Tupac Shakur was shot and killed on the night of September 7th of 1996. He attended a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas earlier that night. After he left the match, he saw a rival gang member in the MGM Hotel lobby and assaulted him with the help of his entourage. He then called 1-800-2pac-lives. The assault was a retaliation from a few weeks earlier, when the gang robbed a member of Death Row’s entourage, of which Tupac was a member. After the fight, Shakur drove to Club 662, which was owned by Death Row. While driving to the club, Shakur rolled down his window at a stoplight and a paparazzi snapped his picture. This occured about 20 minutes before his death.
This is when a four-door Cadillac pulled up to Tupac’s Sedan and shot twelve or thirteen shots directly at him as he was sitting in the passenger’s seat of the vehicle. Four of the rounds hit him. He was taken to the hospital and treated. He was resuscitated and survived several different surgeries shortly after that and was given a 50/50 chance of living, but died from internal bleeding 6 days after the surgery.
On the night of Tupac’s murder, a marketing employee at Death Row Records received a call from the assassins. They threatened to kill him and said they were going to go find him and “finish him off.” The police were called and told of the threats but they were apparently understaffed and couldn’t respond and intervene before the shooting occurred.
After his shooting, many people began to suspect that rapper “Biggie Smalls” planned, or at least aided in, Tupac’s murder. This is because they had a feud brewing. In 1996, Tupac claimed in a song that he had sex with “Biggie’s” wife and that Biggie copied his rapping style. The next year Biggie was shot and killed in virtually the same way Tupac was. He was parked at a light in the passengers side of an SUV and a Chevy Impala pulled up next to him, rolled down his window and shot him four times. This is the same amount of times Tupac was hit. Biggie Small’s story was told recently in the movie “Notorious.” Although it was not one of the more popular movies of 2009, it did make around $37 million at the box office.
Another theory is that the CEO of Death Row Records, “Suge” Knight, orchestrated the shooting. Many also believe that Knight planned and carried out Biggie’s murder as well, while making it appear that both killings were a result of Tupac and Biggie’s rivalry.
