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I always had a private doctor. I didn't think I needed VA care. Then I learned VA is ranked above private care systems nearby and cost less. I'm getting the best care of my life with providers trained to treat veterans. Get what you earn. Visit choose.va.gov not all veterans are eligible for the type or amount of benefits mentioned here. 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 six of Slow Burn. This podcast has language that some people might find offensive. On June 23, 1996, four LAPD officers went to the headquarters of Death Row Records to verbally admonish the record label. The officers had issued that warning at the behest of Death Row's neighbors in the suburban enclave of Tarzana. There had been complaints about armed gang members coming and going. There were increasing reports of assaults, auto thefts, and armed robberies. This might have been a particularly observant neighborhood watch, or it could have been a case of racial profiling. But it was true that Death Row had become a hangout for gangsters, and not just the Bloods that labelhead Suge Knight rolled with. There'd be Crips on one side on couches and, you know, Bloods on the other side. Cause Snoop was Crip affiliated at that point. That's Lee Savage, co director of the documentary welcome to Death Row. And there'd be a donnybrook. It was this thing of violent episodes. And there's this sense that, oh well, to be authentic and to authenticate this music, we need to have the real, genuine articles that we're talking about in this music here in the mix. Reggie Wright, Death Row's head of security, says those tough guys served a purpose. And people always ask me, why didn't you always let have those gang guys around and all of that. You needed them because you can't have your security guys going walking up to the club in New Orleans or wherever, hey, where's the weed at? Or go get that chick number for me. I want to holler at her. And plus Gutter Niggas recognize gutter dudes when they notice some. Some other dudes that had that look, that penitentiary look, or usually done did sometime or done heard who they were. He was like, nah, I don't think we gonna run on for no niggas right now. You knew those dudes were bothered. When he signed with Death Row, Tupac Shakur publicly embraced that gangster ethos. He got the letters MOB tattooed on his right triceps. He said it meant money, organization, and business, but. But some people took it to refer to the mob Piru, a faction of Bloods from Compton. It was 1996, and Tupac was the biggest star in hip hop. But Death Row was starting to fall apart. Snoop was on trial for murder in a case stemming from an altercation near his house three years earlier. After he was acquitted that February, he started to distance himself from the gangsta life. The month after Snoop's acquittal, Dr. Dre announced that he was leaving Death Row. He'd grown weary of the violence surrounding Suge, and he wasn't eager to work with some of the label's newer artists, including Tupac. Dre, at some level, just was not that hot on Tupac. So I think that's where it's like, Tupac, Tupac, Tupac. And it's suddenly, Suge is just obsessed with Tupac. And it just. It rubbed Dre the wrong way. Tupac came to feel the same about Dr. Dream. He was bothered that Dre never showed up at Snoop's trial, and he thought Dre didn't do enough to support Death Row and its beef with Bad Boy Records. Reggie Wright says Tupac would constantly remind his Death Row colleagues that Dre wasn't a good label mate. He was the one that pointed things out to us. He was the one that was like, that's a disloyal motherfucker. I don't want to be around him. I ain't feeling him. Tupac's resentment of Dre became increasingly obvious. Death Row's publicist, George Price, says that the first draft of the art for Tupac's follow up to All Eyes On Me showed Dre getting sodomized. I said, suge, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna allow you to put that out. I took all that shit off of there. Tupac put that same kind of homophobic taunting into the next single he was planning to release. Toss it Up. Plot and child's play Check your sexuality as fruity as the Salisate Quick to jump ship punk trick what a dumb Move cross Death Row now. Who you gonna run to? Dr. Dre addressed Death Row's smear campaign in the October 1996 issue of Vibe. He said, it's just a lot of negative bullshit. So from here on out, Death Row records don't even exist. To Dre, it seemed like Tupac and Death Row were going to ride together, everyone else be damned. That's how it looked from the outside at least. But even as Tupac was calling out Dre for disloyalty, he was making his own moves away from death row. In 1996, Tupac formed his own production company, Euphanasia. He was making plans to start a label under his new stage name, Machiavelli. He also spent much of that spring and summer filming two Gridlocked and gang related. He told people in the film business that he wanted to start working on different kinds of projects. A western starring young black actors and a movie about the uprising led by enslaved preacher Nat Turner. Here's Allison Samuels, who covered hip hop for Newsweek. I think he knew Death Row was going to