Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know The Ballad of Biggie and Tupac About this episode Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur had a famous beef with one another in the mid-90s. It was so intense, it sparked an even wider rivalry between the East and West Coasts. In just a few years, both men had been murdered and the music world was changed forever.
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Transcript 10,370 words · 8 speakers
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1:38 Josh Clark? Hey, everybody, we're going on tour. We're going to be in Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco soon, and tickets are still available.
1:44 Speaker 02 That's right, in the next few days, actually. We're going to be in Denver on Tuesday, the 27th of January. We're going to be in Seattle the next night, our dear beloved Seattle. And then finally, winding it up on Thursday, the 29th, in San Francisco as part of our sketch best appearance. And you can get all the ticket and tour information at stuffyoushouldknow.com. Isn't that right?
2:03 Josh Clark? It is right, and we love you, Denver, and we love you, San Francisco, too.
2:07 Speaker 02 That's right. We love all you cities, and we've missed you, and we can't wait to be back.
2:15 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:25 Josh Clark? Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. So this is the good old fashioned Stuff You Should Know, one of our ongoing hip hop editions.
2:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:36 Josh Clark? I feel like a dork anytime I say hip hop, so I usually say rap.
2:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:40 Josh Clark? But regardless, that's what we're talking about.
2:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, we're talking about Biggie and Tupac and we want to issue a warning and a trigger warning, not, no pun intended there, but this one's obviously going to, because we're talking about the lives of these two guys who were in many ways, real gangsters. A lot of stuff went down, including sexual assault and gunplay and murder. And it's, you know, it's probably not appropriate for, for the younger listeners. And so we just wanted to get that out there. Hopefully if you know anything about Biggie and Tupac, you know that there's some more adult content coming your way.
3:20 Josh Clark? Nice COA, man.
3:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:23 Josh Clark? So yeah, we are talking about Biggie and Tupac and they are pretty well known. If you listen to either one of them, or even kind of have a passing awareness of hip hop, especially in the 90s, you probably know that Biggie and Tupac had probably the biggest rivalry in the hip hop world, it's referred to as a beef, between one another, so much so that it actually triggered or caused, at the very least, popularized the east coast versus west coast thing of rap in the 1990s. That was huge. It was the central focus of rap during basically that whole decade.
4:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, and sadly would leave both of them dead from violence. It was, I hope that's not a spoiler for anyone, but yeah, at very young ages, it's super sad what, what happened to those guys and just super sad that that was. You know, brought about because of just sort of the lifestyle that went along with their careers, you know?
4:24 Josh Clark? Yeah, and a lot of people make a case that that lifestyle was essentially demanded by fans and the media and certainly fostered and nurtured by fans and the media. And so I think both Biggie and Tupac and all the people around him and other rappers basically felt like they had to act like they the stuff that they rapped about or else they would be fake baby gangsters sometimes or studio gangsters even worse.
4:53 Speaker 02 Well, yeah.
4:54 Josh Clark? Yeah, and then they were also surrounded by literal Bloods and Crips. So it essentially had, it was inevitable that it would end in death and violence.
5:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I think hip hop more than other types of music too. There's an expectation to be, to be real. Again, God, all these puns flying out of my mouth.
5:16 Josh Clark? Oh, from Cypress Hill?
5:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course, but to be real and like you said, not, you know, if you were found out to be sort of rapping about something and, and really kind of fake in real life, like that, that's no good for your career as a hip hop artist. So it's sort of, you know, they, I don't know. To me, they're sort of victims of that whole thing in a lot of ways.
5:40 Josh Clark? Yeah, but at the same time, they definitely bought into it.
5:43 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
5:43 Josh Clark? I mean, they essentially laid the groundwork for that. It's just, it's crazy because it's just such a ubiquitous, widespread thing for so long. It's strange to, to think that you can trace it back to one group, one duo essentially.
5:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, so we're going to tell you a little bit about Tupac and his beginnings, a little bit about Biggie, and then once they met up, kind of what happened from there. But for, as far as Tupac goes, he was born in 1971, same years as me. He was born in Harlem. His mother was Athenee Shakur. And she was one of the Panther 21. I'm pretty sure we talked about them in the Black Panther episode. But they were part of the Black Panther Party, the ones who were accused of carrying out a bombing campaign. She did win an acquittal in court defending herself and exposed a lot of stuff about undercover cops and the tactics they use that were very untoward.
6:37 Speaker 02 But Tupac was born about a month after that trial and born La Sane Crooks, but it's not like he changed his name to be a cool hip hop guy later. He was actually renamed by his mom when he was about a year old after indigenous South American revolutionary Tupac Amaru II. So he's essentially was always Tupac.
6:59 Josh Clark? Yeah, he was named after an 18th century Incan, I believe, who led a rebellion against the Spanish. Little known fact, I didn't know that, did you?
7:09 Speaker 02 I did not.
7:10 Josh Clark? So I usually think I associate Tupac with New York because pretty much all the movies he has was ever in were all set in New York. But he's from San Francisco. I mean, he was born in Harlem, but his family moved to San Francisco or actually Marin County, which is a suburb of San Francisco, pretty early on in his life. And at the time, his mom was struggling with a crack addiction. So Tupac was essentially on his own from a very young age. And as black kids at the time, in the eighties in particular, did to make money, when you were in a situation like that, you he sold drugs and that's how he supported himself for a long time, while he was even going through school, too.
7:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, and he was like we'll see Biggie was, he was a really good English student. And I bet a lot of hip hop performers were good in English, you know, it just sort of makes sense. But he dropped out of high school. He studied poetry, he continued to after he dropped out. And actually, his teacher, his English teacher, one of them, Leila Steinberg, was like, hey, I see a lot of potential in you, you can crash on my couch when you need to. And she ended up becoming his first manager.
8:21 Josh Clark? Yeah, and she said, you always have to wear that that bandana around your head just so like you do, because I love it.
