Three albums in exchange for getting out of jail: 2Pac’s last months before his murder 30 years ago

For some, the agreement that Tupac Shakur signed with Death Row Records represented his death sentence. For the rapper, it meant freedom. Shakur had spent eight months in jail, convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in the presence of other men. On October 12, 1995, the artist known as 2Pac was released from prison after the head of the record label paid bail of nearly one and a half million dollars, with the commitment to record three albums for the label. The next day, he got to work and went to the studio to begin the sessions for his most ambitious project: All Eyez On Me, a double album with 27 tracks and a runtime of over two hours. Released in February 1996, 30 years ago, it received excellent reviews and remains the best-selling album of his career, considered one of the best in the history of the genre.

During his incarceration, 2Pac became the first artist to achieve a number one hit while in prison: Me Against The World (1995), recorded in the weeks leading up to his imprisonment, dethroned Bruce Springsteen from the top of the charts. Hopes that this success would help him revive his career and rebuild his life were dashed when he decided to partner with one of the most toxic and reviled figures in the scene at the time, Suge Knight, the head of Death Row Records. A major force in West Coast hip-hop, home to artists like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, MC Hammer and Big Daddy Kane, Death Row was preceded by Knight’s terrifying history, which included extortion, drug trafficking, beatings, and organized crime.

Over on the East Coast, with the authority that came from the fact that New York was the birthplace of that music and culture, there stood Bad Boy, the record label of Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy, P. Diddy and Diddy. They weren’t just commercial rivals. Their flagship artist, The Notorious B.I.G., had gone from friend to sworn enemy of 2Pac following the shooting he suffered in November 1994, which the “California Love” singer believed, without apparent evidence, was connected to Notorious’s circle.

When 2Pac, while in prison, learned about the song “Who Shot Ya?”, released in February 1995, which seemed to mock the incident, the rapper prepared his response. Suge Knight was eager to capitalize on it to strike a blow against the New Yorkers. They were entering a phase of all-out war.

Born to fight

A notable difference between 2Pac and Notorious B.I.G., beyond the deterioration of their friendship, was the former’s interest in social issues, chronicling the experiences of a Black man growing up in the United States. This desire to stand up and denounce injustices had been nurtured at home. In the Oscar-nominated documentary Tupac: Resurrection (2003), a first-person biographical narrative was constructed from interview fragments, in which he alluded to his mother Afeni Shakur’s imprisonment while pregnant, due to her involvement with the Black Panther Party and an alleged conspiracy to attack police stations—a conspiracy later proven to have been fabricated by police officers infiltrated within the anti-racist movement.

Afeni Shakur then dedicated herself to advising residents of the Bronx and offering support in labor law matters, although she gradually became addicted to crack cocaine. Her erratic behavior and the absence of a father, whom he barely saw a few times in his life and who never legally recognized his son, led to an unstable childhood, although he supported his mother in her rehabilitation efforts and would later dedicate a song to her praising her fighting spirit, “Dear Mama.”

These experiences, far from leading him to marginalization, formed the basis for the conscious rhetoric he wielded as a teenager, much to the surprise of his teachers, about social inequalities and the neglect suffered by a segment of the Black population. 2Pac would later say that his lyrics served the same function as the news reports that depicted the horrors of the Vietnam War, revealing to the world the reality of the ghettos. The first single of his career was a declaration. Far removed from what any radio station would consider commercial, the song “Brenda’s Got a Baby” told the true story of a 12-year-old girl who got pregnant by her cousin and who, out of shame, hides the baby, throws it in the trash, and tries to make money through cocaine and prostitution.

In the film also titled All Eyez On Me (2017), the singer’s early success is viewed with suspicion by Afeni: she warns him that power has the capacity not only to destroy the rebels, but also to provide them with the tools to destroy themselves. She spoke from experience. Although the film disappointed fans due to its weak portrayal of one of rap’s most charismatic figures, it drew a parallel between the counterintelligence operations carried out to dismantle the Black Panthers and the silent penetration of repressive forces into the protest movement.

