Suge seemed to believe he could get away with just about anything, more than a few observers said, especially since the appearance of David Kenner at his side. Those who did business with Death Row felt increasing dread. Happy Walters, who managed rap acts like Cypress Hill and House of Pain, was said to have engaged in a shouting match with Suge over who would appear on a soundtrack album. A few days later, while withdrawing money from an ATM machine, Happy disappeared, and terror spread like a virus through the music industry in Los Angeles. Loud Records owner Steve Rifkind, who was said to have engaged in a public dispute with Suge over the group Wu-Tang Clan, reportedly hired Knight’s former UNLV football teammate Bigga B as his personal bodyguard, insisting that Bigga escort him between his home and office each morning and evening. Rifkind denied the story, but Bigga B told a reporter that the Loud owner was so scared “he wouldn’t even go take a piss by himself.”
Happy Walters turned up several days after his disappearance, wandering the streets “incoherent, shaved, and naked,” as one report put it, and covered with cigarette burns, according to another. When he was taken to a hospital, Walters claimed he had amnesia and refused to speak Suge Knight’s name.
The rapper and producer Warren G., angry that he was being robbed of credit by Knight and Dr. Dre, rashly advised an interviewer from the Source that he had “made” Death Row Records, only to phone the magazine a few days later and plead that the editors not publish his remarks. The quote appeared in print anyway, and soon after a story spread among Death Row’s staff that Warren G. had been visited in the middle of the night by several Bloods who stuck guns in his face and warned him to watch what he said. All anyone knew for certain was that Warren G., obviously shaken, began carrying a pair of 9mm pistols.
Suge Knight demonstrated an ability to control his employees with more subtle but equally ruthless methods. He brought dozens of rappers and musicians, both aspiring and established, into Death Row’s studios to collaborate on songs he might or might not use, on this record or that one. Very rarely did the unknowns among them ask for or receive contracts, and when the songs did appear on CDs, very few of them asked for money. Advancing their careers in any way they could, most felt, was payment enough. Even stars were kept on short leashes, often working for future considerations that might be some time in arriving. Months after his album Doggystyle rose to the top of the charts, Snoop Dogg still was living in an unfurnished apartment. Suge frequently rented apartments for songwriters, musicians, or singers who showed him talent, and even after their work began to appear on hit records some continued to exist hand-to-mouth, dependent upon Suge not only for a place to live but even for food money.
For Tupac Shakur, however, Suge spared no expense. Tupac’s inclusion in the Death Row roster not only fueled the gaudy opulence that for many young Bloods had become the signal fact of affiliation with the label, but also resulted in an increased definition of the organization’s hierarchy. Shortly after signing Tupac, Suge purchased a dozen gold rings that spelled out M.O.B. (for “Member of the Bloods”), one with the letters outlined in diamonds and rubies for himself, five more with just diamonds for his most trusted thugs, and six others in plain gold for executives of lesser status. Suge’s gifts of heavy gold medallions, in which the hooded figure in the electric chair—still Death Row’s symbol—had been encrusted with rubies and diamonds, marked recipients as members of his inner circle.
The red leather chair behind the desk in Knight’s office had become the throne of a tyrant who liked to impress visitors by feeding his piranhas live rats, or bringing his guard dog Damu to a full bristle with a whispered command. Obsessed with the Cuban drug dealer Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino in the film Scarface, Suge began to mimic the character’s paranoia, filling a cabinet behind his desk with six television sets that permitted him to surveil virtually every square inch of Death Row’s studios.
The killing of Kelly Jamerson at the El Rey Theater in March of 1995, followed by Mark Anthony Bell’s beating nine months later, along with persistent rumors that Death Row Records was dealing in drugs and guns, increased scrutiny of Knight and his record label both in the media and among law enforcement, but Suge shrugged off accusations that he was more criminal than businessman, as the gossip of those motivated by either envy or prejudice. “There are still individuals in this society who can’t stand the thought of a young black person with a gang of money in the bank,” he told one interviewer. When the Los Angeles Times reported that Death Row was the subject of a federal investigation into alleged ties with organized crime figures in New York and Chicago, Suge told the paper’s reporter, “A black brother from Compton creates a company that helps people in the ghetto, so what does the government do? They try to bring him down. Sometimes people get sacrificed when they stand up. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X.” And now, apparently, Suge Knight. “Sometimes they take away your life,” Suge told the Times. “Sometimes they take away your freedom. It’s sad.”
