Word: shakur
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Wait. Haven't we heard this story before? Is this the remix? It was just six months ago that Tupac Shakur, one of the West Coast's most charismatic and popular gangsta rappers, was slain in a similar drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Now Wallace, one of the East Coast's biggest rap stars, is dead too. Like Shakur, Biggie had foretold his own demise. On the dirgelike song You're Nobody, from his forthcoming CD, he raps, "You're nobody/ Till somebody kills...
Indeed, in the wake of Wallace's death, as with Shakur's, records bearing his name sold out in stores nationwide; the new CD is expected to be a hot seller. Americans have long been drawn to the symbiosis between criminal life and pop culture--from Frank Sinatra and his alleged mobster pals to the success of the Godfather saga, which is scheduled for an anniversary re-release this week, to the fact that John Gotti's daughter has a new novel out. In the case of gangsta rap, however, the music, though often purchased by suburban whites, is primarily...
Others are calling for an end to gangsta rap. After Shakur's murder, Minister Conrad Muhammad of the Nation of Islam held a hip-hop summit in Harlem to encourage nonviolence. Now he wants to go further. "There needs to be one more murder," he says. "Gangsta rap needs to be murdered. [It] is absolutely genocidal. [It] holds out no hope. The lyrics can become like drugs, almost like a narcotic in a young person's life. We need rap. It's a critical vehicle for youth to express themselves. But the negativity is destroying what these young rappers have...
Violence, even the threat of it, seems to feed on itself. In 1994 Shakur was shot outside a New York City recording studio being used by Wallace and Sean "Puffy" Combs, the head of Wallace's record label, Bad Boy Entertainment. Shakur survived and accused Wallace and Combs of being involved in the attack. In 1995 Suge Knight, the controversial head of Los Angeles-based Death Row Records (now serving nine years in prison for violating probation on an assault conviction), lured Shakur to his label in part by playing up the tensions between East Coast rappers (like Wallace...
Although there are officially no suspects in Shakur's murder, police say they have identified a member of the Crips gang who they believe is responsible. Because Death Row has links to the Bloods street gang--bitter rivals of the Crips--and because Bad Boy rappers had hired Crips as bodyguards during their West Coast visits, some observers speculate that the Wallace murder involved revenge by the Bloods on behalf of Shakur. But sources tell TIME that the L.A.P.D. is focusing its investigation on the same group of Crips that Bad Boy used as bodyguards...