C (3:22)

Right, yes, that's a great point. Because it's conceivable that from their side of it, there's a difference between whatever personal issues Tupac may have with Biggie and whatever their kind of interpersonal difficulties might be and standing up for your coast and defending your coast, especially someone who was as kind of like, as positioned as Biggie was coming very, sort of steadily from Brooklyn, very much like, I'm an East coast rapper, which was a little bit different than where Tupac was coming from. Tupac kind of took that up, whereas Biggie was born and raised, like, down the street from here.

B (3:59)

I mean, it was his turn.

C (4:00)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I'm not trying to make excuses for him or get inside his head, but it's conceivable that those are not the same thing.

A (4:07)

No, absolutely. That's a great point that, you know, Biggie's like, yo, they came onto our turf. These dudes hate us. And they've made it clear. And we just allowed them to shoot a video right in our turf. Like, come on. So, yeah, it doesn't. It's not even really necessarily the same thing as what Tupac and Death Row were doing. That's a great point.

C (4:25)

Well, but, like, from the Tupac side, at least for me, and I think this is. I don't want to speak for you, Joel, but I'm going to. As, like, outside observers, it becomes a kind of slippery slope from the west coast, it seems like, anyway, where it's this slipping between Tupac and Suge taking on each other's beefs and a West coast thing. That's really centered around Death Row and that kind of stuff.

B (4:47)

Yeah. I also like the idea of Biggie calling into, like, a radio show. I feel like that's, like, really old.

C (4:52)

School, like, waiting in the queue.

B (4:54)

Yeah, I know, right? Like, you have to, like, dial in and wait.

C (4:58)

Mr. Smalls, I'm Vicki Smalls calling from Bed Stuy. I just want to say, Brian Lair, that I love your show.

A (5:05)

Okay. Chris from Bed Stuy. How you doing?

C (5:08)

You're on.

A (5:09)

You're on, right? Yeah.

B (5:11)

And that goes into my next question. This episode kind of continues to show how hip hop media at the time was playing a role in building up the hype around this East Coast, west coast feud. Basically that Death Row and Bad Boy were kind of using the press to talk to each other. And so there's already been a lot of back and forth through the magazines and through the radio. And then there comes this Vibe cover story by Kevin Powell on Death Row and a New York Times Magazine article, both of which bring up Tupac and Faith Evans. So as readers or followers of this stuff at the time, did you remember these stories and drama?

C (5:47)

I love that you're basically calling me an old man. No, no, no.

B (5:51)

It wasn't that long ago.

A (5:54)

Way back in the day, before the Internet, right?

C (5:57)

That's right. The answer is, yes, I do. I mean, it's funny now because we're doing all this archival research. Shout to our researcher, Sophie Summer Grad, who's sort of killing the game right now. But, you know, seeing all of these covers, I remember every single one of them. I had a subscription to Vibe, you know, when I couldn't barely afford. You know, I was in college and whatnot. Could barely afford to feed myself. But I had to get my vibes and had to get my sources, and I. All these covers. But what I have to say is that, like, this is before they both got killed.

B (6:26)

Right.

C (6:26)

And so the beef had a very different context, at least for me as a hip hop fan. Beef was this endemic part of rap music. And so this beef between a rapper that, at the time, I was just kind of so. So on, which was Tupac, and an emcee that I was far more interested in. Biggie was like, this is not. This is just a kind of white noise. Because there were all these other. There were other beefs going on. There had been since the dawn of hip hop time, you know, Common and Ice Cube. And I'm trying to remember who else was beefing around that time, but it was such a part of rap Music that like, oh, here's another hip hop beef, right? You know what I mean?

B (7:04)

Like you didn't know what would happen. It didn't seem like the consequences were that high or the stakes were that high.

C (7:09)

At least that's to me. Now other people may have read it differently, and I don't deny that people may have really read this as like escalating this east coast, west coast thing. And I probably also bought into it. I just happened to like hip hop artists from both coasts who weren't in either of these camps. They weren't like this sort of classic so called gangster rap camp. And they also weren't like the Biggie camp. I like those sounds as well. But I knew Cali rappers that I loved and I knew east coast rappers that I loved. And so this beat had its place, but it didn't dominate my sense of like east coast like versus west coast sound, you know what I mean?

D (7:43)

I wasn't.

C (7:43)

That wasn't serious.

B (7:44)

You weren't taking aside. You weren't like.

C (7:47)

Not to say other people didn't, but I didn't.

B (7:49)

Yeah.

A (7:50)

So in terms of what I remember about that time, I definitely remember Hit Em Up. I definitely remember watching on mtv. Cause I mean, for people of a certain age, you know, MTV was must see tv, right? And so I was constantly watching it just to see videos. I mean, back then they played videos and that makes me sound really old too. So I remember like this like iconic scene of like Tupac flashing the dollar bills and you know, with sugar from the set of the California Love video and talking about how he and Faith Evans, you know, there was a lot of love in the studio and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, like, like Christopher said, like there's just a big piece of it that like for a lot of the other stuff, they might as well have been speaking in code because there's only so much of it. What was going on behind the scenes, we could know. Like it's not. We only could know what they would tell us. And so one thing that was very helpful though is that Tupac was very explicit. You know, he would, you know, go out of his way to say exactly what happened or what he thought happened. And that just didn't happen in most other hip hop beefs. Like it was a lot more subtle or that, you know, it just hints to incidents that it happened that you just like, man, what is common talking about? Or you know, what are these dudes? What world are they? They all hang out together. How do they know each other? You know, that's. I was like fascinated by that. But Tupac was like the first person that was ever like, yo, man, I actually did this. And this is how I got down with Biggie's wife. Which, I mean, leads into something else, which it's like, man, I totally didn't take seriously. And it's something that is hopefully going to come up and come through in episode five about, like, the ways in which Tupac humiliated Faith. You know, I didn't take it seriously at the time. I was just like, oh, wow, that's crazy. But we didn't. I didn't think about her as like somebody who was being hurt by this and that Tupac really went the extra mile to be, you know, kind of a dick about this beef. And I mean, I guess people could say there's no rules and beef, but the reason why it shocked everybody was because it was so unprecedented and so like such gutter shit that it really caught your attention.

