VIRGIL ROBERTS There have been lawsuits and other things around the meeting on April 23, 1991.III Whether it happened as it’s been described, I don’t know. I don’t doubt that there was something that took place, but for a long time “releases” were kept hidden. It wasn’t like they signed and all of a sudden said, “Okay, Dre is out of this deal.” That actually came about maybe months, if not a year or so, later. That’s when Eazy said, “Hey, I only signed that because they threatened my life.” And they probably did. If you do something under duress, it’s not enforceable. But beyond all that, as a practical manner, Dre could have gotten out of his contracts, because he never got paid and never got any accounting.
Our position at SOLAR was: we ain’t in it. It’s something that took place between you guys, it was really designed to get Dre out of this recording agreement because they didn’t have any other agreements with him. He’s already free to do his publishing. In fact, just like we did a publishing deal with Chocolate, we did a publishing deal with Dre—gave him a million-dollar advance, which was money they used in part to start Death Row. Because he wasn’t signed as a producer, there was nothing to stop him from making records for Death Row or anybody else. It really wasn’t clear that Dre really wanted to be a recording artist. He says he wants to be a recording artist, but the things that recording artists do—like make records and go out on tour—once Death Row started, he really didn’t do that. On one level, it’s much ado about nothing. You forced me to sign a release for the guy who is a member of N.W.A, but he didn’t want to record with N.W.A, and most of the other N.W.A artists didn’t want to record with N.W.A, either.
One of the things that Suge was trying to do was play the tough guy. Big guy, but he had no street cred. He was raised by his mother and father, they would send him to church on Sunday, and that’s how he ended up going to college. So part of his attraction with Dre and some of the other people was, This is a big guy who can protect me in fights. Plus, he went to college, and I didn’t, so he knows more about business than I do.
ALEX ROBERTS We got into an altercation once. A friend of mine was in trouble and I asked Suge to go in on a hard loan with me. I told him, “I’ve known this man a long time and he’s involved in a deal. We can put in demand for escrow for our payments, but that could expose us because we can’t really prove where this money came from, so it will be old school.” Suge said, “Definitely.” Little did I know that because I referred him, I’d get smacked, too.
Suge came into my office and said, “Where the fuck is Dean?” I guess for a second he thought maybe I was involved in shorting him. It wasn’t a punch; it was like a bitch slap, and when I went to hit him back he caught my arm. It really was funny. He fucking broke down and started laughing. He said, “Are you serious?”
I said, “Sometimes you’ve got too much on your plate. That’s what you use me for. That’s what we agreed upon. That, and never for anything to go down in this office.”
VIRGIL ROBERTS The studio that we built was a state-of-the-art studio. The SSL console we had was a sixty-four-track, fully computerized soundboard. The main room was big enough for an orchestra. We found the one Black sound engineer in America at Peabody Sound in Boston, and we flew him out to help design the studio. There was as much steel framing around the studio as there was steel in the rest of the building, because when you build a studio in a high-rise building, like we built, and you want the sound quality to be perfect, what you had to do was make sure that the room where you were doing the recording is isolated from the rest of the building. There were studios that were as well built, but there wasn’t a better studio to work in; it was like an absolute dream sort of facility for producers.
They didn’t have any money. We paid for Suge to get his car repossessed. We paid Snoop’s rent. The guys who would be down in the studio, Daz and Kurupt, we would sort of take care of all of them. A lot of the SOLAR secretaries have such fond memories of the guys at Death Row because even though they were gangsta rappers, they would come up and ask them to type their lyrics and say, “You know, we don’t think you’re a bitch or a ho, so don’t take it personal. Can you please type this for me?”