8:27 Speaker 02 It looks super cool.
8:29 Josh Clark? I know we've also talked about this before, but he was a member of Digital Underground with Humpty Hump of the famous Humpty Dance. And he's shown dancing in the Humpty Dance video in the background. He was a dancer for Digital Underground, but later I think rapped on some of their albums.
8:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:45 Josh Clark? But even from the outset, his whole vibe was much, much edgier than Humpty Humps was. Like Humpty Hump was rapping about how big his nose was and having sex in Burger King bathrooms, right? Like Tupac was rapping about what poverty and crime are like in the black community.
9:03 Speaker 02 You know, he didn't go by Humpty Hump.
9:06 Josh Clark? What was his, what did he go by?
9:07 Speaker 02 Uh, that was Shock G.
9:10 Josh Clark? Oh, I've heard him referred to on other songs as.
9:12 Speaker 02 Well, all right, AKA Humpty Hump. So, yeah, you weren't completely wrong.
9:18 Josh Clark? A little, little side, I would direct people to the Mers song Risky Business that features Humpty or Shock G. And it's a pretty, pretty cute little song.
9:29 Speaker 02 All right.
9:30 Josh Clark? So Tupac goes out on his own. He's got, like I said, a totally different vibe and he released a solo album called Tupocalypse Now. There was no other title that it could have possibly been than that.
9:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure.
9:44 Josh Clark? But the problem was like, there was, he was keeping it real. So there was nothing in the studio that, um, that he was producing that could be played on the radio.
9:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:53 Josh Clark? So it was an underground sensation, but publicly, most people had not heard of Tupac at that point.
10:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Uh, he, Dan Quayle kinda gave him a little more press when.
10:06 Josh Clark? Yeah.
10:06 Speaker 02 He blamed that record Tupocalypse Now on the shooting of a Texas state trooper. So he was in the news a little bit at least.
10:12 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
10:12 Speaker 02 Uh, and he started acting kinda right afterward in 1992 and 1993, he put out, um, or he was in the movies Juice and Poetic Justice.
10:21 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
10:21 Speaker 02 Uh, both really great movies. Juice, Juice is awesome. Actually, so is Poetic Justice. I love both of those movies.
10:27 Josh Clark? The one I've seen him in, I don't think, I think I saw Juice. I didn't see Poetic Justice. I saw, um, Above the Rim. He was really good in Above the Rim.
10:35 Speaker 02 I never saw that one.
10:36 Josh Clark? Oh, that's a good one. You should see it.
10:38 Speaker 02 All right, we need to get together and have a Tupac watch party, I guess.
10:41 Josh Clark? Okay, let's do that.
10:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, but he started getting a little more famous, sort of slowly. And this is when, kind of the early 90s, at the very beginning of his career, is when he first started getting into trouble and getting like a real reputation as sort of living that lifestyle.
11:00 Josh Clark? Yeah, I mean, like, for real. He was involved in a shootout at the Marin County Festival where he lived, where he had just performed, that killed a six-year-old who was playing on a school ground nearby.
11:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:13 Josh Clark? He shot at off-duty police in Atlanta in 1993, when he tried to prevent them from beating up a black motorist. And those charges were thrown out because it turns out the cops were off-duty, didn't announce themselves as cops, and were super drunk. But, you know, those kind of things, like, his legend as like a thug, living the thug life, which I think he basically coined,
11:39 Josh Clark? that just formed, melded really quickly right out of the gate. Like, this guy was legit as far as his fans were concerned.
11:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. So that's Tupac's early days. Biggie Smalls was born, he's a little younger. He was born in 1972 in Brooklyn. His name was Christopher Wallace. He was born to Jamaican immigrant parents. And his mom was a preschool teacher. His dad was a politician in Jamaica, but ended up, you know, leaving when he was two years old and became a welder in the United States. But his mom, you know, Valetta, really thought a lot about education, obviously, as a teacher. So she took on a second job just so she could send him to a very well-regarded high school. And then later went to George Westinghouse Career and Tech Education High School, which had quite an alumni base as far as hip-hop goes,
12:30 Speaker 02 because DMX, Busta Rhymes, love Busta, and Jay-Z all went there.
12:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, I'm guessing I didn't, I wasn't able to find it, but I'm guessing they crossed paths and may have been there at the same time.
12:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, Donald Glover would have gone to my high school had they not sent him to the School of the Arts.
12:48 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah?
12:49 Speaker 02 And I saw him in New York City, a few feet from me, when I was there in December. And let me tell you, dude, I don't know if I've ever seen a more handsome grown man in person with my eyeballs.
12:59 Josh Clark? Really?
13:00 Speaker 02 He's astoundingly good looking. And I wanted to go over and say like, hey, man, we grew up in the same neighborhood, basically.
13:08 Josh Clark? And you're really good looking.
13:09 Speaker 02 You're really handsome. But he, I'm such a big fan of his, but from his music to his acting, but he was with his family and like, it's just like, I'm just not gonna do that.
13:18 Josh Clark? Instead, you got in your car and shouted, Redan High Rules and like laid rubber peeling out of the parking lot?
13:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right. Sure. Danger Mouse went to my high school too, though.
13:30 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah. I forgot about Danger Mouse. Danger Mouse did that Gray album with The Beatles and Jay-Z, right?
13:39 Speaker 02 Uh, I don't know.
13:41 Josh Clark? We'll find out the hard way. So like you said, a lot of hip hop artists are probably, or probably were, are good English students. And Biggie Smalls was not an exception to that. Like Tupac, he was actually, he excelled in English in high school. But also like Tupac, his family was not exactly well to do. Remember, his mom took a second job to put him just through high school. So he started selling drugs on the side, crack again, this is the eighties, and eventually dropped out of high school. And I think any kind of straight and narrow he might have been on from high school was just kind of removed. And he started to get in like actual trouble with the cops.
14:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, he ended up in jail, actually. He spent nine months in jail at one point because he couldn't make bail. And once he got out, he made a demo tape under the name Biggie Smalls. His nickname as a kid was Big. But I think that came from a gangster in a movie from 1975 called Let's Do It Again. Biggie Smalls did. And he said that he wasn't trying to get into a career. He just sort of did it for fun. And that got him on Source Magazine's list in 1992 of unsigned in their unsigned hype column.
14:57 Josh Clark? Yeah.
14:57 Speaker 02 Which eventually put him on a compilation with other unsigned rappers, which eventually landed him on the ears of a 23-year-old named Sean Combs.
15:07 Josh Clark? So yeah, Sean Combs, Puff Daddy, Diddy. People have probably heard of him by now for all sorts of reasons. His career as a 23-year-old was as vice president of Uptown Records. And being an entrepreneur and all sorts of other things, he decided to found his own record company, Bad Boy Worldwide Music Group, usually known as Bad Boy Records.
15:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:32 Josh Clark? And one of the first things he did was sign Biggie Smalls. And they became paired up in the media. They hung out, they're friends, they are fairly close. But like, those two were inseparable as far as like, the public was concerned, whether that was fully true or not.
15:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, and his, when he put out his first single, it was under the name Notorious Big because of legal issues, I guess with the movie?
15:56 Josh Clark? Yeah.
15:57 Speaker 02 For Biggie Smalls?
15:58 Josh Clark? That's my take, yeah.
15:59 Speaker 02 Okay, so he was Notorious Big I G officially, everyone called him Biggie, of course. He had his kid in 93 with his high school girlfriend, Jan Jackson, not Janet Jackson. And he hadn't really broken through at this point, even though he was with Sean Combs at the time. But he, you know, so he continued to kind of deal drugs. Apparently Combs was like, you can't do that kind of stuff if you want to get anywhere. But he broke up with his high school sweetheart, who he had his first kid with. And a few months after that, ended up with Faith Evans, who was also on the Bad Boy label. And that is Biggie and his start. So, good time for a break?
16:41 Josh Clark? Yeah, we're at 1993, Tupac's already a star, and Biggie's starting to come up.
16:46 Speaker 02 All right, we'll be right back.
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18:02 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
18:05 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
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20:12 Josh Clark? So one of the things you may or may not know, if you're just kind of passingly familiar with the beef between Biggie and Tupac, is that they started out as friends. They were actually pretty good friends for a while. Tupac, like I said before we broke, was already a star. His star was established and still growing. Biggie was just starting to come up. He was pretty well-known around New York. And Tupac kind of became a mentor to him. They met in 1993 and they hung out with a bunch of other people, played around with a bunch of guns at Tupac's house. And they became close enough that whenever Biggie went out to LA, he stayed on Tupac's couch.
20:52 Speaker 02 That's right. He was, like I said, he was a, he kind of considered Biggie like one of his lieutenants at the time and definitely was a mentor. Biggie's debut came out and it was called Ready to Die in 1994. And before that, Biggie was like... You know what? I think you should just be my manager and take over from, uh, take over for Sean Combs. And Tupac was like, no, man, you need to stick with that guy.
21:19 Speaker 02 Apparently Tupac wasn't a big fan of Combs.
21:21 Josh Clark? Yeah.
21:22 Speaker 02 But, you know, he said that I had a feeling he just didn't want to get into managing him.
21:27 Josh Clark? Well, he said he'll make you a star. And I think he did know that like, you know, Tupac wasn't a manager or a label owner. Like he was a performer and Sean Combs liked to think of himself as a performer, but really he was an executive. So it probably was the smarter move to stay with him, at least at first, right?
21:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:45 Josh Clark? The problem was is Sean Combs, again, remember inextricably linked BFF with Biggie as far as the public's concerned, was actually jealous of Biggie and Tupac's friendship. He wanted to be friends with Tupac. He was jealous that Biggie got to be friends with Tupac. The reason Tupac didn't care about being friends with Sean Combs is that he thought Sean Combs was basically a poser. He was a record executive playing like he was a hardcore rapper.
22:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:15 Josh Clark? And he didn't have much respect for him. And I think that that really kind of came through to Sean Combs after a little while. And he didn't, he started not liking Tupac.
22:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right. Uh, so the beef is sort of, the beef seed is planted as, as they are, uh, you know, that old saying.
22:34 Josh Clark? Where's the beef seed? It's been planted.
22:37 Speaker 02 Ready to Die, Like I Mentioned, was Biggie's debut in 94. It was a big hit. It went double platinum about a year later, which is, means a lot of records were sold. And this was when the West Coast was sort of, like all the big hip hop stars were mainly out of the West Coast. So he was kind of the biggest thing coming out of New York right off the bat. And it's a great record. He was, uh, you know, he, he rapped a lot about,
23:04 Speaker 02 you know, sort of like the lifestyle and the gangster stuff that he was doing, but also there was a lot of vulnerability on that first record too.
23:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, yeah, he, um, and Tupac wasn't shy about rapping about mental health and stuff like that. And up to this point, like, you did not talk about that kind of stuff. It was all about partying and having sex and like doing drugs and all that stuff. You didn't talk about being paranoid or like super worried about being killed or anything like that. Um, and I, just to kind of set the scene, can we talk a little bit about the, the brief history of hip hop up to that, that point and how big of a deal it was when, um, Ready to Die came out?
23:40 Speaker 02 Sure.