C (9:52)

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, as you're talking about this is a great point. I'm just thinking about that's kind of what gangster rap was too. I mean, I've only really been thinking about this in the last couple weeks as I've been really listening to the music and pulling the music and putting it into our episodes that like, it seemed like in some ways the ethos of a lot of this so called gangsta music was a kind of shock value. And really like this sort of shock and awe of just being so fucking explicit. These dudes knew what they were doing for sure. And they knew. I mean, you see interviews, especially with like NWA and these cats, and they're just like, they say, yes, we're community reporters, but also like, we're in this for the money. And there's an understanding that like, the shock value is really gaining some traction. And so it's not surprising then that you have Tupac come along in this music and it's like, I'm a really, like, this is shock value 2.0.

D (10:41)

Yeah.

C (10:41)

Really, like, yeah, step it up.

B (10:43)

Yeah. And that's like entertainment value too, right?

C (10:45)

Like a performance, like from an actor, from a fantastic actor, you know, especially as rapper actors go, I mean, again.

B (10:54)

With these songs, it starts to feel like at some point, you know, Tupac starts to come at his enemies on All Eyes on Me. And then Biggie raps about Tupac and Faith Evans on Brooklyn's Finest. So it starts to seem like they're really coming at each other now. Like, this is a real thing I.

A (11:10)

Might disagree with that only because it still seems like a very much one sided beef. And where it's again, like Christopher talked about and we just talked about in that last question is like Tupac was very explicit, man, and like just really coming at Biggie in a way that Biggie did not return fire in that way. Like if you. The thing about the Brooklyn's Finest line is that it's more a joke on himself and Faith than it was anything else. And if you read Faith's memoir about that time, she was very upset at Biggie because like that's, you know, I mean, I mean, you're giving life to rumors that are already out there. It's as offensive to her as it is to Tupac. Like, I mean, the joke is on Faith in that instance and not Tupac, you know, so, no, I think that Biggie and them, I mean, they were being non confrontational in a way that, you know, you can't really say that they were taking an active role in the beef.

B (12:03)

Yeah, I think the stuff in the episode about Faith Evans is really interesting and how she became sort of a pawn in this sort of feud. Like, obviously unwillingly in some ways, like Tupac really started using her. But yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so in today's plus episode, we have an interview with Larry the Black Spot Hester, who wrote the east versus west cover story for Vibe. Can you tell us more about who Larry Hester is?

A (12:30)

Yeah, sure. No. So first of all, I'm going to say the good thing about these plus episodes is I can just say the things about people that I was thinking when I was interviewing them and can't come up in stories. And Larry just seems like one of the dudes that like, I've known my entire life. He reminds me so much of a friend of mine named Rod. It's like he's just a very comfortable, cool dude. And you can see why he had so much success as a writer and a journalist. But. So, yeah, he was a former staff writer for Vibe magazine and worked for some other publications including Global Grind. And he's the guy who wrote the September 1996 cover story on Vibe that was headlined east vs West, which a lot of people think may have sort of stoked the fires around that beef, you know, fairly or not. And so he was a dude who like, at that point was only a couple years out of being an intern at Vibe. He had worked in the mail room, worked his way up, and he basically did for the Vibe. And you could check me on this Christopher, if I'm wrong, he basically did something that was essentially like unsigned Hype. Like Mattie C. From a couple episodes ago, he did basically a version of unsigned hype for Vibe, a column called Notes from the Underground. Yeah. And so he discovered Talib Kweli, he discovered three six Mafia. He told us this really great story about Kanye, about getting a demo tape from KANYE in like, 1997 and 98, you know, which is way before anybod had heard of Kanye, you know, even as like a producer in the game, like, he was just some dude from Chicago who was making music, sending a tape. Larry was like, yo, that was dope. But he couldn't get ahold of him. Like, there was like no return address or anything and no phone number, so he couldn't get ahold of him. And he said he ran into Kanye, like 2003, 2004, when Kanye was finally, you know, getting in the game. And he was like, yo, was that your tape? He's like, probably was. I mean, how many other Kanye's are there from Chicago? So. So, yeah, that. That's Larry. Larry is steeped in the game, man. And that's lost in the hubbub around the headline, is that he wrote a really good story, a really humane, personal story about Biggie and Puffy in that time. And that's what sort of drew us to him and made us want to bring him into the studio.

C (14:34)

Yeah, there's been a lot of thrilling things about making this series, and one of them has been a chance to meet these folks who I only really knew as bylines when I was reading their work in real time, and even some who I didn't know. But they've come in to talk to us, to talk to Joel, and just to see these folks who are kind of this middle ground between us making this series and the artists themselves. They're these translators, these interpreters, but they touched the artists, they touched these worlds. They were at the Source Awards and they were at these major turning points. They were in Vegas and in LA when these artists were killed. And are thoughtful and can translate, but they're also cool as hell. Yeah, they're mad cool. And they get what we're doing and they get how difficult it is, and they get the nuance that we're trying to capture around gender, around music, around race, all those kinds of things. And it's because they're all black folks and black men and women. And I don't know. That's just super fucking inspiring to me as a black creator. It's dope to see them so thoughtful and so respectful of the art and of the lives that they're talking about.

A (15:45)

I mean, the one thing about Larry that the only thing I'd add is like, he comes in and he's just like, yeah, man, you know my boy Bones Malone? I'm like, you know Bones Malone, right? Yo, I was like, I grew up idolizing Bones Malone. I had a Vibe subscription. I was like, bones Malone is like, you know, I'm trying to think of like an equivalent 96 basketball player. Like, it had been like Kendall Gill or like Eddie Jones or something. To me, who. I know, I know this isn't the sports podcast.

C (16:11)

I was gonna say equally obscure. I know who Bose Malone is obscure to me, not obscure to.

A (16:17)

Right. To me, they were as famous as, like, you know, a mid level NBA player in the 90s. And so for him to say that, I was like, yo, can Bones Malone come too? You know? Yeah, can you bring Bones back anyway?