The artist had several run-ins with the police, from being beaten by officers for jaywalking to a shooting from which he was acquitted because the officers were carrying stolen weapons and had lied during the investigation. 2Pac also believed that Jacques Agnant, one of the sexual assailants who was with him the night he was convicted, was an undercover federal agent. Despite this, Death Row was an unusual place where other police officers worked, earning extra money by providing security for the mobster Suge Knight and his record label. Some of them had been convicted of corruption. The small security detail assigned to protect 2Pac the night of his murder has fueled theories about alleged cover-ups, a perception further amplified by the lack of effort that was put into the investigation: the shooting that took Shakur’s life occurred on September 7, 1996, but the first arrest wasn’t made until 2023.

On the day of his murder, Tupac watched a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas with Suge Knight. Later, accompanied by other people connected to the mob boss, they had an altercation with Orlando Anderson, whom Tupac attacked over the alleged theft of a friend’s chain. Anderson belonged to the Crips gang, which was at odds with the Bloods, the Los Angeles gang to which Knight belonged. Knight had several other members of that gang in Death Row. Later, Tupac was riding in the passenger seat of a car with Knight to continue partying when, at a traffic light, another vehicle with four occupants pulled up alongside them and opened fire. Knight was superficially wounded, but the rapper died six days later, on September 13, in the hospital. Both this murder and that of The Notorious B.I.G., a year later, were framed within the coast war, which 2Pac had further fueled that summer with Hit ‘Em Up, an aggressive song against his colleague, where he boasted of having slept with his wife.

Police never linked 2Pac’s death to the previous incident. Everything changed when a former Crips member, Duane Davis, considered a person of interest for years, decided to publish his memoirs. In Compton Street Legend (2019), he cheerfully recounted how he obtained the murder weapon, how he had given it to his nephew (Orlando Anderson, who died in another shooting in 1998), and who was in the Cadillac from which 2Pac was shot. Las Vegas police now maintain that Anderson was the killer, motivated by revenge, and Davis the mastermind. The gang member is awaiting trial, although he has recanted and claimed he wrote the book for fame.

Thug life

Suge Knight’s possible involvement has been a subject of speculation ever since. 2Pac fulfilled his part of the bargain: he delivered three albums, the two that comprised All Eyez On Me and another one he wanted to release under the stage name Makaveli, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, which was released posthumously in November 1996. Suggested motives include 2Pac’s desire to regain his independence once the agreement was complete or a wish to monetize the suffering of their most famous artist. Figures like Snoop Dogg (whose first joint, he has admitted, was given to him by 2Pac) have pointed to Knight as the culprit. His refusal to cooperate—he ruled out Anderson as the killer, but also refused to testify on the matter—and a criminal record that continues to deteriorate—he is now in prison for homicide—support this belief. However, he has not been charged and there is no convincing evidence against him. Knight has always maintained that he was the real target of the assassins.

The other kingpin of the Coast War, Sean Combs, isn’t faring any better. Davis, arrested as the mastermind behind the murder, accused him of financing the criminal infrastructure. Since 2018, Combs has begun to be seen as the sinister figure he was: he’s serving a prison sentence for two counts of transporting women for prostitution and faces hundreds of lawsuits from people he allegedly drugged and abused, many of them minors at the time. Two years ago, another woman filed a complaint against him for sexual assault, mistreatment, false imprisonment, and kidnapping related to events in 2018: she joked that Combs was 2Pac’s killer, the producer flew into a rage and brutally attacked her.

The rhetoric that 2Pac championed around the “thug life” is often used against him to describe his descent into hell. But, as he explained in interviews, “thug life” wasn’t about promoting crime, but rather about reclaiming the label that white power attached to Black people or justifying acts of necessity, such as self-defense or theft. It’s this ambiguity that has made it so difficult over time to encapsulate what the rapper truly represented, beyond his immense influence.

One of the authors who has best achieved this is the Italian writer Antonio Solinas, author of the graphic novel Tupac Shakur: Only God Can Judge Me. “Tupac was a complex character,” says Solinas. “A poet and a gangster, a generous friend and ruthless enemy, a lover of women but also somewhat misogynistic, a street rapper but also an activist. In Tupac’s case, paradoxically, it was easier for the American mainstream to sell the nihilistic gangster image than the political activist one, and therefore, the system gradually distorted that more untamed part of his discourse. I think that, beyond the lessons to be learned from Pac’s tragic end, one only needs to look at his work (and at what is happening these days in the United States) to understand how necessary it is to always reason in political terms regarding American dysfunctions.”

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