be a roadblock for him because none of the major studios, those people weren't gonna deal with that, you know. Cause you didn't know if Suge was gonna go out and beat somebody up. You don't know. And nobody's gonna do business with you with that. The surest sign that Tupac was considering a different direction came on August 27, 1996. That's when he fired Death Row attorney David Kenner. Kenner was a former defense attorney who'd made his name representing drug traffickers. He came to power at Death Row by attaching himself to Suge Knight. Kenner got Suge and Death Row's artists out of a bunch of legal jams. And he came to play a big role in the label's day to day operations. You knew he was the power in some ways. You know, he was definitely the guy who made things work. It was Kenner who had engineered Tupac's release from prison. But first, Tupac had signed a contract with Death Row, an agreement that also made Kenner his legal representative. Once he was on the outside, Tupac grew frustrated with that arrangement. One of his other lawyers later said Kenner was less than transparent about money Tupac was owed. The final straw came when Kenner denied Tupac access to some music he'd been working on in the studio. That's when Tupac fired him, a move that some friends and outside observers considered rash. To cut ties with David Kenner as Tupac did was a very big deal. You knew that was that first strike, and it was a big strike to say, I'm. I'm out. Death Row's publicist, George Price, says he came to believe that Tupac's loyalty only went so far. Tupac wanted to start his own company, and that's why he was doing what he was doing with Death Row, to make that money that he needed. That's the only thing that Suge and I would differ on because, you know, he wanted to say that they were such close friends. And I believe that Suge really thought that was the case, but it was not the case. As far as Tupac was concerned, Tupac was using Death Row as a means toward an end. In less than two years, Tupac had been shot five times, gotten convicted of sexual abuse, and been locked up in a maximum security prison. He'd become increasingly paranoid, defensive, and hostile. He'd also released two number one albums and become the most famous rapper in the world. It often seemed like Tupac couldn't think more than one second ahead. But he also appeared to understand on some level that he couldn't keep acting that way forever. He had to make a decision about what kind of career he wanted to have and what kind of life he wanted to live. In the summer of 1996, he was increasingly essential to the survival of Death Row Records and increasingly ready to strike out on his own. He was on the verge of making a choice. And then he went to Las Vegas. What happened in Tupac Shakur's final hours? How close was he to quitting the gangster rap life? And how would one last reckless act come to define his legacy? This is Slow Burn. I'm your host, Joel Anderson. This is episode six, Till somebody kills you. In 1996, Mike Tyson was close to finishing his comeback. Tyson had been convicted of raping 18 year old Desiree Washington in 1992. He'd served three years. Now he was out and on a mission to win back the three championship belts he'd lost back in 1990. He'd regained one title by battering Frank Bruno in March 1996. Now, six months later, he was making a run at another one by going up against Bruce Seldon. It wasn't going to be that big a challenge. Seldon was far from the best heavyweight in the world. That was probably Lennox Lewis. But Tyson had paid Lewis $4 million to stand down. He was doing what it took to get back on top. Tupac Shakur saw Tyson as a kindred spirit. They'd both had Tough childhoods and those experiences had made both of them into fighters. At the height of their careers, they'd gone to prison after juries found them guilty of sexual violence. They both saw themselves as victims. When Suge Knight pushed Tupac to go to Vegas to see the title fight, Tupac rearranged his schedule so he could go. There was nothing he loved more than seeing Mike Tyson beat somebody up. Suge had roots in Vegas. He'd gone to school and played football at unlv. He'd bought a mansion there with his music business money. A house he'd seen in the movie Casino. It was two doors down from where Mike Tyson lived. Every other place that we went to, we knew it was work. But Vegas was just a place that we came to relax and enjoy. That's the R and B singer Danny Boy. He was part of the crew of Death Row affiliates. Who made the trip? All the Suge homies. We were probably 100 and something cars deep. The night of September 7, 1996, was a big one for Suge. He was running a nightclub in Vegas, Club 662. And there was going to be a party there after the fight. The rapper Craig Mack was scheduled to perform. Here's Reggie Wright again. Craig Mack was like, his signing party is going to be signed to Death Row East. Death Row east was Suge's expansion plan, his attempt to move in on Puffy's turf. Craig Mack had a hit a couple years earlier with flavor in your ear. It was on Bad Boy Biggie had a verse on the remix. Signing Craig Mack the Death Row would be a coup and a statement of purpose. It's not clear how firm these Death Row east plans really were. Craig