B (16:32)

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like he has, like, some really, really great stories. And he's someone that talked to both Biggie and Tupac. And it seems like from your interview, he also feels that there were outside forces that really played a role in, like, fueling the feud. What do you think about that?

A (16:48)

So I definitely think that he credits outside forces to playing a role in their feud. But I think there's a few things at play when he says that he's sensitive to the idea that Vibe magazine is to blame or solely to blame about stoking the east west conflict. And I think that's the legitimacy of that point of view, that, you know, people point to that headline. They point to the interviews with Tupac and the interviews with Pac, you know, with Biggie and Puffy is playing like a really pivotal role and leading to where things ended up. And he even says that he takes some blame for that. Right. But I also think that he's wanting to push back on that narrative a little bit because the media is always an easy scapegoat in these sorts of things. And so, yeah, I mean, it makes sense to say there were a lot of things that played a role in their feud, whether it's gang culture, whether it's record companies, you know, exploiting this tension for record sales, that sort of thing. So, yeah, I totally get why Larry talks about these outside forces, and it's not to deflect from the blame that media played in the east west conflict, but I think that he's sensitive about that and it's bringing it up. And it's actually a good point that, like, it wasn't just us guys. Okay. There were other. There were other media outlets. There were other factors that led to where this story ends.

B (18:02)

Yeah.

C (18:02)

And, Joel, you know, you and I have talked about this before, and you've said, at least in our conversations between the two of us a few times over, that, like, as we've been working on this project, part of what we keep coming across is, like, how people have. Pardon the metaphor, but, like, taking these stories apart and sort of selling off the parts that they own. There's so many people who were around and players. We just keep digging up people who were involved, especially on the Tupac side, because he wasn't just doing music, he was doing film, and he was an activist. And so he had his hands in a lot of different things. And so there's just so much stuff out there that all these different people have some legitimate or illegitimate claim to. So it's not surprising then, that coming back to the actual timeline when these two guys were alive, that there would be a lot of people in the mix in their own ways, deliberately or inadvertently stoking the conflict.

A (18:56)

Absolutely.

B (18:57)

That makes sense. Well, he has a lot of good stories, so let's listen to the interview.

D (19:05)

My name is Larry the Black Spot Hester, and I was a staff writer for Vibe magazine, and I'm responsible for writing the COVID story of the east versus west issue that talked about the relationship of Biggie and Tupac and the craziness that went along with it.

A (19:27)

You started as an intern at Vibe, right?

D (19:29)

Yes, yes, I interned in the mailroom.

A (19:31)

What?

D (19:31)

Which means I was working in the mailroom at first for $0.

A (19:35)

Wow.

D (19:35)

And this was V's early, early days, you know, right after probably the Ice Cube cover. One of the section editors at vob, Emil Wilburkin, he had a column that he was overseeing called 10 years later. So I pitched him on UTFO and the Roxanne. Roxanne single. He liked it, I wrote it. He came back, he was like, yo, that was the bomb. He blew up the spot. You could tell with the slang how far that goes.

A (20:04)

That was fresh, huh?

D (20:04)

I know, right?

A (20:05)

Yeah, right.

D (20:08)

So after that, he was like, yo, do you want to keep doing it? And then one editor, Mimi Valdez, she decided that it was time for me to kind of move up a little bit, and she asked me if I wanted to do the Underground Hip hop column. So I started doing that. It was called Notes from the Underground. And I was the first to give light to Talib Kweli, 36 mafia.

A (20:31)

So wait, are you getting, like, demos and you're listening to this and you just like, that's dope. Let me write these dudes up.

D (20:36)

Yeah, it was as simple as that. There was no politics involved with. Was just whatever I listened to that I really liked and felt I would reach back out to them and say, yo, you know, tell me your story. Here's the crazy thing. Because a lot of artists, they forget to put in their information. And one artist that forgot to give me their contact information was Kanye West. What? Yes. The only thing the tape said on it was Kanye.

A (21:04)

Are you serious?

D (21:05)

That's it? Yeah, yeah.

A (21:07)

What was on his tape then?

D (21:08)

There was this one joint where he used. It was a theme from. I want to say it was the Godfather, But it was nuts. And I had my co workers and everything helping me, trying to find out who this guy was. I knew his name was Kanye and he was from Chicago. And I was trying so desperately to find this dude because I wanted to put him in, you know, But I. I just couldn't find it. And then the next thing I know, dude, Kanye blows up. And I'm like, man, I wonder if that was the same Kanye that sent me the demo. So I interviewed him one time for BET.com and I had asked him, I said, yo, did you send a demo tape to Vibe back in the days? And he just grinned and was like, yeah, probably. I was like, okay. Well, that helped. Thanks, Kanye.

A (22:02)

That's crazy. What year was that?

D (22:05)

Oh, man, this was late 90s.

A (22:07)

Oh, wow.

D (22:08)

This was late 90s. Yeah.

A (22:10)

It must have just felt like all new and fresh and fun. Telling people you were with Vibe must have just. Doors just open.

D (22:16)

Yes, yes. It was like a key card to everything. Because we had a lot of money at the time. Cause we were under Time Warner, you know, so they was footing the bill, and we had the Quincy Jones Association. But at the time, it was the wild west of hip hop magazines and the rap industry. This period was the first time rap was making money before it was all about, you know, I'm doing it for the respect, you know, for the fans and the popularity. But money was just now getting into it. Vibe was really instrumental as far as I believe, in bringing the high fashion element to the quote, unquote, urban audience. You know what I'm saying? It wasn't until Vibe to, like, say, like, a Gucci or somebody like that to say, okay, I'm gonna put my clothes next to a rapper whose lyrics is trying to Kill half of the block, you know?

A (23:13)

Well, actually, I wanna ask you then. So what do you think was sort of the tipping point? What do you think happened? Or when did you notice, oh, there's money in this now. Like, there's money in hip hop right now.

D (23:25)

When Dre and them hit, that's really when I think the money started to take precedence. And to me, the way I see it is that when the money got really big, that's when the problem started to arise.