Not long after we released the Deep Cover soundtrack, Jimmy Iovine offered them a couple of million dollars to come and be part of Interscope. At that point in history, we had a joint-venture deal with Sony. And part of the deal with Sony was that any assets that SOLAR acquired, Sony would have a right to acquire. Dick did not want Death Row to be acquired by Sony. Therefore, his deal with Suge and Dre was on a handshake. We wanted Sony to come up with money to distribute Death Row. And that was at a point in time where all the major companies were stepping away from distributing gangsta rap. We didn’t have, as a company, the money that it would take to market and promote the record. Interscope was on the verge of going out of business because they had had nothing but failure. Ted Field, who had been the financier and partner with Jimmy Iovine, had said, “I’m pulling out.” Jimmy had an A & R guy that was working for him named John McClain, and McClain’s father was Dick Griffey’s godfather. He played The Chronic for John. He went to Jimmy and said, “We’ve got to get this record.” And Jimmy said, “Whatever it takes, I’ll get the record.” So he went to Suge and said, “I’ll give you a million dollars if you bring that record to me.”
LESLIE GERARD When Tupac was in prison, he couldn’t get bailed out. It was a $3 million bond and Suge Knight paid for it, and he said, “If I pay for this, I want you on my label.” At that point, Tupac was on the up. He was hot; he was the guy.
VIRGIL ROBERTS Tupac had been signed to Interscope. Interscope didn’t know what to do with him. Suge was really good at recognizing talent, and he recognized the talent in Tupac. He basically went to Jimmy and said, “Give me Tupac, sign his contract to me. I know what to do with it.” So he then went and got Tupac out of jail and turned him into a Death Row artist.
ALEX ROBERTS It was Snoop who brought up the idea of Pac on Death Row. It’s when he’d gone into Rikers on that bullshit charge. He’d been in and out of trouble already. We know how disgusting America and the boys in blue can be and how they immediately stereotype.
Suge said, “I need to ask you—because this could hurt us—do you really think Pac is innocent?”
I said, “From my lips to God’s ears, yes.”
“Why?”
“My experience with him. How polite he was.”
WENDY DAY He came from a very poor background and never had money. So when the money started to come, he assumed that it would continue to come, and he spent accordingly. I know that 99.9 percent of rappers in the music industry think that when they have a hit record, they’re going to make far more money than they do. And they do not. Unrealistic expectations led to that.
When you signed to a record label, and he was signed to Interscope, you pay everything back. It’s called recouping. You pay everything back from your share, your percentage. So if they spent a million dollars on him, and he was supposed to receive eighteen points, which would be 18 percent of the retail selling price, out of every dollar that came into the company, he would be entitled to eighteen cents, but that eighteen cents would go to pay off the million-dollar marketing and advances that he received.
There were people in his life that were taking advantage of him and he knew that, and his intention was to stay down with them because he felt he owed them. They were there for him in the beginning when he had nothing, so even though he knew they were stealing from him, he wasn’t going to do anything because he felt a sense of loyalty. Loyalty was extremely important to him.
GOBI RAHIMI He was highly intelligent. He was very volatile. He was very loving. He was very compassionate. And he—above all else—valued loyalty.
PUDGE THA PHAT BASTARD He stayed loyal as fuck.
WENDY DAY In some situations, he was loyal to a fault.
GOBI RAHIMI I think at one point I’d heard that he had more than forty different people who relied on him.
WENDY DAY He had loyalty to Death Row. He didn’t sign just for financial reasons because at that point, he could have gone to other labels—any label would have picked him up. Part of the reason that he chose Death Row was because he felt like the East Coast was against him. It’s hard for me to say this because I know how untrue it is, only because all the people that he thought had united would never ever come together. He believed that all of the powerful music influences—from Andre Harrell to Puffy, Russell Simmons to Jimmy Henchman to Haitian Jack, like, anyone in the music industry that had power—he believed that they were a cabal. So he felt like the only way to counter that as a chess move was to sign to Death Row. Remember, when Pac was incarcerated—and I believe this was a Suge Knight chess move—[Knight] got onstage and dissed Puffy.IV I believe he did that because he was trying to pander to Tupac, and it was the perfect way to instill in a new artist your intention to ride for them. I think that that moment is what did it.