Mac, who died in 2018, said the reports that he'd signed with Suge were premature. But if Suge was trying to bait his east coast rivals, Reggie Wright assumed they were on safe ground. We're on the West Coast. The last thing that was on our mind was getting in trouble with in Vegas. Let's take a quick time out. When Mike Tyson walked to the ring to face Bruce Seldon, there was a new Tupac song bumping from the speakers at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. The track was called let's get it on, and it featured a promo for the party at 662. All right, this ain't gonna last long. Y' all know how Tyson do it, so we gonna watch him beat this boy silly. And then we gonna all go party at six six two's mob staff. So Tyson, do your thing. Boy, do your thing. Let's get it on now yes, let's get it on. In the blue corner tonight, challenging for the title, please welcome the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Introducing the one and only Iron Mike Tyson. Tupac was right. The fight didn't last long. Tyson knocked Seldon down twice in the first round and the ref stop the bout after just 109 seconds. As soon as it was over, fans started chanting, fix, fix. Fix. The winner by way of technical knockout is the new WBA heavyweight champion of the world, Iron Mike Tyson. I agree with the fans and their reaction. A very unpopular victory here from Mike Tyson. There's no evidence that Seldon took a dive. And not everyone in the arena was disappointed with what they'd seen. Tupac's bodyguard, Frank Alexander said Tupac was thrilled by the fight and jumping around hysterically. 50 blows. I counted them, Tupac told his entourage. Then Tupac and the Death Row crew headed for the floor of the MGM Grand. Some of the people in that Death Row group were members of the Bloods. One was a guy named Trayvon Lane. A couple months earlier, Lane had been jumped by a group of Crips in a footlocker at a mall. They'd taken his chain, which had a diamond covered Death Row pendant. At the casino, Lane spotted one of the guys who'd attacked him in the shoe store. He pointed them out to Tupac. Tupac had a history of acting incautiously. He'd started fights and menaced gangsters and hitmen. He'd released a track in which he'd violently threatened a long list of prominent east coast rappers. But now, flush with success and high from the rush of the Tyson knockout, he did something as reckless as he'd ever done. Here's Reggie Wright. I hate that Pac, showing his loyalty, took off and did what he did. What Tupac did is chase after the Crip who'd stolen Trayvon Lane's pendant. His name was Orlando Anderson. He was 22 years old. You can see the blurry footage from the MGM security cameras on YouTube. Tupac appears from the left in a flash, having already landed a punch. He then follows up with a kick as his crew joins in pummeling Anderson. Pac should not have been that close to the action. That's Alex Alonso, a sociologist who studies gangs in la. He's your number one artist and you're walking around with him like he's a member of Ma Piru. And it just shouldn't have went down that way. In that moment, Tupac was no longer a performer. He was a gangster. Casino security broke up the beatdown and the Death Row crew hustled out of the casino. Tupac was still pumped. I took him out faster than Tyson, he boasted to Frank Alexander as they walked back to their hotel. For Pac, Alexander wrote in his memoir, bragging after a fight was like having a smoke after sex. Tupac and his team stopped at the hotel, then stopped at Suge's house. Finally, they headed to Club 662. Tupac rode in the passenger seat of Suge's new BMW 750. They were blasting Tupac's new album so loud that a bike cop told them to turn it down. At about 11:17pm Suge stopped his car at a red light. Frank Alexander was in the car behind them. He watched as a white Cadillac rolled up next to Suge's BMW. Then he saw an arm come out of the Cadillac's window, then a.40 caliber Glock pistol. Tupac Shakur was riding in this black BMW when the gunfire erupted. Shakur was shot several times in the chest. The driver, his record producer, was grazed in the head. Witnesses say Tupac tried to scramble over his seat to dodge the gunfire, but he wasn't able to escape. He got two bullets in his chest, one in his leg and another in his hand. Suge wasn't seriously hurt. He floored the BMW and made a U turn into traffic, sending vehicles scrambling across the road. The shooter's car peeled off and made a right turn. When the smoke cleared, it was gone. We'll be back in a second. Danny Boy had already made it to Club 662 for the after party. He was waiting on the death row contingent to arrive. Sugam wasn't there in the time. I thought that they should have been there neither. And then one of the homies kind of like just busting, you know, through the security, you know, holla. Sugam just got killed up on the Strip. And that's when everything became crazy. Suge was actually treated and released not long after the shooting, but Tupac was in intensive care. Rapper Tupac Shakur remains in critical condition this morning at a Las Vegas hospital after he was shot repeatedly over the weekend. He is severely injured internally. He has multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. On