A (23:40)

Can you say more about that then?

D (23:41)

I'll just get right into it. Rap has always been a street based art, and there's different elements to the street. You know, rap just happened to be one of the more positive ways of expression. But when you hot in the street, just like a drug dealer, if he's hot in the street and he's making a lot of money, you're gonna have the wolves start to come out. And I think in the case of both Biggie and Pac, you had the wolves, you had the artists, you had the executives and the corporations, you had the media, you had all of these people in this gold rush of hip hop to try to get as much as they could. And the deaths and the violence and all of that was a byproduct of this crazy mix.

A (24:30)

Can you just, like, for people that were not there in 1996, like, after they're coming off this, like, tremendous run, like, how famous they were, how big they were, like, what they meant to the culture at that time, they were.

D (24:42)

Symbolic of hip hop being able to make money independently of sorts. They were the entrepreneurial spirit of hip hop at the time. Because 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, from watches to cars to Versace clothes and all of that, it inspired people a lot. And I think that's what still around today. Like that same entrepreneurial movement that Bad Boy had did, like, even down to their street teams, like, they revolutionized street teams. Between the Bad Boys Street Team and the Loud Records street Team. Those two street teams are legendary. I mean, you saw them everywhere. You know, they was putting up stickers, putting up posters, handing out stuff. It was such a hardcore movement that they had going on that it was hard not to respect it. Bad Boy was almost ran kind of like a cult. Puff had a way of making people feel like they were contributing to the overall vision. You know, whether they was getting paid 100 bucks or 100,000 bucks. They felt that they were part of something. If they had to stay out to 3am Getting posters up, they did it. And then they would go home, take a nap, and then be right back at the office. I think that type of work ethic kind of stuck around in hip hop for a lot of people. And they've used that as a blueprint to run their own labels.

A (26:29)

You know, you could say that Puff was kind of creating a cult. But it also pissed people off too, right? Like, you could easily see where people are, like, y' all niggas flashing and everything. This is.

D (26:39)

Oh, yeah. Well, you mean, like the materialism. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was part of that crew. I was part. Yeah, I was backpacker all the way, man. I was like, this is whack. And, you know, all the materialism and the jewelry and all of that. Yes. I feel like he has had a hand in the materialism and the consumerism of rap. But it's like everything. You have your good part and you have your bad parts. But what sucks is that, again, we have a metamorphosis of something that kind of, I guess, bloomed into something that we didn't think it would be, which is the hip hop that we have today. And I think it's interesting that you're tackling this topic because I think, ironically, the whole Tekashi 6ix9ine thing is very similar in a way that it comes down to the company that you keep. And I think a lot of the bad came from the company that rap dudes had to keep. Cause it's no mystery, and it's no wonder that there was some street cats running with Bad Boy. There were some street cats running with Death Row. It's like when you have that element in there, things are gonna go wrong because they're dealing with two different playbooks. You know what I'm saying? Them street cats is not gonna say, you know, I'm gonna see you in court. I'm getting my lawyer. No, but if you're in the rap business, yeah, that flies. It's like, yo, I'm calling my lawyer. And it's like, oh, you know Jacoby and Myers, let me get them on the phone. But when those two come together, it's gonna be a mess. That's what a lot of the quote unquote beef stuff, I think, came from the people around them getting into it, you know? I mean, cats like to. They like to claim whatever's hot. So if I'm some knucklehead, just remember when, like, When Wu Tang was super hot, it was like 157 Wu Tang members and ain't none of them was on the album. Everybody was claiming Wu Tang. You know, it was the same type of thing. Everybody was claiming Bad Boy. Everybody was claiming Death Row. I think that kind of added on a street level to where the tension was.

A (28:47)

Right. Well, speaking about that, then Suge, like, why was he so mad at them?

D (28:54)

Ah, man, that's a good question. Looking back at it now, I would think that it was more of a strategic move that Suge was doing. I think because of today, Puff was. And Bad Boy was still pretty much unshaken. We never saw them shake about it or get off their game. And I think Suge was trying to get them off their game somehow by prodding them. And you see the same thing with Pac when he did the hit him up and all of that, he was prodding Biggie. I think Suge was using street tactics to try to get Puffy off point. And I don't think he was really all that mad at Puff. I think he was just trying to get Puff off of his game, get an anti Puff movement going to boost sales. Cause he had to, you know, I mean, Tupac was a stone cold Steve Austin, a rap at the time. You know, if you was feeling left out or something like that, everybody gravitated towards Pac. He spoke for you.

A (29:58)

I mean, you said that Puffy and them ran with street dudes, but it doesn't sound like they ran with the kind of street dudes that Suge and them ran with. Is that fair?

D (30:06)

Yeah, it's fair in the sense of the street dudes that were running with or kind of associated with Bad Boy weren't flamboyant with their associations, you know what I'm saying? It was like whoever street cast that was a part of that, they did their thing and they let Bad Boy and Puffy do their thing. And then people just got. They pay however they got, they pay. But as opposed to a death row where it was just like, you know, you get out of prison, the bus, drop you off in front of the death row office. That's what it seemed like, you know what I'm saying, Sugar, get everybody jobs out of the jailhouse. And that's how it came across. You ain't gonna really find gang bandanas and stuff on Bad Boy affiliates, you know. But Suge was, because, I mean, that's a different culture. The cultures of how they carry it out is different. But you had street cats on both sides and Disagreements happen, and they handle it the way that they know how to handle it.

A (31:10)

Right. How did the idea for the story that you ended up doing come up? Like, did you want it? Did they assign it to you? Cause I know that the internal conversations about all this stuff had to have.

D (31:19)

Been like, you know, oh, yeah, it was very intense. Some of the conversations I was in on, some of them I wasn't in on. But the way that it came about was one day when I was, you know, I was in the mix, I was doing, you know, my columns and everything, Keith Clinkscales came to me and was like, yo, I want you to do our next cover story for the Juice issue. It's about Puffy breaking his silence. So I was like, word, he's gonna talk. Cause this was after, you know, Pac had said all types of stuff, and everybody was saying crazy stuff, and the whole east versus west thing was going. And until then, Big and Puffy never really said anything. They were really quiet. Cause, you know, their whole thing was, it'll just blow over, but it wasn't blowing over. So I guess Puff wanted to put his words out there, maybe for historical value or whatever, but he wanted to finally start talking about it. So Keith Klinkscales felt that since I was the young up and coming dude, that I would mostly be suited for the task.

