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Hey, Sal. Hank. What's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Slow Burn is a production of Slate Plus, Slate's membership program. Slate plus members get an entire bonus episode of the show every week with all kinds of extra material, exclusive interviews, roundtables, and more of the crazy stuff we found while researching the show. Joining Slate plus is also a great way to support this show and our other podcasts. If you like Slow Burn, help us make it. Join Slate Plus@slate.com Slowburn for just $35 for your first year. Slate plus members also get their Slate podcast with no ads. Not even this one. Okay, here's episode five of Slow Burn. This podcast has language that might be offensive to some listeners. Previously on Slow Burn. Hip hop's east coast, west coast feud heats up the Notorious B.I.G. records. Who Shot ya? Tupac Shakur tells Vibe magazine that Big E and Sean Puffy Combs had something to do with the shooting at Quad Studios. Tupac then signs with Suge Knight's Death Row Records, and Suge helps bail him out of prison. Back in California, Tupac is ready to restart his career and settle old scores. In the fall of 1995, the Notorious B.I.G. was blowing up. The 23 year old's debut album, Ready to Die, was certified double platinum. He was a fixture on radio and mtv. The sitcom Martin even built an entire episode around him. Man, say what? Biggie Smalls in the house. What's happening, baby? Baby, you the man. If I had your hands, I'd cut mine off. Then you wouldn't be able to count all that loot you making, man. And if you don't know, now you know. That's right, that's right. Biggie was constantly on the road that year, touring from city to city. He was also promoting the debut album from his proteges, Junior mafia. And he was collaborating with everyone from the R and B group 112 to Michael Jackson to Shaquille O'. Neal. Christopher Wallace found celebrity dizzying but thrilling, and Biggie made sure his friends came along for the ride. Here's one of those friends, Chico Delveque of Junior Mafia. Man, that was a beautiful life. We had Fun, man, we had fun. Beverly, man, we had fun, man. We traveled the world, man. We went around. We ain't let nothing bother us, man. Biggie had started dating Faith Evans a year earlier. Evans was the first female artist signed to Puffy Combs Bad Boy Records. She and Biggie met at a photo shoot. They got married after two months. Their honeymoon period was blissful, but very short. Biggie started cheating with other women almost right away. And eventually Evans started having flings too. By October 1995, she'd moved out of their Brooklyn apartment. A year later, Evans talked about her relationship with Biggie on the TV show Video Music Box. In the interview, she sounded totally exasperated with her husband. As far as me and him, I don't really. We don't really interact right now. Cause I think he's being kind of tasteless about the way he's doing a lot of things. We are legally married, but we don't live together, anything like that. Every once in a while we run into each other, but as of right now, I'm kind of bitter. Around that time, Evans was busy promoting her music and working as a songwriter. As tensions rose between the east and west coast rap scenes, she spent a lot of her time flying between New York and Los Angeles. On one of those trips to la, she met Tupac Shakur. It was just a few days after he'd gotten out of prison when Suge Knight brokered Tupac's release. He'd promised that Death Row would make him a bigger star. Tupac, in turn, had promised Suge that he'd make Death Row the biggest label in the world. Can Am's studio didn't look like the place to stage a world takeover. It was a nondescript brown brick building located in an industrial park in California's San Fernando Valley. At Can Am, Tupac worked furiously. He had legal fees to pay off. And he wanted the world to know that the past couple of years, the arrest, the prison time, the Quad shooting, had only made him stronger. Tupac smoked weed and cigarettes, drank Hennessy and pumped out song after song. He spent as much as 19 hours a day in the studio. The R and B singer Danny Boy, who was signed to Death Row, worked with Tupac at Can Am should built a bedroom in the office for himself and, you know, showering this at the studio. We like staying in the studio. Cause Pac ain't leaving. Tupac's work was driven by pain and rage. He still believed that Biggie and Puffy were responsible for the shooting at Quad Studios. He tallied up all the slights he thought they directed at him. He'd been dwelling on it for a year. In prison, Tupac made plans for revenge. Frank Alexander, who worked as Tupac's bodyguard, said the one thing that kept Tupac going was the thought that when he got out, he was gonna sleep with Biggie's wife. Tupac