The Killing of Tupac Shakur (27 page)

Numerically, the Bloods are outnumbered by the Crips, according to Compton and Los Angeles police. But what the Bloods lack in numbers, they make up for in violence.

Sometime in the early ’70s, police began to notice that the black gangs were dividing into Crips and Bloods. But although many of the gangs fall under the loose umbrella defined by the two best-known names, the smaller sets are still identified by the local streets, landmarks, parks, or neighborhoods, which are incorporated into their names—the Donna Street gang in North Las Vegas, for example, and the 18th Street gang in Las Vegas. Today, Crips often have altercations among their own subsets or factions. Bloods, on the other hand, don’t seem so inclined.

In the Compton area, police have seen different Crips gangs unite to enhance their criminal enterprises. The Crips gangs began calling themselves C.C. Riders (Compton Crip Riders). They’ve spread to other Western states, including Nevada.

(In the late 1980s, Southern California gang members began traveling into Las Vegas, one of the hottest spots in the nation and, to the gangs, a ready mark. The gangs had a similar M.O.: takeover robberies of banks and casinos. Gang members considered casinos, especially, an easy score, according to gang-unit detectives. They were able to grab a large sum of money in just a couple of minutes. When casinos were hit, some of the money was later found by Los Angeles-area police in gang sweeps. The disturbing thing for officers, however, was that the takeover robberies seemed to serve as an initiation ritual for new Los Angeles-based gang members. The police swooped in on the early perpetrators and slowed the practice down a bit. But they couldn’t stop it completely.)

Crips gang members identify with the color blue, and usually have a blue rag in their possession or wear some blue article of clothing (such as blue shoelaces, blue hat, blue hair rollers, or blue canvas belt). In Las Vegas, they wear light blue. Members generally write their graffiti in blue, tagging their gang name on walls in the ‘hoods to mark their territorial
boundaries and to publicly taunt their enemies or rivals. They use terms like “Crip,” or “BK or PK” (which means Blood Killer or Piru Killer). Crips refer to one another as “Cuzz” and use the letter “C” to replace the letter “B” in their conversations and writings, such as “Meet me at the cusstop” and “That guy has crass calls.”

Pirus and Bloods identify with the color red and refer to one another as “Blood.” A Piru usually carries a red rag and wears red clothing. Bloods write their graffiti in red and use the terms “Piru” and “CK” (for Crips Killer).

Black gang members once eschewed tattoos, but that’s changed; now, members are tattooing themselves in the same manner as the traditional Hispanic gangs.

In the black street gang, there is little structure in terms of hierarchy and rank. No one member is in charge of everyone. Some members have more influence than others, but the term “leader” is seldom used. Age, physical stature, arrest record, and behavioral background are the main factors that determine an individual’s influence on a gang. Gang members gain respect, influence, and power within a particular group by demonstrating their nerve and daring.

Each gang’s level of violence is determined by the dominant members’ ability to incite the others. The dominant members are generally the most violent, street-wise, and knowledgeable in legal matters, which is especially useful in the event their members are arrested. They might participate in a violent act, or simply encourage others to commit it. They’re usually well liked and respected by their fellow members, as well as by outsiders.

• • •

Are black gangs becoming the new mob? Claims of “disorganization” not withstanding, some cops think so. Police say that black gangs and the mob now overlap, with players from organized crime hiring gang members as their hit men.

“I compare [black gang members] to the early days of
the mob,” said North Las Vegas Police Lieutenant Chris Larotonda. “They’re doing the exact same things. Then it was bootleg whiskey. Now it’s drugs. But you have to make yourself look legitimate, even though your money may be coming from other [illegal] sources. Some of the gangs are expanding in just the narcotics sales and [otherwise] trying to legitimize themselves. We’ve seen them try to branch out into more legitimate-type businesses.”

Even U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., has likened Nevada’s street-gang members to mobsters. Reid told a Judiciary Committee considering an anti-gang measure that “we’ve got sophisticated crime syndicates turning our cities and towns into war zones.”

The basic differences between traditional organized crime versus street gangs “[usually comes down to] access to political influence,” said Lieutenant Bill Conger from LVMPD’s gang unit. “The street gangs aren’t organized enough for that—yet.”