A (32:28)

So it was more like Puffy reached out to Vibe then, is what it.

D (32:31)

Sounds like, as far as I think. I don't know if it went down exactly like that, but the way that it was pitched to me was that Puff wanted to speak out finally and clear the air on everything.

A (32:43)

So you had that meeting with Keith Klinsko, and then you go home that night, and what are you thinking?

D (32:48)

The first thing I thought was, well, if I do this story, my dad is finally gonna realize that I'm not a bum. Right? Cause it's gonna be a cover story. Cause he didn't know what the hell I was doing. He just knew I was talking to rap people and whatnot. For me to get to meet someone at that level of the game was a big thing. Because at the time, we'd never seen anybody from rap on that level of the game that was wearing Rolexes and driving cars that, you know, we only saw on TV and stuff. No one had reached that yet. So this was like a historical moment for me personally. Personally to be able to sit face to face with somebody like that and then to speak to Biggie as well, who's, you know, from Brooklyn. He's from Bed Star. I'm from Crown Heights. We're neighbors. You know, he made it out. And to speak to him was mind blowing, too. Yeah. But it was also scary as hell, man. Cause there was a lot of a violent type element that was around this whole thing because, you know, people was beefing and stuff like that and, you know, throwing around allegations. So I felt like, man, I'm getting in the middle of all of this. You know, I don't have a car, I don't have a driver. I'm riding a train. You know, people can see me whenever. Do I want to associate myself into this type of thing and possibly become a target? I don't know what was going to happen because again, this had never happened before.

A (34:20)

Right. So, yeah, it seems like, yeah, you would be kind of scared, right? Because it's like, yo, like, first of all, nobody really knew who shot Pac. He's putting all this stuff out in the air, you know. It must have felt dangerous.

D (34:32)

Yeah, it was. And it was felt by a lot of people. There was times, like. Cause I would go to Daddy's house studio, which was Puff studio, that was over in the Times Square area at the time, and he was finishing Big's album. The Locks was on deck, Mase was on deck, and these guys were already in the studio. So sometimes if a threat would hit the airwaves or whatever, Puff would just shut down the studio. Yeah, there'd be times it would be just like, yo, everybody go home. We don't know what's gonna happen, you know, so they'd just shut the studio down and bounce. And then, you know, if it turned out to be bs, then everybody would come back and start working. Wow.

A (35:15)

Well, how would these threats come in? Like, what do you know? I mean, like, what would they just be like, yo, like, we saw somebody rolling up the block, or like, what?

D (35:21)

It'll be something like a phone call or just word of mouth. Somebody heard something. And then, you know, I guess Puff and them would assess, you know, how real the word on the street would be. And then he'll make a decision, you know, he'll send. He'll send everybody home. Or he'll just be like, ah, that's bullshit. And just keep going, man. Yeah, it was really interesting, man. Even at Vibe, I always joke about it. But after the mail room, I became the receptionist at the front desk. Right.

A (35:52)

Okay.

D (35:54)

So as receptionist, I got to see every crazy person that would come off of them elevators. You know, there would be messengers, there'd be mail people, there'd Be artists. There'd be people off the street who's just like, yo, y' all need to write something about me. I don't got a demo yet, but I'm just, you know, I'm interesting. And then we had loud records that was just right above us. So, you know, you never know when Old Dirty Bastard would come in, you know, or Mobb D. One day, you know, the elevator doors opened up. It was just smoke. Just smoke all in there. And, like, dudes in business suits scared to death, and it'll be like, eight other dudes behind them, you know, that was on the label. And this was what went on constantly.

A (36:38)

Oh, wow.

D (36:38)

You know, so during the height of the threat level of Death Row, we didn't know if a crazy fan would come in. So I guess they wanted a male presence in the front desk. And really, all I had was like, I think I had a vibe box cutter.

A (36:58)

A vibe box cutter?

D (36:59)

Yeah. And then I lost it. Another writer, Bones Malone, I don't know if you heard of him.

A (37:04)

He's a legend.

D (37:05)

Exactly. Yeah.

A (37:06)

Oh, yeah.

D (37:07)

He knew I didn't have anything on me, so he gave me a cue ball in a sock. And he was like, yo, here. I was like, yo, good looking. And I. I was up there at the front desk with my cue ball in the sock remote to the. To the stereo to play the music. And then, you know, I just did my thing. And this was at the height of the oh, my God, sugar's gonna get us era. Wow. You know, because I don't know if you remember at that time, but Suge was such an ominous figure from afar. Like, there were people who didn't even want to say his name in public. You know, he had that much of a threatening vibe about him. So we didn't know what was gonna happen. So I was up there, you know, holding it down in the front. Thank the creator. Nothing ever happened, but it was just that much of eggshells that we walked on because we just didn't know what happened. We wasn't gangsters. You know what I'm saying? We didn't have any guns stashed in the office or nothing like that.

A (38:06)

Well, so there's a sense that the hostility that Suge, Tupac and Death Row were directing towards Bad Boy in New York, that it was unprecedented that nobody had ever seen this sort of menace before. Is that fair to say?

D (38:20)

Yeah, I think it'd be absolutely fair to say that no one has ever seen anything like that at the time. It was such a new Thing. And it wasn't like people were just that scared to death. It was more cautious of the unknown because you had people who understood what the street thing can do and how accessible anyone is to street retaliation. And I think we had to take that really seriously. You know, even though it might not happen, there was still the possibility that it could happen, and we had to be prepared.

E (38:56)

Wow.

A (38:57)

So it sounded like you interviewed Puffy and, you know, Biggie, like, over multiple occasions. Is that right? Or did you just get one shot with him?