didn't wait long to start trying to step to her. He was that guy who would sit up there and plot for months. You know, that was the way he thought. That's Allison Samuels, who wrote about hip hop for Newsweek in the 90s. What other better way to get back at someone, a man, than hey, I have your girl? Here's how Faith Evans tells the story in her autobiography. She was at a club in LA when she ran into her friend Tretch, the leader of the rap group Naughty by Nature. Tretch told her that Tupac was at the club too, and that he wanted to meet her. Tupac flattered her, telling her that he listened to her music every day while he was in prison. He asked her to sing on his next record. Evan said she'd do it for $25,000, and Tupac agreed. Not long after that, they both ended up at the same event, a launch party for the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack. That album was a showcase for the era's biggest female RB artist, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, tlc, and Evans herself. Although Tupac and Evans didn't go together, he walked with her down the red carpet and he sat at her table all night. He was very publicly staking a claim. In her memoir, Evans wrote, I saw Whitney Houston from across the room and she gave me a look that said, oh, word, you're with him. And my heart sank. Later that night, Tupac jumped into Evans limo and rode to an after party with her. They agreed to record together in a few days. Tupac said that he'd send a car to bring her to the studio. When the car came, it was a convertible and Tupac was driving it himself. Evans says she was shocked when they pulled up at the Death Row studio. She claims that before that day, he she had known that Tupac had signed with Suge Knight's label. Evans waited to be called in, recorded her part and asked for her check. Tupac said he'd give her the money at his hotel. When they got there, he told her, I love New York, but I'm not fucking with New York right now, cuz nigga set me up. That night when she asked for the money again, Tupac said If I give it to you, then you my bitch. He suggested that she perform oral sex on him. She left without the check. Evans has always maintained that she never had sex with Tupac. Tupac would tell a very different story. How did Faith Evans get caught up in the feud between Bad Boy and Death Row? How did Biggie respond to Tupac's attempts at vengeance? And in a rap beef, are there lines that you should never cross? This is Slow Burn. I'm your host, Joel Anderson. This is episode five, Wrath of a Menace. Maybe Suge Knight felt threatened by Puffy Combs success. Maybe Suge thought a beef between Death Row and Puffy's Bad Boy Records would be good for business. Or maybe Suge just felt most comfortable in an atmosphere of hostility. No matter the explanation, Suge was doing everything he could to stoke a conflict. According to a column in Billboard, Puffy skipped an industry convention in Miami because of threats from Suge. Here's the writer and former music executive, Dan Charnas. I believe that this beef is really about the small mindedness and insecurity of Suge Knight. The R and B singer Danny Boy was part of Suge's entourage. He remembers that Suge made a point of entertaining one of Puffy's ex girlfriends. Oh yeah, Suge, like that was Suge's way of getting to you too, like, like I'm gonna get your girl. And he got her. Like I don't give a damn who you was. For a long time, Puffy and Bad Boy refused to take the bait. And then finally the fight became two sided. What made Bad Boy crack was Death Row coming onto their turf. In December 1995, Suge Knight sent Snoop Dogg and the Dog Pound back east to film a video for the group's new single New York New York. The song itself isn't particularly incendiary. It's a five minute boast from Dog Pound member corrupt. The only time New York gets mentioned is is in the hook, which is sung by Snoop. Even though the song was innocuous, shooting the video in New York might have seemed like a provocation. To make things worse, the song was built on a beat that Biggie had already used in a commercial for St. Odds Malt Liquor. I know you thinking well God damn, what he drinking? The crooked letter no what the beer feel better I used to be your husband. Biggie responded by calling into a local hip hop station. Here's Reggie Wright, Death Row's head of security. After Biggie got on the radio and was like, how these dudes out here Filming this on this New York, New York video. When we gonna allow this to happen? Was Biggie being playful or was he trying to incite his hometown? There's no way to know, but at least one person took the on air instigation seriously. Shortly after Biggie made that call, someone fired shots on the video set in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The bullets were aimed at the trailer where Snoop and the Dog