NFL
By: Rick O’Donnell
Everyone who listened to hip-hop in the 90s knew of the biggest hip-hop beef of all time. Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. started a feud that would spill out more than just between artists. It would evolve into a beef between two labels and eventually divide East Coast and West Coast hip-hop. Eventually, it would lead to the demise/murders of two of rap’s greatest and most beloved artists to ever live. At first, it was blamed on gang violence, but with the now infamous Sean “Diddy” Combs scandal coming out, was the beef always facilitated by Diddy that would eventually lead to both stars’ murders?
Now everyone is on the bandwagon that Diddy had something to do with Tupac’s murder now that police arrested Duane “Keefe D” Davis in custody. Davis claims that Diddy put the hit out on Shakur offering $1 million as a reward but does it go deeper than that and was Tupac right all along that the Bad Boy mogul set him up the first time as well?
In 1994, Tupac was shot on the streets of New York on his way to the studio to lay down some tracks. At the time, and a police investigation, it was labeled as an attempted robbery but Shakur always had it in the back of his mind that it was a setup. This would go on to be the spark in the powder keg of this hip-hop beef since Lil’ Cease and Junior Mafia were there when Tupac arrived. Was Tupac right? Did Diddy set the whole thing up to look like a robbery?
It’s not too far-fetched of a story. The relationship between BIG and Pac was tight up until then. They were arguably two of the biggest rising stars in hip-hop. Knowing what (we think) we know about Diddy now makes the story that much more interesting on a level even Hollywood couldn’t write the script for.
Those who knew him knew Tupac as a very charismatic and persuasive individual. If this current case of Diddy is true, what if the two of them were sitting around one day, and ‘Pac was like “Yo, I don’t trust this dude. Why don’t we get up out of here and do our own thing me and you?” They were on the rise and had the star power to do so. What if Diddy (then Puff Daddy) got wind of it and set up the ambush to look like a robbery gone wrong knowing BIG could’ve been persuaded by his close friend?
Skip ahead to the line on Runnin’ (Dyin’ to Live) on the Tupac Ressurection album (Produced by Eminem). The song features a posthumous release of a previous track Runnin’ From The Police between the two artists (BIG & Pac) but on the song it features a clip of Tupac stating “Strangers is telling me, ‘Oh you don’t know? Biggie know who shot ya.’ They braggin'” as if Bad Boy, Biggie, and Diddy all had something to do with it.
The case for denial wasn’t strong when Biggie would put out a song “Who Shot Ya?”. The answer back by Tupac with “Hit ‘Em Up” and the rest is history that we all now know. Now the rumor goes that Diddy pressured Biggie to put out the track that would eventually drive the massive wedge between the two.
Is it too far-fetched to believe that the original hit went wrong and Tupac lived through it? Then Diddy and his camp said we gotta lay low to not seem as suspicious and almost two years later tried and succeeded. What if Diddy was jealous the whole time of Tupac and wanted him out of the picture? He’d be the one with the most to lose if BIG and Pac started their own label as Tupac was yet to be signed to Death Row.
There had to be another setup. A plot that was supposed to look like a robbery gone wrong, if attempted again would open up a whole investigation. However, if someone lays low for two years, offers up the same $1 million reward, and can stage it to look like gang violence after building two years of dividing East Coast/West Coast it’s easy to think this was just happenstance. It would look like it was an escalation of feuds gone wrong.
What if Biggie knew about the setup the second time around and wanted to come clean for his lifelong friend? Fast forward to all these rumors now, is it too crazy to think that Diddy would silence him and make it look like retaliation as well to protect his empire from crumbling?
Looking back on it now, it’s wild to think of how these two stories intertwined and how a power-hungry music mogul could’ve cost us the two greatest artists of our generation.