D (39:05)

It was over multiple occasions. So I had did the main interview with him, and often I would get on the phone with him, or I would go up to daddy's house and, you know, and hang out a little bit, speak to Big, you know, locks and everybody like that, just to get, you know, more background information and stuff like that. So it went on for maybe about. Maybe about a month, tops, the back and forth. Cause not too long after I had interviewed Puff, he had that accident where his arm got cut open and people thought that he tried to commit suicide. So I had to get on the phone with him, ask him what's up? And, you know, he explained it. He was like, yo, you know, I was play fighting, blah, blah, blah. Champagne glass broke, and I got cut. So, you know, I'm good.

A (39:50)

Did you believe him?

D (39:51)

I believed him.

E (39:52)

Yeah.

D (39:52)

Yeah, I believed him. I didn't think he was BSing. From what I had learned about his personality, he's not really the suicide type, you know, not that there is a type, but he was very much in love with his life at the time, you know, so I didn't think that he would try to kill himself over that.

A (40:11)

So let's go to that. Cause the first quote you used in the story is, I'm hurt a little bit spiritually by all this negativity. And you seemed to find him in, like, a really low place. Was that, like, your memory of the setting and how he was in that time?

D (40:23)

He had put on. Well, he had to put on the I'm good front. But at the time, Puffy was still kind of coming into his own as far as what type of person he was gonna be and stuff like that, and learning the lessons from mistakes he had made before. And he still had a love for people. And he felt betrayed by people, by what was going on, because all of this was still new to him, too. You know, he was spearheading this, but at the same time, it was still brand new to him because, again, nobody was doing this. He liked when people Liked him. And he felt that he was doing a good thing. And to have all of a sudden this tidal wave of negative energy coming at him. Yeah, it hurt him. He's a people person, you know what I mean? And he has a certain foundation. So when all of this new, wow, we don't like you. Cause you from New York and all of this stuff, he felt bad. Cause he thought he was making music to make everybody happy. And I think Big felt it the most because that was the end of his friendship with Pop. I think that was one of the things that really caught my attention the most when I was speaking to Big. Like, you could literally see the hurt. Like, it wasn't, you know, all of that. Yo, we used to be friends, and he was telling everybody he was for real. And I don't think people really understood from an emotional place. He felt betrayed, you know, because it caught him off guard. Cause when he was telling me the story of what happened, I think it was in an article where he says Pac was out the window screaming. You know, west side and all that stuff like that. He was really confused. Big just wanted it to stop. He didn't want to go to any of the places, anything like that. He didn't, you know, like to hang out with Puff and party everywhere and whatnot. He was like, yo, he just wanted to go away. I think he would have rather made up with Pac and they become friends again than having things play out the way they played out.

A (42:35)

Wow.

D (42:36)

Yeah. Cause, you know, like, when you speak to him, you know, when you speak to somebody, you know, when somebody's pulling your leg and you be like, man, motherfucker, ain't really hurt. He don't give a. You know what I'm saying? But it wasn't like that with Big. He was like, man, yo, it's messed up. I don't know where all this came from. He had suspected that it might have been the Hollywood thing. Cause there was a number of times where he said that Pac became Bishop from Juice. And there's tales of people who get into the acting thing. Sometimes their characters start to rub off and they lose. You know, they lose connection with who they were. Pac was still new in the acting thing. You know, he wasn't that seasoned. So, yeah, it's possible Pac could have become part of Bishop, or Bishop become a part of Pac, and he just didn't know it. Or it could have been people in his ear, you know. But either way, yeah, Big was pretty disappointed that his friendship with Pac didn't work out.

A (43:35)

Wow. I mean, you know. Cause obviously there are people that were skeptical, but it mostly seems to be from Death Row and Pac that they had nothing to do with what went down at the Quad. Like, you believe their sincerity? That they were just like, dog, I don't know what the fuck you talking about.

D (43:51)

Yes, I completely believe that. I mean. I mean, what would Big and them have had to gain from robbing Pac, you know, at Quad Studios and shooting them down? Like, Bad Boy wouldn't have had anything to gain from that. So I think it was probably some guys that heard it on the street that, yo, Pac is gonna be at the studio. Cause word gets around really fast. And they was like, yo, we gonna get him. And everything played out the way it played out. You know, I don't think Junior Mafia had anything to do with it.

A (44:25)

Big says to you in the interview, there wasn't nothing I could do. Did you take that as him knowing what was gonna happen. But literally not being able to do anything to stop it or that he just didn't know about it?

D (44:36)

I think it was a little both. That he didn't know that it was gonna happen. And he didn't know what to do when it started to happen. Or, you know, after it went down. Cause, like, really, in all honesty, what could he do? You know what I'm saying? Go downstairs and pull the bullets out and, you know, stop the bullets with his hands, like Neo from the Matrix. What could he do? Get into a gunfight? Like, I mean. And I understand Pac's point of view, too. Cause it looked like it could have been a setup. I probably would have thought I was set up, too. Things play out in crazy ways when you're dealing with that street element.

A (45:15)

Did you feel it all defensive in that time, at that year, in that moment? Cause, you know, a lot of people were like, vibe, y' all responsible, man. And I saw you say in one thing, like, you were pissed about the headline, the east versus West.

D (45:28)

Right?

C (45:29)

Yeah.

D (45:29)

Yeah, absolutely. I was one of the people who was not feeling the east versus west headline. There was a meeting, and some of the parties will still deny it to this day, but there was a meeting to decide whether or not it would go on. And I was one of the people who voted, no, we should do something else. Come up with some other headline for it. We can't do east versus west because it's gonna start some shit. And it went on. And to this day, I still feel away whenever somebody says, hey, you wrote that story. You know what I'm saying? Because even now people feel that that was the catalyst for a lot of the way that things played out, that that was the cause of it, that east versus west cemented it and was like, yo, boom. There was a beef that really didn't exist, but we made it exist. I gotta say, for the past 23 years, it's always been on my mind at some point. Wow. Yeah, it's on my mind a lot. Another thing that I like to bring up a lot when talking about this topic is that Vibe wasn't the only company that was getting over with this east versus west thing. Like, people tend to forget that a lot of outlets was in on it. I mean, just what is it, like 200 documentaries on this? End of the day, it probably all came out the same month it happened. Everybody had some Tupac thing on their mixtape or Biggie thing on their mixtape. Even down to. I don't even think there would have been a West side connection with, you know, Cube and WC and Mac 10. I don't think that that group would have even existed if there wasn't a so called east versus west beef, you know, because a lot of their thing ran off of that, you know, so people are making money off of it. But I just find it interesting that Vibe gets all of the blowback from it. So many people had a hand in sensationalizing the story. I think it was just everybody's, I guess, greed or whatever that pushed everything to go as far as it did.