I was not excited about him signing to Death Row. There was so much drama to Death Row. There were federal agents trying to infiltrate. They always said that Suge was a gangbanger who wasn’t really in the music industry, that it was trying to conceal who he was as a street mogul. Of course, I didn’t know the extent of the drama or the craziness, but I was friends with guys that worked at Death Row, just like I had friends that worked at every label. And they were pretty high up in the hierarchy, and I know how stressed out they were, how frustrated they were. And I shared that with Pac without mentioning their names and without putting them in harm’s way. I was pretty open with him. I said, you know, “The staff is even stressed out over there. Are you sure this is what you want to do?” And he just saw it as he had no alternatives.
I believed he could sign anywhere. I believed he could have run the price up through a bidding war; I would have happily helped him. He didn’t want the help. He wanted to sign to Death Row. He was adamant about that. There were different clauses that I advised him to put into the contract; the contract was handwritten. I remember from the letters he was writing to me what was in there, and I was able to give him at least some coaching on what to put in there. I don’t know if he ever did or not. I would like to think that he did, because he did trust my judgment and my acumen, so I hope that he did. But I sort of knew there was no choice. He was signing to Death Row.
JUSTIN TINSLEY By the fall of 1995, it was like, wait a minute, this label has Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and this label has now added Tupac. We talk about super teams and big threes in the NBA; Suge had those three guys all on this label at one time. Of course, that was very short-lived: Dre left by like the spring of ’96, and Dre leaving it should have been the first telltale sign, but Death Row at its peak was such a powerful example of Black entrepreneurship.
LESLIE GERARD Pac’s now on Death Row. He hasn’t released anything yet. “California Love” wasn’t out yet. He’d gotten nominated at the Grammys for “Dear Mama.” I’m at a party at MCA. In walks Suge Knight with a trail of people behind him. The first person in line is Tupac. It’s this kind of line of succession. Tupac sees me, jumps out, and gives me a big hug. We’re just so happy. The next person in the line was Snoop. When Pac breaks from the line, everybody stops, waiting for him to get back in the line. It was like they weren’t allowed to continue on until Tupac got back in front.
ALEX ROBERTS When Suge went and got him out, Pac went straight into the studio and wrote All Eyez On Me. For Pac to come out and do what he did… you would think it would’ve been straight to the strip club, not seeing him for a week. Then maybe, Okay, let’s get this going. No. He made it known that we’d signed the right person.
VIRGIL ROBERTS Tupac was super talented, and what he needed was somebody to work with him on putting together his music and getting it out on the streets. Dre worked with him on his first record [with Death Row, “California Love”] and many of the other records Tupac did with a kid that had been signed to SOLAR named Johnny J.
TOMMY “D” DAUGHERTY I do remember toward the end I did maybe ten sessions for All Eyez on Me because they couldn’t get another engineer. At Can-Am Studios they had two rooms. One in the front, one in the back. I pretty much was in the front room all the time. [Engineer] Dave Aron was in the back room. I’ll never forget the day Johnny J had a box of discs that he wrote on his SP-1200. He told Pac, “Man, you wiped me out. I don’t have any more beats left.” Tupac had this look on his face like he was so happy. I wiped this motherfucker out of beats.
MOE Z MD Interscope was like, “Come to the studio, do a remix of ‘Temptations.’ ” They’re gonna drop that next. All right, cool. Did all these cool remixes and everything. And then, nope, Tupac got out of jail and was with Death Row. Not even two months later, there was “California Love.” That record killed any record we did. I remember, I pulled over to the side of the road. I was blown away by how far they’d taken it.
KENDRICK WELLS Those sessions were a party going in and a party going out. It was kind of weird because you go in and you’re like, I’m at crazy-ass Death Row, the Motown of right now, but then you get patted down by guards when you go in. Once you go in, there’s all kinds of food and alcohol and respect. Music comes on and you see these beast artists step up like it’s easy. They just started finger-painting all over the tracks. When you see art get expressed so easily, it’s fun.
TOMMY “D” DAUGHERTY I can remember one of the Jacksons sitting there in a session, or the guys from Bell Biv DeVoe. It was amazing, the people that would show up saying they wanted to be part of Death Row. It was like, you don’t even know what you’re dealing with here. Death Row was about more than engineering. It was like running the whole show, like keeping the ship afloat. And if you couldn’t keep it afloat, they’d throw you out the back door. And I mean, a ship with a bunch of pirates on it!
