The University Times

Mr W. F. Flame,

You may not remember me, but I’ve heard your music on the internet. Initially I wasn’t a fan, as I thought your music was just more posture-heavy gangster club rap. While your music may indeed be all of those things, it says nothing of the syncopated onomatopoeic fills you embellish your songs with, or the unrestrained and uncompromising emotive aggression that goes so well with the intensity of producer Lex Luger’s snare-roll lead beats. I was won over, and came to consider myself something of a fan. That’s not the reason I’m writing this letter though, you don’t need me to tell you your music is good. No, this letter is regarding your association with co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records, Suge Knight. In October last year you confirmed that he will be helping you oversee your record company and helping you in your ill-conceived movie career. You said that “it is what it is, you gotta start pulling in people in the game who know the game. Suge helped me get a good movie deal. He’s helping me oversee the company; I’m not trying to be ‘Pac, I’m not trying to be Death Row.”

I can understand your motivation, Death Row put out a lot of good music. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle and Tupac’s AllEyez on Me are seminal hip-hop albums, all released on Death Row Records under Suge Knight. Then there is the whole he’s a blood, you’re a blood thing, which is sort of understandable, if not lamentable. That’s good that you’re not trying to be Tupac though, because according to the best evidence, Suge Knight had Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls killed. Or at least, that’s the opinion of former Robbery-Homicide detective Russell Poole who was assigned to the investigation of Biggie’s murder, detailed along with further investigation in his book compiled by Randall Sullivan, the subtitle of which is condemning enough, “Labyrinth: A Detective investigates the murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the implications of Death Row Records’ Suge Knight and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal.” According to Poole’s theory, Tupac was killed by Knight for attempting to break away from Death Row Records, and Biggie Smalls was killed to put suspicion on a fictitious east coast/west coast feud.

Poole sets it out that Tupac, who was recruited to the label from jail in exchange for Knight using Death Row resources to help with both his money troubles and secure his release from jail, had made attempts to break from the label. Suge Knight ostensibly invited Tupac to the now infamous Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas to show that there were no hard feelings. Following the fight, Shakur’s bodyguard saw one of Suge’s bodyguard’s whisper in ‘Pac’s ear, prompting him to assault a Southside Crip on the other side of the hall. It is this Crip, Orlando Anderson who would later be blamed for Tupac’s death by drive-by on the strip, and later testified defending his supposed sworn enemy, Suge Knight, leading the judge to believe he was in the pay of Knight. After this time, the case is still unresolved due to the highly embarrassing involvement of off-duty LAPD officers working as security for Death Row Records, and the subsequent efforts to cover up the dirt.

It was one dirty cop, Officer David Mack who was the connection the deaths of Tupac and Biggie and Suge Knight. After being arrested for an unrelated bank robbery, he bragged in jail about being a Mob Piru Blood (with whom Suge Knight is associated) and was visited by one Amir Muhammad. A reliable informant had said that the shooter in the Biggie case was a contract killer and member of the Fruit of Islam, the elite security division of the Nation of Islam (Have you seen the Wire, Waka? I saw an internet rumour that Brother Mouzone was based on this guy). Anyway, David Mack and Amir Muhammad became friends in the University of Oregon in the late 1970’s, and Amir bore a distinct resemblance to the composite sketch of Biggie’s shooter. If you want to read a detailed account of the Sisyphean legal attempts being made against Suge Knight and the mountain of evidence implicating him, as well as the institutional pathologies of the LAPD, Randall Sullivan has an excellent thirteen page long article on Rollingstone.com. But that’s beside my point, my point being that Suge Knight is a bad man. You say that you’re not trying to be ‘Pac, but you named your debut album Flockaveli, knowing full well that Tupac’s last album was under the pseudonym Makaveli! Are you trying to trick us? Then last week you tweeted about going going, back to Cali Cali, like a certain east coast notorious rapper sang. The parallels are getting too weird for me Waka, and I don’t want to see another young rapper exploited and killed by the criminal Suge Knight.

Just be careful about how you break it off.

Your friend,
Tommy Gavin