A (47:56)

You know, Chao, we spoke to Chael Coco about it and he said that it was relative ignorance because nobody could have possibly envisioned what happened would happen because it had never happened.

D (48:05)

Right, Exactly. Yeah. Again, yeah, like I was telling you earlier too, it's like this is the first time this has happened. Like, there was never a death in hip hop over something like this, over, you know, a rivalry. And there's been rivalries for years before that. There's been tons of rap rivalries, but none of them ever ended up in the death of both people, you know, which is bananas. And like, if you think about it, why was this one a different case? Why? Out of all the rivalries that we had in hip hop until 96, this one caused the deaths of two of the most brilliant creative minds in the music. And it should bring up a lot of question marks as whether or not it was the rap thing that did it or if it was something in addition to it. I think it was something in addition to it. You know, I think the rap was the backdrop, but I think it was street stuff, man. I think it was street stuff. It was their crews. It was, you know, people that they affiliated with or, you know, or people that wanted to be affiliated or people was just trying to use the whole situation to their advantage.

A (49:22)

Can you take me back to where you were when you heard Pac got.

D (49:25)

Shot and what you thought at the time? I was a correspondent for Tim Westwood's radio show in London, and I heard about Pac getting shot. And then I went and had to do the report. I believe it was either the same day or almost the same day. And it was so weird to me because I had a lot of emotion. I didn't really have the time to process everything. And when I was in the business deep like that, I had a very emotional connection to the hip hop community. So some people say that over the air sounded like I was nearly in tears. But I think that was a little accurate. Cause, you know, it's still a little bit of a blur. But I remember I felt very emotional about it because it was just supposed to be on records. This was just supposed to be another rap battle. And now Pac is shot, you know what I'm saying? So the fact that he was dead, that he was now dead, it shook me a bit. Because I never had someone, you know, I never had a rapper that I liked die. You know, I was still young. I wasn't ready for that, you know what I'm saying? To me, the only celebrities that died was the people that my moms and pops grew up listening to. And now, you know, they on tv. Oh, you know, so and so passed. It was like that, but it was like, man, Tupac's dead. So it just took me a while to process the fact that one, it was Pac, and two, it was one of rap's elite. It was a confusing time for me. It was a shocking time for me. And it was really eye opening that how real this was.

A (51:27)

Were you scared? Did you feel scared? Or did it feel, you know, oddly.

D (51:31)

Enough, it felt dangerous, but oddly enough, I wasn't scared. I guess it was just, you know, youthful ignorance or whatever, you know, when you think you're invincible or whatever. But, yeah, I wasn't scared, but my parents were. You know, my mom's was like, yeah, you had your fun. You need to. You need to stop. And then when we saw the pictures from the autopsies and all of that stuff, it still didn't seem real. Like, I can understand now why people still say that Pac is alive, because I don't even know how they really Explain it, man. Or describe it. But it's like the timing of it was weird. The, you know, the fact that it happened, how it happened, there's still no suspect, no real suspect in just felt so odd, like it wasn't real, you know. So I get when people like, oh yeah, he's in Cuba somewhere, chilling. I mean, I don't believe it, but I get it. And yeah, that was my feeling at the time. I just couldn't make sense. I felt like somebody I knew died.

A (52:35)

Obviously, I'm gonna ask you about the next one. And I guess Biggie probably felt more personal.

D (52:40)

Yeah, yeah, Biggie felt more personal to me. Cause I had met him, I know people like Biggie, you know, he's practically a neighbor. So, you know, he repped Brooklyn. I'm from Brooklyn and how Brooklynites are, you know, we like to stick together. I know you for being on the west coast, man. Y' all hate that. But we take pleasure in that, in trolling everybody with our Brooklyn ness. So it was like, you know, even my mom's was. My mom was upset when Biggie died. He was very charismatic and that came across in his music. And you wanted to root for him. You know, he was truly the underdog. I mean, he was heavyset, he was dark skinned at a time when, you know, if he wasn't Christopher Williams looking or I'll be sure you wasn't getting no play. So he was the underdog of rap. And everybody wanted him to win, especially Brooklyn and New York, we wanted him to win. And then for him to get cut down over something that it wasn't even like he started anything, you know what I'm saying? It wasn't like, like he punched Pac in the mouth or did something crazy like that. It was just, he was just in the car, he was just around all of this craziness and that craziness took his life. So it makes you feel really bad about what happened. And I mean, even to this day I still feel like I have partial responsibility in it. Even though that wasn't my goal at the time. Indirectly I felt like my coverage of it had lent to his demise. And I mean, people say like, well, hey, if you didn't do it, somebody else would have. Which is true. But still, I can't help but feel in some way partly responsible for how the things went down, the way they went down.

A (54:35)

When did that start? Like, when did you start to feel that burden?