PUDGEE THA PHAT BASTARD One conversation I had with Biggie, he expressed to me very implicitly how he wished he was on Death Row, how much he did not want to be on Bad Boy [Records]. When you talk to people in their crisis moments, they’re gonna tell you things that they wouldn’t otherwise say. But Biggie was not happy with his situation at all. And Puffy is my guy; no disrespect to him. But it’s a well-known fact, Biggie felt whatever he felt. He wanted to be down. He liked the gangster and the elevation of Pac and them, of what their movement was doing.
GREG KADING Puffy is not some gangster. He’s not Tony Soprano. He was in fear for his life, and for good reason. He knew that Suge had it out for him. He knew that Suge held him responsible for the murder of Jake Robles.V
JUSTIN TINSLEY What really set this thing off was what happened in Atlanta in September 1995 when Big Jake was allegedly killed by Puffy’s bodyguard at the time. At least before that it was just people dissing each other, but after that there was blood on the ground.
GREG KADING Jake Robles’s murder—that was when blood was first spilled. Then what kind of exacerbates this whole thing is these labels starting to say that, you know, Bad Boy West and Death Row East, and that they were going to encroach on each other’s territories. This just goes back to gangster mob mentality: That’s our turf. It starts off and there’s a competition. There’s a rivalry. It’s who can be more successful. Then you get a murder, and now it’s really real. The violence is real.
ALEX ROBERTS The East Coast–West Coast thing was great for business. There was a beef but we leveraged it to sell records more than anything else. It sold one hell of a lot of records. I’d tell people to look at the positives. Just don’t push it too far. And nobody needs to get shot. If you’re pushing it too far, you might as well go back to the hood, and stand on a corner where you have to win every second of the day. The heat wins once and you’re done. Dre—and Eazy and Cube—they’d worked so hard to get away from that life and get welcomed into Beverly Hills.
CORMEGA I was at a show in North Carolina with Mobb Deep and the people in the crowd were screaming, “Makaveli.” That’s the East Coast! Pac was big in New Jersey. Ho
w is it East Coast versus West Coast when this man got niggas in New Jersey, which is walking distance from New York? Big ran New York but Pac ran America.
D-SHOT He was always having fun and he was fun to be around. The women—the women loved him. One time we ended up at the, I think it was called the Freaknik, in Atlanta.VI We came and he wanted to be around us. He had us come up to his room and hang around him a little bit. We hung around with him. So here’s the difference: every star down there that was on TV was in that one hotel, but when Tupac came down the escalator it was a whole ’nother level. That boy, at that point, was a true superstar. He wasn’t just there on no rap level; it was a superstar level—the movies and the music.
There were times where I don’t think he really realized that, though. He was the kind of cat that would show up to yo hood by himself. He’ll pull up on you. He’ll have his straps on him and everything but he’ll come meet you in your hood. I’ve seen him do it. He did that to me a couple of times. That’s the kind of person he was.
PUDGEE THA PHAT BASTARD At the height of his career, with all the drama, it’s looking like the Million Man March. Queens Day. He’s calling me like, “I’m gonna meet you in Queens. I’m coming to Queens.” I’m from the Bronx—from Harlem, but grew up in the Bronx. So I’m on my way to Queens like, Oh, man. All right. So I ride the train instead of driving. I’m with my brother and two friends. I’m thinking he’s coming with, like, one or two people also. I get there. He calls me. He’s like, “Yo, where you at?” I’m like, “I’m right here at the entrance.” This is Queens Day. So everybody in the world is out. I’m like, “How I’ma see you? There’s mad people out here.” He’s telling me he’s right there but I don’t see him. So then the next thing you know, everybody that was in that park, all at once, parts like Moses parted the Red Sea. And he came walking down like he was on a runway. Basically the whole damn parade was everybody that was with him. The whole park, the whole damn Queens Day, was his people.
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