23:41 Josh Clark? Because you said that the West Coast had kind of taken over from the East Coast, like from Slick Rick and LL Cool J and all them, the ones who were coming up in the eighties. At the time that, um, Biggie Smalls' record came out, everyone was all about Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, all these guys, like, that's where rap was. It was on the West Coast. So for somebody to, to come along and basically snatch that away and bring it back to New York, it was just a really big deal. And it took a rapper of the caliber of, um, Biggie Smalls to do something like that. Cause there were tons of other albums that had come out, like
24:20 Josh Clark? Tribe Called Quest had three albums by this time. Um, and yet the Biggie Smalls' record coming out just, just completely undid, essentially caused an earthquake in the rap world and tilted everything back to New York.
24:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Uh, so as this is happening and Biggie's blowing up in like in a big way, uh, Tupac is in New York, um, filming a movie in 1993. And we get a new guy on the scene, or he was actually on the scene, but a new guy as far as his podcast goes, uh, named Haitian Jack. And he starts hanging out with Tupac. Tupac likes this guy. They start partying together. Uh, Biggie knows about Haitian Jack because he was, you know, pretty familiar with the street gangs of New York. And he warns his friend Tupac and he's like, man, this guy is real trouble. So like, you gotta watch out. You should probably stay away from this guy. Cause like, he's a super violent dude. Like, I know we're, we're all real, but this guy is, he will land you in jail probably at some point. So stay away.
25:18 Josh Clark? Or get you killed.
25:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:21 Josh Clark? So, um, things are going along. Biggie and Tupac are friends. One's in New York, one's on the West Coast. It turned out Biggie was- Pretty right in warning Tupac against Haitian Jack because shortly after that, Tupac met a girl named Ayanna Jackson. She was 19 at the time while he was in New York filming, hanging out with Haitian Jack. And she alleged that Tupac, Haitian Jack, the road manager for Tupac, Charles Man Man Fuller, and another man, I couldn't find who he was, gang raped her. And she called the police afterward. The police showed up, they found guns in the room. And now Tupac is in big, big trouble again, right?
26:02 Josh Clark? So two threads begin here. One is Tupac is now charged with sexual abuse, sodomy, and possession of guns, illegal guns.
26:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:11 Josh Clark? That starts, that thread starts, and we'll pick up again later. But another thread starts, which is a dispute, a beef now with Haitian Jack, because he thought that Haitian Jack had dropped a dime on Tupac to get out of the trouble for this gang rape charge.
26:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, so Haitian Jack had his case separated from Man Man Fuller and Tupac. He pleaded down to a lesser charge. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and avoided jail time. Tupac always said he was innocent and that he was set up and sold out by Haitian Jack. But that, you know, we need to point out that completely contradicts the story of the victim from Ayanna Jackson. So, but, you know, the whole point of this is, there's, like you said, there's now this official beef that kind of, again, planted the seed of what would happen to he and eventually Biggie moving forward.
27:06 Josh Clark? Yeah, and the thing that really kind of blew this, this whole thing up is Tupac said as much. He said Haitian Jack cooperated with the police. This major actual gangster in New York cooperated with the police in an interview with the New York Daily News. So the New York Daily News prints Tupac saying that. And that did not make Haitian Jack very happy. Those two separated immediately. They didn't talk anymore. They weren't friends anymore. They didn't hang out. And now Tupac had essentially an enemy in Haitian Jack, which is, from what I can tell, not what you wanted.
27:39 Speaker 02 No, not at all. So the case is moving forward at this point. Tupac is financially strapped because while he is making money, he's spending it faster than he's making it. He's also helping out friends and family with their finances. So there was an invitation from a guy named Jimmy Henchman Roseman. He knew Sean Combs, he knew Haitian Jack. And he said, hey Tupac, why don't you do a guest spot for this rapper Little Sean? He's in Biggie Circle. He's a guy with Sean Combs as well. We'll pay seven grand. He needed the money. So he did it. He shows up at Times Square at Quad Recording Studios on November 30th along with three of his guys.
28:23 Speaker 02 And before getting on the elevator to go up and record, they were met by these other three guys who draw guns. Tell them to get down on the ground. Tupac draws his gun and he ends up being shot. He ends up being robbed. He ends up being beaten pretty badly. And Combs and Biggie and Henchman, Jimmy Henchman Roseman were up in the studio at the time.
28:50 Speaker 02 They were, they were there. So all of a sudden Tupac is getting wheeled out on a gurney. Sees those guys and he flips a bird at Biggie and his crew because he thought they were in on this attack. And that's when the beef like really started between these two.
29:05 Josh Clark? Yeah. And Biggie was like, I have no idea what he's talking about. And Tupac just decided that if, if Biggie Smalls hadn't set him up, he had at least turned his head and let all of this happen. Like he knew that it was going to happen. He didn't warn him. There's no evidence whatsoever either one of those things happened. And Biggie Smalls always was like, no, like this had nothing to do with it. After Tupac died, he was obviously heartbroken and spoke in public about how sad he was that Tupac was dead. It, it seems like it was a one-sided beef. But the beef on Tupac's side was so energetic that you couldn't just ignore it.
29:45 Josh Clark? There was just a divide and the divide was so great that Bloods hung out with one side, I think Tupac's side, and Crips hung out with Biggie's side.
29:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:56 Josh Clark? And you have that kind of thing, like there's very little chance of like reconciling or accidentally hanging out because you ran into each other on the street and you kind of patched things up. That is not going to happen with you now hanging around with the Crips and the Bloods.
30:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, and no one ever really got to the bottom of who was behind that shooting. There's a lot of disagreement and people pointing fingers and claiming this and that. I guess we don't need to totally get into that, but after he was beaten and shot and robbed, he's bandaged up, he's in a wheelchair, he's still got this court case going on and he's found guilty of sexual assault, he's acquitted on the other charges and he's sentenced to 18 months in prison, where his third album came out, Me Against the World, came out while he was in prison serving that sentence.
30:44 Josh Clark? Dude, if you want cred, release your rap album while you're in prison.
30:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, called Me Against the World.
30:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, exactly.
30:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:54 Josh Clark? So while Tupac was in jail, I don't remember how long he was in for.
31:00 Speaker 02 18 months.
31:01 Josh Clark? 18 months, okay. While he was in jail, Biggie releases a track called Who Shot Ya? And Tupac interprets that as it was completely directed to him. It was essentially Biggie Smalls gloating about having set up Tupac and now Tupac was in jail and he'd been shot. And that seems to not be the case at all. Biggie Smalls apparently wrote that song before the Quad City shooting. And again, just from all evidence, it seems like Biggie had no problem with Tupac. This is all in Tupac's head. Like this whole east coast, west coast beef seems to have come from Tupac being paranoid, essentially.
31:43 Josh Clark? And I looked up why he might have been paranoid. And apparently there's pretty widespread acknowledgement or belief that he was suffering from substantial mental health issues while he was alive and that that had a huge impact on the way that he interacted with people, the level of trust he would afford even the closest people. Like, I think it was very easy to fall out of his favor because you might do or say something that he suddenly found suspicious and now all of a sudden, like you were his enemy. Like, you would do something like set him up or rob him or pay for him to be killed or something.
32:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, I wondered about that and I'm glad you looked into that.
32:20 Josh Clark? Thank you. I am too.
32:21 Speaker 02 You're welcome.
32:23 Speaker 02 Maybe we should take another break?
32:25 Josh Clark? Yeah.
32:26 Speaker 02 All right, we'll take another break and we'll, uh, we'll get back to it right after this.
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35:18 Speaker 02 All right, so I don't need to go over what we've been talking about because everyone's listening. So at this point, the record labels that were handling this kind of music, it wasn't like the major label stuff at this time, like that would happen in the future. But it was, it was basically hip hop labels. You had Bad Boy with Sean Combs, Death Row Records on the other side. Um, that company was founded about the same time in 1992 by Dr. Dre and a few other guys. And one of those guys was his former bodyguard, Marion Shug Knight, spelled S U G E. He was the CEO of Death Row Records.
35:58 Josh Clark? Yeah.
35:59 Speaker 02 And he was a blood, like, he was, you know, he was a straight up blood from, from South Central Los Angeles.
36:06 Josh Clark? Yeah. Um, so, and he's now the CEO of Death Row Records, right? So that automatically makes Death Row Records like another, it's a legit music label as far as like the stuff that the artists on the label are rapping about. The CEO of the record label is a blood, not a form of blood, a blood.
36:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:26 Josh Clark? So we talked about how the Quad Studio Shooting, like, really kind of started the beef. The thing that made that beef really genuinely public came at the award show for Source Magazine, their annual awards. This time, uh, this one was in 1995, where Shug Knight, who'd been visiting Tupac in jail and apparently had bought into Tupac's theory that, um, Sean Combs and Biggie Smalls had set him up to be shot and robbed. Shug Knight was accepting an award and during his speech, he invited any, any rapper who didn't want to worry about the executive producer trying to be in all the videos, which was a direct shot at Sean Combs.
37:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:09 Josh Clark? He said, come on over to Death Row Records. And I mean, if you go back and look at like Biggie Smalls, um, videos and like basically any rapper on this label at the time.
37:21 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
37:21 Josh Clark? Sean Combs is probably going to pop up making a cameo, if not dance on it, usually with his shirt wide open.
37:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:28 Josh Clark? He really was not, he was not what they, like Death Row Records was doing. And so like Shug Knight made a pretty good point, like if you were really actually looking for legit stuff, come over here. But saying it publicly and doing it by taking a shot at Sean Combs at the Source Awards.
37:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:47 Josh Clark? While you're accepting an award, it was a big deal. That was, that really kind of made that beef public and it turned into East Coast versus West Coast essentially immediately.
37:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, I remember at the time thinking, cause, uh,
38:03 Speaker 02 I remember just seeing, and it wasn't just rappers, like they had like some R and B acts. And I feel like, I feel like Combs was always in those videos, just like, like you said, either dancing or just like, yeah, yeah, in the background.
38:16 Josh Clark? Yeah.
38:16 Speaker 02 And I remember thinking about the time, at the time, and this wasn't like, my hip hop was all like earlier stuff and Tribe Called Quest and that kind of thing. And, you know, Dr. Dre and Snoop, I was into that at first, but this generally wasn't my thing. But I remember thinking like, this guy's, he sucks. Like, he's not, he's not a talented artist.
38:36 Josh Clark? No.
38:36 Speaker 02 Uh, cause he wasn't, I guess, you know, he was a, like you said, an executive and a producer. And I was, I remember thinking that like, why is he always throwing himself in there in front of the camera? Like, he sucks.
38:46 Josh Clark? Yeah, and he was dorky even compared to who were essentially mainstream rap artists like Tupac and Biggie Smalls.
38:53 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
38:54 Josh Clark? No shade on them, but there were way more underground rappers at the time putting out really good stuff. Tribe Called Quest is a really good example of that, that when you compared them to them, he became even, even more cringey, right?
39:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure.
39:09 Josh Clark? He was, it was, and he definitely like, kind of brought down the credibility of, of the label and all the artists on it for sure. Like Biggie Smalls was exponentially too good for Sean Combs. Sean Combs just kind of had him under his thumb.
39:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely.
39:25 Josh Clark? Which is sad because, I mean, Biggie Smalls is, Biggie Smalls and Tupac usually kind of battle for first or second place on most lists of the greatest rapper of all time. My money's on Biggie Smalls, what about you?
39:40 Speaker 02 As the greatest rapper of all time?
39:41 Josh Clark? Well, it's between Tupac and Biggie, how about that?
39:44 Speaker 02 Oh, okay, uh, cause Chuck D, like, dead in the bullseye for me.
39:48 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah?
39:49 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. I was always a Public Enemy guy, like, that started in high school.