Black street gangs are alive and well in Las Vegas. Although L.A. gangs still influence them, they now stand alone.

“We have our own Crips and Bloods,” said Conger. “There was some Los Angeles influence early on, but Las Vegas is its own town, and we have our own [gang] problems.”

Indeed, 2001 ended up “the bloodiest year ever,” said North Las Vegas Sergeant David Jacks. Two street gangs were in open combat, with an onslaught of shootings taking place on the border between Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. One street separated the rival street gangs, both of which originated in Los Angeles, Jacks said. “We refer to [the area] as ‘Crips city’,” he said.

There are several motives.

According to police sources and talk on the street, the killing of Tupac Shakur (and to an extent, Biggie Smalls) was a byproduct of one of three pre-existing situations: one, the fierce competition between East Coast and West Coast music factions to sell records and dominate the gangsta-rap world; two, Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight’s connections to the Bloods street gang and its rivalry with the Crips; and three, a conspiracy of top record-company executives to kill their own superstar rappers as a way of boosting sales.

Each of the three theories has also spawned related sub-theories. One relating to the third scenario is that Suge Knight was behind the deed, an accusation that Knight has vehemently denied and one that has never been substantiated with evidence. Conversely, it has been suggested that Suge, not Tupac, was the intended victim.

Still, others who have followed the saga contend that it was nothing as sinister as a deep-rooted conspiracy, but more likely a case of personal retaliation (stemming from the fight at the MGM Grand), or a semi-random act of violence, semi-random to the extent that the rival-gang consideration would be involved if that were the case.

One music-industry insider said, “The only scenario
that fits is somebody thought they were doing Pac a favor [by killing Biggie]. I don’t know who killed Tupac. I’m tired of the speculation.”

Tupac himself has been named in speculation that there was no killing, that the whole thing was an elaborate dodge, staged to fake his own death.

Let’s take a look.

• • •

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” Aretha Franklin sang 20 years ago. And that’s exactly what Suge Knight, Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, and Puffy Combs all said they wanted. Could the vicious and bloody rivalry between record companies be as simple as that?

Some sources say that the rivalry has, indeed, been as simple as that—respect as rappers and songwriters, as businessmen, and as gangstas.

“The rumors [about a feud] are helpful, but not true,” Suge told
Vibe
before Tupac was killed. “They get me additional respect, and this business is about getting the respect you deserve, so you can get what you want. I don’t worry about all the talk.”

Tupac also spoke to
Vibe
about being respected for his music, while at the same time appearing to be willing to fight Suge’s East Coast battles with him.

“My homeboy Suge gave me the best advice that I could ever get from anybody,” Tupac said. “When people ask Suge if he’s beefing with Bad Boy and Puffy, he says, ‘It’s like me going to the playground to pick on little kids. That’s like me being mad at my little brother ‘cause he’s getting cash now. I’m not mad at that; I’m just mad at my little brother when he don’t respect me. And when you don’t respect me, I’m a spank that ass. I don’t give a fuck how rich you got on the block, I’m your big brother. That’s my only point. I feel as though he wrong, he got out of hand. He got seduced by the power, not because he’s an evil person, but because money is evil if it’s not handled right.”

“Why is it mandatory that I get respect?” Tupac said to writer William Shaw. “I know other people who are just as successful as me and you can call
them
a bitch ... but if somebody calls me a bitch, I don’t care if we’re in court, we’re going to fight.” In his world, he told Shaw, “All good niggers, all the niggers who change the world, die in violence. They don’t die in regular ways. Motherfuckers come take their lives.”

Some observers maintained, however, that the bicoastal feud was more about money and women than personalities, that it was these tangible status symbols that led to the professional jealousies.

Producer Jermaine Dupree, a friend of Puffy Combs, told
Newsweek
: “This industry has a problem with people thinking there isn’t enough room for everyone. It’s the attitude that, ‘If you got it, I can’t have it, so I am going to take it.’ That’s why these deaths are happening.”