Pound were hanging out. No one was hurt, and no one was ever identified as the gunman. After the shooting, the Dog Pound added a new scene to the video. It showed the group rampaging through New York like Godzilla, destroying the skyline and crushing cars in the streets. That wasn't nearly enough wreckage for Tupac. He saw this latest shooting as yet another personal attack, and he took offense to them. They doing this. They just. They were just around when I got shot at the studio, and now they're gonna shoot up the trailer because I'm with y'. All. I'm with y' all for two months, and now they shooting at y'. All. Tupac had launched his own revenge plot against Bad Boy Records well before the shooting on the Brooklyn video set. That plot centered on Faith Evans. In November 1995, he'd met his old acquaintance Kevin Powell on a different video set. That was a shoot for California love in the desert about 100 miles from LA. And I remember getting to the set and, you know, looking for Pac. Finally someone said, there's this trail over there. And I remember knocking on the door. You know, the door opened somehow and a gust of marijuana smoke came out. And I was. I was just like, oh. Because I remember in the Rikers island interview, Tupac saying he wasn't gonna smoke weed anymore, but there he was. This was Powell's third interview with Tupac in three years. He thought the star wasn't in good shape, but I remember thinking to myself, my gosh, this is not gonna end well, you know, because it seemed like this was a desperation move for Pac, you know, to be in this space. Powell's story, headlined Live from Death Row, came out in the February 1996 issue of Vibe magazine. In the story, Powell quoted an anonymous source saying, Tupac and Faith are now very, very close. Asked about the relationship, Tupac said, you know, I don't kiss and tell. Right around that time, the New York Times Magazine published a profile of Suge Knight. In the article, Suge teases Tupac about his fancy patterned shirt and claims that Evans bought it for him. And how did you thank her, Tupac? Suge asks. I Did enough. Tupac replies in a tone that the writer Lynn Hirshberg describes as rather salacious. It was a new low in a rapidly spiraling conflict. Here's Keirna Mayo, who was a staff writer at the Source. It's almost as if Faith wasn't a full human being. Women in particular, those of us who were writing about it, talking about it, you know, just chalked this up as yet another example of, you know, a woman being used as the pawn in between male beef. Faith Evans would later say that the story in the New York Times Magazine sent Biggie into a jealous rage. She said that he practically beat down the door of her hotel room, screamed and cursed at her, grabbed her arms and shook her. Still, a little while later, they reconciled briefly and conceived a son, Christopher Jordan Wallace. Let's take a quick break. Tupac's fourth album, All Eyes on Me, came out in February 1996, just four months after he was released from prison. The 27 songs, all of which he recorded in those marathon sessions at can am, were less thoughtful and less political than his earlier work. Now he sounded like the reckless gangster rapper his critics had long accused him of being. It was my only wish to rise above these jealous, coward motherfuckers I despise. When it's time to rise, I was the first officer. Give me the nine. I'm ready to die right here tonight. Motherfuck. They like. Music journalist Cheo Hodari Koker wrote that All Eyes on Me finds the rapper even more venomous than he was before his incarceration for sexual abuse. You can hear all that venom on the song Wonder why They Call youl Bitch. It's the track that Tupac had asked Faith Evans to sing on, although she's not credited on it. In episode four, you heard about C. Delores Tucker, the activist who accused Tupac and other rappers of objectifying and disrespecting women. And wonder why they call you bitch. Tupac responded to that charge. Dear Ms. Delores Tucker, right, you keep stressing me, fucking with a motherfucking mind. I figured you wanted to know, you know, why we call them hoes bitches. Maybe this might help you understand it ain't personal. Strictly business, baby. Strictly business. Allison Samuel says Tupac changed after Ayanna Jackson accused him of sexual abuse. Everything, I think, was a result of that case because he felt like he had been lied on. I think it absolutely soured him on his faith in people. I think he lost trust in people after that, and I think it made him incredibly angry. At women. Pac was an artist capable of real depth and empathy. If anyone should have been able to rise above misogynistic tropes, it was Tupac. What does it say about him that he didn't? Here's Samuels again. Hip hop doesn't do right by women in particular, to me, women of color. What would doing