the morning of September 8, Tupac underwent emergency surgery. His mother afeney rushed to his side. Friends and supporters, including Tyson, Jasmine Guy and Jesse Jackson were there, too. One family member told a reporter that Tupac would pull through. After all, he'd survived a shooting before. You Know, he was, he was just, he was embarrassed, but you didn't think that he was. He was gonna die. While Tupac was in the hospital, there were rumors about possible gang related retaliation. People were making threats, saying that they were gonna finish what they started. A Bad Boy employee reported getting a death threat and some Bad Boy artists canceled appearances. In Compton, there was a flurry of gang related violence with at least three people killed. It was just a hint of the warfare that was coming. Suge Knight gave a brief statement to Las Vegas Police. He described the casino fight as mere pushing and shoving. He downplayed rumors that the east coast west coast beef might have played a role in the attack, though he did tell police that Death Row may have been a target because we sell more records. On his second day at the hospital, doctors operated on Tupac again, this time to remove his right lung. After that operation, he momentarily opened his eyes, raising hope that he might make it. On September 12, Tupac started convulsing violently. His doctors were afraid he'd hurt himself, so they put him into a coma. On September 13, six days after he was shot, Tupac had to be resuscitated several times. His mother, Afeney eventually told the doctors to stop trying. This is Dale Pugh, marketing and public relations director for University Medical Center. This message is being recorded at approximately 5:15 on Friday, September 13. Tupac Shakur passed away today at University Medical center at approximately 4:03pm Kevin Powell had been keeping vigil in Vegas when Tupac died. He wandered out of his hotel in a daze. There was mad people out there. There was a lot of Hummers. Everybody was playing Tupac's music. I had some liquor. I went to that corner and I poured liquor on the ground. And I remember just crying and I was drunk and I don't remember anything else. Most mainstream news outlets told the story of a young man destined for an early death. Good evening. A controversial rap artist who led a troubled existence has lost. Lost his fight for life. He had already survived one near fatal shooting, but he couldn't survive a second. Rap star Tupac Shakur died last night after a brief life in a rough business. He was 25. Allison Samuel said it was a challenge to get our editors at Newsweek to see Tupac as something other than a gangster rapper. I think they still didn't understand this. This is going to be someone. This is a legend. And they wanted him in all the, you know, gang pedantic and just sort of looking. And I was like, no, we're gonna have him looking wonderful and nice cause there were beautiful pictures of him. And so I was able to go through and just make sure, you know, we did this very respectful tribute to him. The AP's story about Tupac's death quoted the rapper Heavy D. I hope this is a wake up call for a lot of us, he said. Orlando Anderson, the man Tupac and the Death Row crew beat down at the MGM Grand Casino, has long been considered a suspect in Tupac's murder, although he was never charged. You'll hear about the murder investigation in a later episode. Anderson himself was shot and killed in a gang dispute at a Compton car wash two years later. If Anderson was the shooter, that suggests that Tupac's death was just another incident in a long sequence of violence and reprisals within the west coast gang world, that it had nothing to do with rap music, really. Plenty of more intricate theories flourished in the wake of the murder. One of the most widespread holds that Suge Knight was involved, that he saw Tupac pulling away from Death Row and refused to allow it. Knight himself has always denied that he had anything to do with Tupac's killing. There were also rumors centering on Death Row's feud with Bad Boy Records, rumors suggesting that Biggie and Puffy might have had Tupac's blood on their hands. Next week on slow burn. Going back to cali. Foreign. 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 Lee Savage, who co directed the documentary welcome to Death Row and co wrote the movie Straight Outta Compton. He gave us an inside look at Suge, Tupac, Dre and the rise and fall of Death Row. To hear it, Sign up for Slate Plus@slate.com Slowburn Slowburn is produced by me and Christopher Johnson with editorial direction by Josh Levine and Gabriel Roth. 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 ii, Darry 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. Tonight's meal tilapia surprise with boiled cabbage. Begin cooking steps 1 through 50 now. Are you kidding me? Making dinner shouldn't feel like doing a thousand piece puzzle. With Blue Apron's new One Pan Assemble and Bake meals. The hard part's already done. Pre chopped ingredients, zero stress. Just assemble, bake and enjoy. No complicated steps. No mountain of dishes. Try assemble and Bake today. Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20. Terms and conditions apply. Visit BlueApron.com terms for more.