But of course, the rivalry motive was far more involved than that. Deep down, Tupac wondered whether Biggie really had set him up to get robbed and shot at Quad Studios in 1994. Though he occasionally denied it, Tupac told San Francisco deejay Sway two months before he was killed, “Strangers, niggas in jail told me, ‘Hell, you don’t know who shot you? Biggie’s homeboys shot you.’”

“Tupac really believes Biggie and them shot him,” veteran rapper lce-T said in a
Vibe
magazine interview. “If somebody thinks they shot them, it’s on for life.”

Biggie responded to Tupac’s accusations. “The rumor that’s spreading is all this shit like I set him up—you know what I’m saying?—and that’s crazy,” he told MTV.

Biggie asked for but never got an apology from Tupac. “It’s real niggahs in the streets thinking, ‘That’s fucked up what Big did to Tupac.’ I think that should be erased,” Biggie said. “As far as with me, he always gonna be my man. ... But he need to just check himself. And I want an apology, ‘cause I don’t get down like that.”

Instead, after Tupac signed with Death Row, he responded by publicly attacking Biggie, even bragging that he’d had
sex with Biggie’s wife Faith Evans. Then in 1996 at the “Soul Train” Awards in Los Angeles, Biggie’s armed bodyguard got into a fight with an armed associate of Tupac’s backstage at the Shrine Auditorium. That’s when the rivalry started being referred to as an East Coast-West Coast rap war.

On the other hand, Tupac’s cousin, Chaka Zulu, told a reporter, “I don’t think [the feud] came out of Pac’s camp. I think it came from people that are caught up in the hype of the East Coast-West Coast thing.”

Biggie and his friends continued to vociferously deny the accusations. Lance “Un” Rivera, Biggie’s partner in the Brooklyn record-label-management company Undeas Recording, said in a published interview that the accusations were unfounded.

“He and Tupac didn’t have no beef,” Rivera told
Rolling Stone
magazine. “They was real close friends. Tupac developed a hate for him. [Biggie] couldn’t understand what it was, but he never responded. He said, ‘I’m not going to feed into it.’”

Biggie, in his last interview, published in
The Source
the week after his death, again insisted that the rift between him and Tupac was blown out of proportion. But no one has ever said whether Biggie had an alibi for either—or both—the Manhattan and Las Vegas shootings of Tupac. When asked, the police said they didn’t know, because Biggie was never a suspect.

The rivalry wasn’t relegated just to Tupac and Biggie. It went right to the top. Suge Knight’s Death Row Records had been battling Puffy Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment for control of the multimillion-dollar rap-music industry for a few years, and the rivalry heightened further, some say, after the 1995
The Source
Awards in August at the Paramount Theater in Manhattan, when Suge criticized Combs on stage, making fun of his appearances on videos with Bad Boy artists. Suge was an award presenter. Before he left the stage, he said, “If you don’t want the owner of your label on your album or in your video or on your tour, come sign with Death Row.”

This was an obvious shot at Combs, who occasionally appears in his rappers’ videos and often raps on their albums. Puffy was shocked by Suge’s blatant and public disrespect. Some say a battle to the death began that night. A few months later at a party for producer Jermaine Dupree, a Death Row employee and Suge’s close friend Jake Robles was shot. When he died a week later, Suge blamed Puffy Combs, calling it a hit. No one was ever arrested and Puffy has denied any involvement.

Movie actor Warren Beatty became friendly with Suge while researching a movie project set in the rap world. Beatty dismissed talk that Suge would retaliate against Puffy for Jake’s death.

“It’s sort of hard to keep up with the apocryphal on Suge,” Beatty told the
New York Times
. “I mean, Puff Daddy, Muff Daddy, whatever. I know Suge was very close to the man who died. And I know he was very upset. The apocryphal is just talk, even when it’s pungent.”

Still, rumors persisted, and if they had any substance, the feud had escalated. Now people were being marked for death. What may have started out as hype to sell records had turned violent.

Steve Jackson, a rap-music producer who was with Biggie the night he was killed, told the
Village Voice
, “You know as well as I know that people wanna avenge Biggie’s death, man, because they are very sad over the fact that he was set up. They have friends and their friends have friends and their friends want revenge. You still have Suge Knight, you still have Puffy Combs, you still have their friends. You still have the East, you still have the West.