right look like? Not overly sexualizing women in the videos, not over sexualizing relationships and songs, you know, just sort of having more of a respectful tone. And it sounds old school to say that, but the fact that he thought getting back at Biggie was through his woman, which was the most insulting and degrading thing he could do to Faith, the fact that he didn't care that he was degrading her, you know, understanding that there are human feelings connected to you, sort of just disregarding a person and thinking that they're not, you know, that they're second class citizens. I'm not gonna make an excuse for hip hop here, but I'm gonna ask you, is that a hip hop problem or is that a man problem? It. Yeah, I think it's a man problem. I think it's in hip hop again, because I think a lot of times with a lot of young rappers, when I talk to them, I feel like a lot of them are coming into the game. They get this fame, they get this money, and they have no outlet. They have no one to talk to, they have no one to sort of guide them. And so I think it can be maybe intensified in hip hop because a lot of them are coming from backgrounds where they didn't have that guidance. Thanks to Tupac, Faith Evans became a punchline. And there were plenty of folks in hip hop who were happy to laugh along. A column in Vibe is the new slimmer Faith losing weight from all that running back and forth between the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac. Evans knew she was being used in her 1996 interview with video Music Box. You can hear that she was fed up with it, but all the stories that he concocted and all that, I mean, he ain't got to do that. I mean, if they got beef with each other, him and Big, then they are two men. They need to go at each other and not, you know what I'm saying? Okay, I ain't got nothing to do with him. I did, you know, here's Kierna Mayo again. Like, it was fucked up. Definitely. It was horrible. In addition to what she was suffering in. In the marriage, in the context of all of that and being an artist on Bad Boy, like just all of it. When you just think about it in hindsight, unbelievable. Like she's a survivor. We're gonna take a timeout. With the release of All Eyes on Me, Tupac again proved there was a huge market for the kind of music C Delores Tucker called pornography. The double album went straight to number one on the Billboard charts. Suge Knight had made good on his promise to Tupac. Death Row had made him a bigger star. That stardom though, had come at the expense of other Death Row artists. Here's Reggie Wright. He had Dre and Snoop at that time. And the Dog Pound album was out doing well. It kind of got pushed to the side because of Pac coming. One of the people who got pushed to the side was Death row's other founder, Dr. Dre. Dre had been working on California Love on his own. Suge insisted that Dre put Tupac on the song. It was Pac's first single off All Eyes On Me. More than any other track on that album, California Love sounds like a celebration. Out of the bail fresh out of jail California dreaming Soon as I step on the scene I'm hearing Hoochie screaming Feigning for money and alcohol for life Of a West side player with cavaci and a strong ball Only in Cali will we riot, not rally to live in die California Love turned out to be the biggest hit of Tupac's career. It would also be one of Dre's final songs for death row. The 30 year old producer had gotten tired of the labels gangster theatrics. If it keeps going this way, Dr. Dre said, pretty soon n from the east coast ain't gonna be able to come out here. And vice versa. On March 29, 1996, the East coast and West coast scenes converged at the Soul Train Awards in Los Angeles. It was the first time Tupac and Biggie were in the same room since the shooting at Quad Studios. It was a triumphant night for both of them. Tupac's Me against the World, his last record before joining Death Row, won Best Rap Album. Biggie's One More Chance remix took Song of the Year. First things first. I pop on freaks all the honeys, dummies, playboy bunnies, those wanting money, those the ones I like. At the awards show, Biggie performed One More Chance in a black tux and a black bowler hat. Puffy sat on the stage at a white piano. Faith Evans sang the hook. It was the fulfillment of Puffy's vision of elegant showmanship. A far cry from Death Row's gangster image. Here's Larry Hester, a hip hop writer known as the Black Spot. Hester profiled Bad Boy records for the September 1996 issue of Vibe. We seen them start from the bottom and work their way to the top and then reap the rewards. And they showed us everything that they reaped again and again and again. This was still the West Coast. Biggie heard some boos from the LA audience when he shouted out Brooklyn during his acceptance speech. But the real hostility came after the show was