But once he was out, his busy career and fast lifestyle got in the way of the relationship. He and Keisha parted as friends.

While in prison, Tupac continually told his friends he needed to get out. If he did, he vowed he wouldn’t return to the thug lifestyle. He said he wanted to turn over a new leaf.

Death Row Records’ Suge Knight sent Tupac a bulletproof vest with “Death Row” and its insignia printed on it. Then Suge and his attorney, David Kenner, visited Tupac at the New York state prison. Tupac told Suge, “I want to join the family. Just get me out.”

Suge and Kenner, apparently trying to capitalize on Tupac’s desperation, presented him with a four-page handwritten record contract that committed Tupac to three albums for the Death Row family. In return? Knight and Kenner would get Tupac out of prison by posting the $1.4 million bond required for him to be released during the appeals process. Tupac signed. He also agreed to appoint Kenner, Death Row’s long-time attorney, as his own lawyer.

On Thursday, October 12, 1995, according to the records department at Clinton Correctional, Tupac walked out of prison.

Some say it was only because Tupac was behind bars that he signed the contract with Death Row. Tupac was the breadwinner for his family—cousins, niece, mother, and half-sister. He had attorney fees and other lawsuits to settle. Death Row bailed him out, and not just out of prison, but financially as well. Friends and associates warned Tupac that he’d be selling his soul, that he’d be owned by Suge and Death Row, but Tupac signed anyway.

“Why they let me go, I don’t know, but I’m out,” Tupac rapped in a music video after his release.

Tupac was a free man. He was grateful to be out. Waiting for him upon his release was a private chartered jet that flew him from New York to Los Angeles. That same night, he was in a Los Angeles studio recording an album for the Death Row label. Within three days after his release from prison, he’d recorded seven songs. It marked the beginning of a torrent of songs—some 200 of them—Tupac would record between then and his fatal shooting 11 months later.” There’s nobody in the business strong enough to scare me,” Tupac said during a
Vibe
interview. “I’m with Death Row ’cause they not scared either.”

Tupac was openly grateful to Suge. “When I was in jail, Suge was the only one who used to see me,” he said. “Nigga used to fly a private plane all the way to New York and spend time with me. He got his lawyer to look into all my cases. Suge supported me, whatever I needed. When I got out of jail, he had a private plane for me, a limo, five police officers for security. I said, ’l need a house for my moms.' I got a house for my moms.

“I promised him, ’Suge, I’m gonna make Death Row the biggest label in the whole world. I’m gonna make it bigger than Snoop ever made it.’ Not stepping on Snoop’s toes; he did a lot of work—him, Dogg Pound, Nate Dogg, Dre, all of them—they made Death Row what it is today. I’m gonna take it to the next level.”

Tupac’s Death Row Records solo debut, the double-CD
All Eyez On Me
, made $14 million in its first week in stores. It was the fastest-selling CD of 1996. With its 27 songs and titles such as “Shorty Wanna Be a Thug,” “Wonda Why They Call U Bytch,” and “Rather Be Ya Nigga,” it sold seven million copies.

Death Row was the world’s premier rap label, producing more platinum albums than any other. And it wasn’t just black youths from the ghetto who were buying the record. White boys from middle America were also lining up to hear his sound. The majority of fans and buyers of rap music are middle-class white youths; 70 percent of those who buy rap music are white. Not everyone, however, understood why so
many were drawn to Tupac’s music.

Richard Roeper, a columnist for the
Chicago Sun-Times
, called Tupac “a street-walking clown obsessed with guns, money, sex, and killing. His success isn’t the story of someone rising above the thug life through his talent. It’s the story of someone wallowing in it.

“As I write this,” he continued, “I’m listening to
All Eyez On Me
. If I hear the words ‘motherfucker,’ ‘bitch,’ or ‘nigger’ one more time, I’m going to open the window and throw my little stereo into the sea. There’s scarcely a mention of the word ‘love’ in any of the more than two dozen songs, but the aforementioned words appear more than 100 times apiece. It’s a soundtrack for the ’90s. Meet Tupac Shakur.”

• • •

Tupac called Kevin Powell to the state prison while he was incarcerated. As he smoked one cigarette after another, he told the former reporter from
Vibe
magazine, “This is my last interview. If I get killed, I want people to get every drop. I want them to have the real story.”

Tupac told Kevin that when he was first incarcerated, fellow inmates dissed him, “Fuck that gangsta rapper,” they said. Tupac was insulted. He didn’t like being recognized only as a gangsta rapper; he considered himself a full-fledged rapper, one who was paving the way for others to follow. He said he rapped about life, which, in his world, included a lot of violence. He considered himself to be saddled with more responsibilities than others in his age group because people looked up to him, turned to him for answers. But there was a major problem: He’d been smoking so much marijuana and drinking so much alcohol that he was barely coherent. He called himself a “weed addict.” Then he went to jail and was forced to get clean. Once off pot and booze, his mind began to clear. He talked to Kevin about two of his favorite themes: race and black-on-black violence.