D (54:41)

This was years after it happened, I think probably a lot more when his mom started being a lot More vocal. Just when you get older and become more experienced in life in general, you start to understand the relationships that you have with the world around you and how decisions, whether they're the right or the wrong decisions, still impact whatever's around you. You know, I mean, I don't beat myself up constantly about it, but there is a part of me that still feels like, man, maybe if someone else had written that story, maybe it would have just played out differently. Why did I have to do the story where, you know, people have lost their lives over, you know, and it's not just Big, it's the other people that were associated with the story, like, you know, with the Big and Pac story, like was dude stretch and, you know, people that we don't even know names of that have lost their lives or lost their livelihoods over this whole mess. And on top of that, there still hasn't been anyone caught. There still isn't a suspect. It sucks in a way. But in another way, I feel that covering the story gave me the opportunity to do other stuff, you know, in the right way and provide opportunities for other people, you know, as an editor or whatever, to not really to make good out of it, but to have something constructive to come out of it, you know, even if it's just dialogue like we're having right now, where we're no longer caught up in the sensational of it, but just the hardcore facts of what happened so that it's documented correctly. So then and years later down the line, someone will listen to this same story, the same podcast, and be like, okay, so if that happened and that happened, well, okay, well, we have a cohesive story now. It's not just hearsay. It's not just, you know, some dude yapping on the street. You know what I'm saying? This is research stuff that we're all doing. So I try to look at it that way, that we're now pushing towards a more legitimate hip hop journalistic approach to all of these different topics.

A (57:27)

Yeah, well, what do you think you would have done differently then? I mean, you know, if you presented with this opportunity, presented with this story, what would you have done? I mean, if you, like, you know, now, as a grown man, you know, father.

D (57:41)

I think I would have been a lot more outspoken about certain things that I did I didn't necessarily agree with. I think I would have went harder on the east versus west thing, you know, even though at the end of the day it was an executive decision made, but I probably would have fought a little harder now I think I might would have really put in that extra energy to getting the story out to more people, you know, so there would have been a lot more sides of the story than what's currently out now. I never really went to look for people to tell this story to, you know, it's just kind of like if people came by, you know, they came across my name and they asked me, yeah, I'll tell them. But I felt like I should have more actively sought out avenues to put more of the facts out. Yeah, but I mean, I really don't know, to be honest with you, man. I don't know exactly what I could have done differently. I'm not psychic, you know, because if I was psychic, I wouldn't have had to write anything to make any money. But yeah, I mean, like you said, there's really no telling how this would have played out. And, like, chaos said, you know, nobody knew that it was gonna happen like this. It was just bonkers. So, yeah, I just kinda look at it like that now, really.

A (59:18)

What was covering hip hop like after that?

D (59:21)

It was rough because the media, especially hip hop media became the enemy. Rappers did not want to really talk about anything to journalists unless it was propping up their projects. Pretty much anything that went bad was the media's fault. Artists would kind of cherry pick their writers, so that became harder for other writers who may have been just as good. You know, covering a story would not get that story. There was kind of like an entitlement to rap artists that they could beat up on writers, you know what I'm saying? Because you had writers that would literally get, you know, assaulted.

A (60:12)

Jesse Washington.

D (60:13)

Jesse Washington, you know, you know, other writers out there who've been assaulted by artists and the artists. There was no empathy for journalists, you know what I'm saying? Even from readers. It was like, you know, well, yeah, that's what y' all get, you know, and that was kind of the attitude. You get cussed out, you get your tape recorder broken and all kind of stuff like that. And, you know, you had writers that was like, you know, they training, like, just in case, like taking up martial arts in case a feral rapper comes at him, you know, because you had a lot of artists who would feel that media people were there to try to get some kind of sensational story on them to boost their magazine. And unfortunately, you had a lot of writers that were doing that, you know, and then it got mixed up. They got all mixed up with the writers who were really trying to get the story and tell the Truth. And nobody knew who to believe, so it just became a whole mess until now. It's like, whatever, because you have more outlets for artists to, you know, put out their real stories or whatever, you.

A (61:26)

Know, what should we have learned from what happened with Biggie and Tupac? Did you think we learned anything from it as a result?

D (61:34)

That is an interesting question. I think we started to learn a lot, but I think we're starting to regress. You know, I think we learned our lesson as far as we're a lot faster to cool things off. We're a lot faster to say, all right, let's not let this get out of hand and turn into some street craziness. And, you know, nobody wants to get hurt or shot. You know, what happened to Pac and Biggie, you know, that retrospect. Now, the reason why I say we're regressing is because such an emphasis is being put on sensationalism, that that's the type of thing that boosts careers now. And as a lot of careers are dependent on how wild and crazy your personality can become, how real you are, how far you're willing to take it. You know, I think that right after the Big and Pac tragedies, that we had more of an appreciation of peace. We haven't had any artists of that level in the game die the same way. And I think a lot of us had become complacent in the fact, and we just figure, oh, it's just not gonna happen. We have a new generation who wasn't there to experience it, you know, and who are looking at the world in a completely different way than we're looking at it, you know, and it's nothing to them. So in that way, I think we're kind of almost thirsting for another tragedy, which I know sounds crazy, but I think there's almost a desire for it because the stakes are so high in entertainment to top the next thing. You know, everybody wants to be that person. And I think before, it was easier for us to look at each other as human beings and not so much as brands. So I think until this new generation has someone that they care about that much or something that they care about that much and have it ripped away from them in that way, they're not gonna really have a true grasp on what it feels like. It's not just canceling somebody on social media, you know, it's not just saying, oh, just pull the plug on their show. This is their life or death. And I don't think people nowadays really have a full Appreciation of the risk involved when it comes down to life or. Or death. It's more of a. Like, a figurative thing, you know, it's like, almost like it's television, it's entertainment. It's not really real, and people kind of want to see that. So I'm kind of concerned about the direction that we're going because a lot of people say, well, what do you think would happen if, you know, Pac and Biggie were to die, say, today, like, would have played out the same way. I'm not so sure if it would have. I think it might be a case where it would turn into more theater. It'll be about, you know, who loved them the most, who had the last song with them. Everybody will be posting pictures of them and whoever passed away, you know, and that's all it would be about. There would be no lesson to learn. I think we had the bandwidth at one time to say, okay, there is a lesson to learn from this. I don't feel that people would learn a lesson or see the lesson or the potential of a lesson if it was to happen today.

A (65:33)

That's real.

C (65:34)

Damn.

A (65:35)

Thank you, bro.

D (65:36)

Seriously, bro, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

E (66:05)

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C (66:41)

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E (66:47)

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D (66:53)

Nice.

C (66:54)

A cozy retreat, man. Cozy retreat, sir.

E (66:58)

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