over. Biggie and his crew were waiting for their cars when a black Hummer pulled up. The window rolled down. It was Tupac. West side. Fuck y'. All. Tupac yelled at Biggie as chaos broke out around them. Biggie just stood and stared at his old friend Larry. Hester said Biggie couldn't believe that Tupac was this far gone. He says Pac was out the window screaming, you know, west side and all that stuff like that. He was really confused, you know, and Big just wanted it to stop. In the middle of all this, someone screamed, he's got a gun. Biggie got hustled into a limo and hurried away from the scene. It was the last time Biggie and Tupac would ever look each other in the eye publicly. Biggie tried to brush off his feud with Tupac. He contributed some verses to Brooklyn's Finest, a song by an up and coming rapper named Jay Z. In the song, Biggie made a joke out of the idea that Tupac and Faith Evans had slept together. Time to separate the pros from the con. As for Tupac, he took his beef with Biggie to a place that rap feuds normally didn't go. Hit' Em up came out two months after the Soul Train Awards. It was one of the most brutal diss tracks in the history of hip hop. Tupac didn't just boast that he'd had sex with Faith Evans. He also threatened some of the biggest names in east coast rap. Puffy Jr. Mafia, Mobb Deep, Lil Kim, Lil Kim don't fuck around with real GS quick to snatch your ugly ass off the streets so fuck Beast I'll let them niggas know it's all for life don't let the west side Robin Pretty much everyone thought that Tupac had gone too far. I was like, wow, you know, this is crazy. I have a copy of the album with the hit Hit him up and oh, I didn't like that, man. I heard it for the very first time. I never played it again. Everything was moving into a space that was beyond the pale. I mean, the whole damn thing was, was there. Would it be safe to assume that violence would follow? Yes. But Biggie never threatened to retaliate for hit him up. In a story for Vibe, he told Larry Hester that the song said more about Tupac than it did about him or Faith Evans. If the motherfucker really did fuck Faye, that's foul how he's just blowing her like that. Never once did he say that Faye did some foul shit to him. If Honey was to give you the pussy, why would you disrespect her like that? Biggie's crew felt that Tupac's dis demanded a response. Here's Chico Delveque, a member of Junior Mafia. After a while, a few guys in the group was like, man, let's just do some diss songs and get at these dudes, man, let's get at Big was like, nah, man, leave that alone, man. Like, come on, man, let's just stay focused on what we gotta do. And that's what we did. We left it alone. But leaving it alone wasn't enough to make it stop. Next week on Slow Burn Vegas. Slow Burn is a production of Slate plus, Slate's membership program. You can sign up for Slate plus to hear a bonus episode of the show this week and every week this season. In this week's bonus episode, you'll hear an extended interview with Larry Hester, a former staff writer with Vibe magazine. I talked with him about interviewing Biggie and Puffy in the midst of their beef with Death Row Records. To hear it, sign up for Slate plus and Slate. Slate.com slowburn slowburn is produced by me and Christopher Johnson, with editorial direction by Josh Levine and Gabriel Ross. Sophie Summergrad is our researcher. Our mix engineers are Jared Paul and Paul Mounsey. Don Will composed our theme song. The artwork for Slow Burn is by Lisa Larson Walker. Special thanks to Slate's Child 2 Darie Johnson, Chris Melanfy Lo and Liu, Allison Benedict and Jared Holt. You can find a full list of books, articles and documentaries used to research this episode on our show page. And by the way, we created a playlist on Spotify to go with this season. We'll be updating it each week with new episodes and songs by Tupac, Biggie and their collaborators. Check it out every week at the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. Peace. When it's this cold curl up with a snack that's cozy and delicious like my mochi ice cream My mochi is scoops of premium ice cream wrapped in soft dough with delicious flavors like strawberry and mango. It's creamy on the inside and chewy on the outside, and only 70 calories apiece. Grab a warm blanket and snuggle up with a purple box of my mochi ice cream today. It's the perfect wintertime treat. Why does every recipe I try need 18 ingredients, including a jar of something paste I'll never use again but will sit in my fridge for nine months? I just want dinner in the oven fast. That's why I love Blue Apron's new One Pan Assemble and Bake Meals. They send you fresh ingredients that are already chopped. All you do is put it all together and bake. That's it. No chopping, no weird leftovers. 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