39:52 Josh Clark? I like them too, but I don't know, I think I don't like the, I don't like the instrumental track to a lot of their stuff. It's too hard and raw, edgy for me.
40:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, I liked it. I mean, trust me, I was way more into like, Tribe Called Quest and Far Side and Jungle Brothers and like that kind of style. So, Public Enemy, me being into Public Enemy in high school is definitely kind of a weird thing.
40:24 Josh Clark? Yeah, but
40:24 Speaker 02 As I was listening to The Smiths and The Cure.
40:26 Josh Clark? That's right. No, I'm with you. I was listening to The Smiths and The Cure, but also like Boot Camp Click, like Smith and Wesson, Nas, Wu-Tang, Gangsta.
40:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. See, I never, oh, I like Gangsta, but I never got into Wu-Tang.
40:39 Josh Clark? They were pretty good. They were, they were better solo, I think. Most of like Method Man and RZA were better solo than Wu-Tang together, but whatever.
40:47 Speaker 02 And this is two middle-aged white guys discuss their hip-hop path.
40:51 Josh Clark? I do. I do have to say that Dr. Dre's The Chronic was literally life-changing.
40:56 Speaker 02 Oh, for sure.
40:57 Josh Clark? And it's not just me that that happened to. I think that changed a lot of people's trajectories.
41:02 Speaker 02 I was one of them, man. I know that thing by heart, inside and out.
41:05 Josh Clark? Yeah.
41:06 Speaker 02 It's a fun listen when I put it on. A lot of nostalgia floods back.
41:09 Josh Clark? It is. I thought the same thing would be for Doggy Style, Snoop's debut solo album. It's not, it does not hold up.
41:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it's not, it wasn't as good as The Chronic by a mile.
41:23 Josh Clark? But I liked it as much as The Chronic at the time, and I don't anymore.
41:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm with you. And part of that may have to do with the fact that Snoop Dogg is, I don't know, become the Snoop Dogg of today.
41:33 Josh Clark? Man, he's amazing. He's now the owner of The Throw Records.
41:37 Speaker 02 No, he's awesome, but I just feel like he's, he's a bit overexposed for my taste.
41:42 Josh Clark? Oh, I see. He's like the, um,
41:45 Speaker 02 The Peyton Manning of the hip-hop world.
41:47 Josh Clark? He's the Pedro Pascal of rap.
41:49 Speaker 02 Okay, even better said.
41:51 Josh Clark? But he's an American treasure, though. I mean, like, he was an Olympic mascot, along with Flavor Flav.
41:57 Speaker 02 Now I'm picturing Snoop Dogg, Pedro Pascal, and Peyton Manning, and just sitting at lunch, just saying like, guys, isn't this great?
42:05 Josh Clark? I could see that. Talking about mutual funds.
42:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, we should do something together, because we're not out there enough.
42:11 Josh Clark? Right. It'll blow everyone's mind.
42:15 Speaker 02 All right, so we are in September 1995 at this point. Suge Knight has dropped the bomb at the Source Awards, which I'm sure did not sit well with Sean Combs. And Tupac is in prison at this point. And Knight and Combs go to the same party here in Atlanta at what was called the Platinum House. It's a strip bar over on Piedmont Road, near the Colonnade, which you love.
42:42 Josh Clark? Yeah.
42:43 Speaker 02 A fight breaks out. And a guy named Jake Robles, it was a Death Row employee, and he was a Blood and a close friend of Suge Knight. He was shot and killed. And witnesses were like, Sean Combs' bodyguard is the one who did it.
42:59 Josh Clark? Right, so this is not good. This does not help this rivalry at all. And eventually, I guess over the same time, Tupac's still in prison, but Suge Knight is still visiting Tupac there. And like, they're becoming closer and closer. Because not only is Suge Knight going out of his way to go visit Tupac in prison, he's also helping him financially. He helped him, post bail, get out on an appeal. And when Tupac gets out of prison, again, he's now deeply indebted to Suge Knight. But apparently, they had become real friends. He releases his fourth album, All Eyes on Me. I think it was in February of 1996. Like, immediately went double platinum. I think it went to number one on the charts.
43:44 Speaker 02 So at this time, Death Row is at Can-Am Studios outside LA. That's what they're working out of. And people, you know, at the time were like, you know, the real stuff is going down there. There's a big gangster culture in and around that studio.
44:03 Speaker 02 Suge Knight is a real heavy. He's threatening people right and left if they don't, you know, aren't on his good side. And people are hanging out there with gang members who are their security. So there's, you know, there might be Bloods there one day. There might be Crips there one day. There might be a huge singer there one day recording. But all of this is sort of happening around Can-Am Studios.
44:27 Josh Clark? Right. So Tupac gets out of prison and remember like this guy is like essentially a heat seeking missile focused on Biggie Smalls. Like I get the impression that he just sat in prison like ruminating about Biggie Smalls and getting back at him. So one of the first things he does was hire Biggie Smalls wife Faith Evans, who was herself a pretty popular recording artist at the time. He offered her $25,000 to be on one of his records, a track for his album All Eyes on Me. And she did. She's like, sure, 25 grand, I'll do it. And I guess after she performed or
45:07 Josh Clark? laid down the track, I guess is it called, he was like, I got my check at the hotel room. You got to come over to my hotel room to get it.
45:15 Speaker 02 Red flag.
45:16 Josh Clark? Yeah. So she went, both of them say that he propositioned her. He says that they had sex. She is repeatedly denied and emphatically denied that they did. But just the fact that they were in a hotel room together gave Tupac, even if it wasn't true that they had sex, gave him plenty of grounds to tell everybody that they did have sex, to at least gnaw at Biggie Smalls with questions, you know, in his head.
45:43 Speaker 02 Yeah. And this is his wife. So like it's on for real at this point. There's no coming back. At the Soul Train Award Show, this is in March of 96, Tupac and Biggie both won awards. So they were there. That was the first time they had been together since that Quad Studio shooting, which is where it all started. And they both had their guys with them. They both had their entourages. Tupac had The Bloods. Biggie had the Southside Crips on his side. And there was a guy named Keith D. And he was a Crip. So he was with Biggie. And outside of this, at the Soul Train Award Show. They got into a fight, basically. Witnesses said that Tupac is shouting, shouting down Biggie's groups, sort of inciting them.
46:28 Speaker 02 They all brandished guns, but nothing happens at this point. Just a lot of sort of back and forth and like, you know, I've got my gun, so shut up.
46:37 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's astounding. Crips and Bloods with their guns drawn in the same spot and no one shot anybody. That's crazy. So Tupac released Hit 'Em Up, which is considered one of the best diss tracks of all time. He actually specifically names Biggie by, well, by name. He also talks about how he slept with Biggie's wife Faith Evans.
46:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:59 Josh Clark? And while this is also going on, there's like a lot of money to, that people have figured out we can make from this, right?
47:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:06 Josh Clark? This beef and like, say, you know, some street skirmishes or whatever. This stuff makes news, right? Like, people know about this. And this is before, I think cell phones were still kind of bricky at the time. Long before the internet, like, and people still knew about this stuff. It was just a big deal. And that helped sell records like crazy. It also helped sell magazines. There's a Vibe magazine from September 1995. And on the cover is Biggie Smalls and Sean Combs. And it talks about East versus West. Some people put their finger on that Vibe issue and, and point to it as like fanning the flames of this beef.
47:49 Josh Clark? And essentially making these, these two groups like have to hate each other even more. Or else they're going to seem weak or like, you know, fake, whatever.
48:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. And while this is all going on, Tupac is becoming a little more paranoid about Death Row Records. And Suge Knight and basically like Suge Knight's kind of controlling the money, saying that, you know, you're going to blow all your money unless I'm in control. He didn't think he was getting the, the proper royalties. He thought you're holding, holding me back in Hollywood and I'm trying to get my movie career going. So like trouble is sort of brewing on the inside there. Which finally would culminate on September 7th, 1996. A lot of people connected with Death Row Records. Tupac, you know, as one of them, went to the Mike Tyson fight against Bruce Seldon in Las Vegas.
48:43 Speaker 02 And after the fight, one of the Death Row group members, he was a Blood named Trevon Lane, saw a guy who said, hey, he stole a Death Row necklace from me a few months ago. That guy's name was Orlando Anderson. He was a Crip and a nephew of Keith D. And Tupac, Suge Knight and other people, Jump Anderson, rough him up pretty good. And a few hours later, Suge Knight and Tupac are at a stoplight. Cadillac pulls up next to them and the car is shot up and Tupac is dead six days later at the age of 25.
49:20 Josh Clark? Yeah, apparently he was like making jokes and everything as he was being put onto the gurney after the shooting, but he just went downhill really quick from there.
49:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:29 Josh Clark? So a lot of people are like, this is Biggie, this is Sean Combs. They had, they said they had nothing to do with it. But this, this, this did kind of give Biggie Smalls like a wide opening to be like, this stuff has to stop. These, this East Coast, West Coast thing has gotten out of hand. And it seemed pretty cut and dry that really it was them beating up Orlando Anderson and him and other Crips being in town who targeted and carried out this, this drive by, you know? That seems like almost certainly the explanation for the whole thing.
50:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, that's who the cops thought from the very beginning was the guy that was jumped and beat up. They didn't arrest him. He died a couple of years later in a shooting in Compton. Fast forward all the way to 2019 in a memoir where Keith D admitted that he was in that Cadillac. He said, I gave the gun to Anderson. He was in the backseat. There were two other guys in the car. Some people say it was a guy named Deandre Smith who was the actual trigger man. But basically, everyone in that car ended up being killed except for Keith D. And in September 2023, he was arrested and charged with Tupac's murder.
50:46 Speaker 02 And that trial is going to happen all these years later, coming up this summer in August of 2026.
50:53 Josh Clark? Yeah, and Keith D. and later on, a bad boy co-founder named Kirk Burrows and others. After all these allegations and revelations about what Sean Combs has been up to came out. They've come forward and been like, we think he actually did have something to do with this. Seems like a pretty quick turnaround to me. I think it was just Crips retaliating for a beat down. So Tupac is gone now, like you said, age 25. And if you want, you can go, you know where Clarkston is, Chuck?
51:26 Speaker 02 Sure, that was a rival high school of Redan.
51:28 Josh Clark? There is a Tupac statue and memorial in Clarkston. Did you know that?
51:33 Speaker 02 I did. I've never seen it, though.
51:34 Josh Clark? We went there. You and I went there and it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. And it's just in the middle of this little rinky-dink suburb of Atlanta. Strange, but it's cool.
51:44 Speaker 02 That was kind of my stomping grounds was that area of Memorial Drive where Clarkston was owned.
51:48 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah?
51:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:50 Josh Clark? Well, we'll have to go to the Tupac statue together.
51:52 Speaker 02 I'll go check it out.
51:53 Josh Clark? So, so I think what Chuck, like less than six months? No, right at about six months after Tupac was killed, Biggie Smalls was murdered.
52:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, this was March 1997. He was in a car, riding in a car, leaving a party of Vibe Magazine in LA. Pronounced dead at the hospital. He was but 24 years old. And immediately everyone was like, this is Suge Knight. Who, by the way, people blamed Tupac shooting initially on Suge Knight.
52:24 Josh Clark? Yeah.
52:25 Speaker 02 But he was shot as well. He was just grazed. But that seems obviously to have not been the case. But everyone immediately was like, no, Suge Knight definitely was in on Biggie's murder.
52:34 Josh Clark? In retaliation for Tupac shooting, right?
52:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:38 Josh Clark? It's also entirely possible that Sean Combs did this too, but it certainly seems to have been a contract hit. Like they, the, the people who killed Biggie Smalls shot and shot into his car. They were lying in wait. They were essentially parked at this intersection, waiting for them to stop. They stopped. Sean Combs' car ran a red light and Biggie's car stopped at it. So Sean Combs wasn't near the shooting when it happened. There was an FBI agent who came forward or actually, I guess, created a whole report on this, who was like, it, it, this, it was essentially the LAPD hiring a hitman at the behest of either Suge Knight or Sean Combs.
53:23 Josh Clark? And so it was not, Tupac's probably was not a conspiracy. Biggie Smalls murder was almost certainly a conspiracy.
53:31 Speaker 02 Yeah. And, you know, Suge Knight would have done all this from jail. He was in jail at the time. He is in jail. He's in prison now. Again, uh, this is from, this is a 28 year sentence. So this, this is a big one. And this is for the death of a Compton businessman from 2015. He was never charged in Biggie's killing. But Biggie's last record or last, you know, sort of official release. I know they both put out a lot of stuff posthumously. But the, his next like real drop was Life After Death was called that before he was murdered. But that sold more than 10 million copies and certified diamond.
54:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, it gets not, as Tupac released nine posthumous albums, seven of them went platinum.
54:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:17 Josh Clark? Did you know Suge Knight has a podcast from jail called Collect Call?
54:21 Speaker 02 Uh, it's not, but that's a pretty good name for a podcast from prison.
54:26 Josh Clark? Agreed.
54:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:29 Josh Clark? You want to know what ended the East Coast, West Coast beef?
54:33 Speaker 02 Oh, is that still not happening?
54:34 Josh Clark? No, no, it ended fairly soon after this. Rap became more decentralized and groups like OutKast came around. And the, the, whether you were from the East Coast or the West Coast was watered down. It didn't matter nearly as much. So you can thank OutKast for ending the East Coast, West Coast rivalry.
54:53 Speaker 02 Yeah. Cause people are like, no one's got a beef with Big Boy and Andre.
54:56 Josh Clark? No, everybody loves them for sure. Like, I, I know we've sounded maybe facetious. We are not being facetious right now.
55:03 Speaker 02 No, but boy, I love OutKast.
55:05 Josh Clark? Um, one last thing, apparently, Michael Jackson assaulted Tupac once in a studio when Tupac insulted Quincy Jones's daughter.
55:15 Speaker 02 Oh, uh, Rashida or another one?
55:18 Josh Clark? Another one, not Rashida. I don't think it was Rashida. I don't know.
55:23 Speaker 02 I wonder how that, I wonder how that fight went.
55:27 Josh Clark? It's a widespread rumor and apparently also, you know, Biggie was on one of Michael Jackson's songs.
55:35 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
55:35 Josh Clark? Doing his thing, like legit doing his thing. It wasn't watered down for the radio or anything like that. And apparently, Michael Jackson threw his lot in with Biggie and was not a big fan of Tupac and snubbed him once.
55:46 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
55:47 Josh Clark? And apparently, in addition to beating him up.
55:50 Speaker 02 And everyone said, no one cares which side you're on, Michael Jackson. You don't have that kind of cred.
55:57 Josh Clark? No.
55:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:58 Josh Clark? But it is a, like, Biggie does a pretty good job on that song.
56:02 Speaker 02 I'll have to check it out.
56:03 Josh Clark? Okay, I think that's it, Chuck.
56:06 Speaker 02 Man, we did it.
56:07 Josh Clark? We did it. We made it through. Hopefully, we didn't sound too ridiculous and dorky at any point, but we'll find out.
56:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:13 Josh Clark? Um, Chuck said, yeah, it means it's time for listener mail.
56:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is just a kind of a nice email with some good suggestions. Hey, guys, my name is Josiah Brown. I live in Tennessee. I've been a devoted fan since I was about 10 years old and I'm 20 now.
56:27 Josh Clark? Wow.
56:28 Speaker 02 Uh, my mom put me on to you guys and I basically never stopped. So, thanks, Mom.
56:31 Josh Clark? Thanks, Mom.
56:33 Speaker 02 Uh, I've been binge listening recently. I do that every so often. I've just been reminded of how wonderful the show is. And I just want to reach out and say thanks for providing some wonderful content and bringing the same big old smile to my face all these years. Keep up the good work, fellas. And that is Josiah B. And Josiah had a lot of good ideas, including Anne Frank, Oscar Schindler,
56:54 Speaker 02 Motown.
56:54 Josh Clark? Okay.
56:55 Speaker 02 I want to do Motown for sure. Uh, Mr. Rogers. I can't believe we haven't done that one yet.
56:59 Josh Clark? We were going to, and then that Tom Hanks movie came out and kind of ruined it for a little while.
57:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, I finally saw that on a plane recently.
57:07 Josh Clark? What'd you think?
57:08 Speaker 02 Did you see it?
57:09 Josh Clark? No.
57:10 Speaker 02 Uh, it was okay.
57:14 Speaker 02 And the Hindenburg, and that, the Hindenburg is going to be coming at some point in the not-too-distant future because we commissioned that article and it's, it's in the folder on the computer. So I definitely know we're going to get to that one.
57:25 Josh Clark? Okay, booyah. Who was that again? Josiah?
57:28 Speaker 02 Josiah.
57:29 Josh Clark? Thanks a lot, Josiah. That was a very nice email and thanks for all the great ideas. If we do any of them, hopefully we'll remember to credit you with them, right?
57:37 Speaker 02 That's right. Except for the Hindenburg, it's already in the bag.
57:40 Josh Clark? Okay. If you want to be like Josiah and email in, we would love to hear from you. You can send it off to [email protected] .
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58:42 Speaker 07 Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From Gothic masterpieces to poppy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find the Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts.
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