Unlike Martin and Malcolm, Suge was lucky in his enemies. Attacks on gangsta rap had begun in the early 1990s, when a Harlem minister named Calvin Butts organized a protest march outside Sony’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan. After the reverend changed his mind, however (deciding that rappers were only reflecting the problems of life in the inner city), the cultural right made a gigantic mistake by replacing him with Dr. C. DeLores Tucker. For the ten or twelve months after Tucker formed the National Political Congress of Black Women in 1993, demanding that corporate America assist in the suppression of this hateful music, the woman enjoyed enormous success. Allied with William Bennett and his Empower America movement, she made appearances on virtually every major television news program, saw her letters printed on The New York Times op-ed page, obtained a position on the NAACP’s Board of Trustees, and then used it to prevent the organization from giving Tupac Shakur its 1994 Image Award. After Tucker delivered a seventeen-minute speech at Time Warner’s annual shareholders meeting, the company’s executives were so cowed that they decided to sell their 50 percent interest in Interscope back to Ted Field, who promptly sold the same shares to Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s MCA.
An enraged Suge Knight mounted a highly effective counterattack, aided in considerable part by the questionable character of C. DeLores Tucker. At first Suge’s claim that Tucker had asked him to leave Death Row and work for her at a new Time Warner label, promising $80 million and two state-of-the-art recording studios, sounded ludicrous. But as the media learned more about Tucker’s background, what Suge said sounded increasingly plausible. Though she called herself “Doctor,” it turned out that Tucker had no college degree. And while she had indeed been the highest-ranking black woman in the state government while serving as Pennsylvania’s commonwealth secretary during the 1970s, Tucker also was the subject of a three-month investigation at the end of her term in which it was discovered that she had used state employees to write speeches for which she was paid more than $66,000. When Tucker claimed that the FBI, at her instigation, was investigating the sale of gangsta rap records to minors, the agency quickly issued a denial and her credibility was further undermined. An embarrassed Bill Bennett was already backing away by the time Suge purchased a two-page ad in The Source that printed a long list of “Freedom Fighters,” including Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, Marcus Garvey, and others. The name “C. DeLores Tucker” also appeared on the list, but it had been crossed out by a red line, which among members of the Bloods was a way of marking someone for death. That same month, Suge delivered Snoop Dogg’s new album Dogg Food to stores on Halloween. “Suge thought, ‘They’re all so scared of it, I’ll release it on the scariest night of the year,’” a reporter explained.
The album quickly went platinum, and by early 1996 just about everyone in the music industry agreed with what David Geffen told Rolling Stone: “The decision to dump Interscope was a gigantic error for Time Warner and a great opportunity for Edgar Bronfman.”
By February of 1996,
as Snoop Dogg sat in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom listening to final arguments at his first-degree murder trial, many of Death Row Records’ biggest names had begun to ask themselves where exactly Suge Knight was leading them. “This is some serious shit,” said an obviously daunted Snoop outside the courtroom, where he stood wearing a suit and tie that had replaced the flannel shirts he’d worn early in the trial.
The charges against the rapper arose from a killing almost three years earlier in which a twenty-year-old Ethiopian named Philip Woldemariam was shot in the back by Snoop’s bodyguard McKinley Lee. Apart from Snoop’s celebrity, the scenarios of Woldemariam’s death offered by both prosecution and defense were depressingly familiar. The incident began outside Snoop’s apartment in Palms, each side agreed, when Snoop’s friend Sean Abrams flashed a gang sign at Woldemariam as the young Ethiopian and two of his friends drove past. The car stopped, epithets were exchanged, and Snoop’s bodyguard Lee ran downstairs to intervene. Woldemariam and friends drove away, but less than an hour later Snoop was behind the wheel of his Jeep, with Lee in the passenger seat and Abrams in the back, as they prowled the neighborhood. The three found Woldemariam and his friends at nearby Woodbine Park, where the group was dining on takeout Mexican food. What happened next was a matter of dispute. According to the defense attorneys (David Kenner for Snoop, Johnnie Cochran for Abrams and Donald Re for Lee), Woldemariam reached for the .38 he wore in his waistband, forcing McKinley Lee to draw his own gun and shoot the Ethiopian in self-defense. The prosecution countered that Snoop and his friends had pursued Woldemariam to the park and that the shots fired by Lee had hit the Ethiopian in his buttocks and back. How could that be self-defense?
Apart from Snoop’s celebrity status (among those who made an appearance in court to show their support were Suge Knight, M.C. Hammer, and Tupac Shakur), the defense had three major advantages. The first was Kenner, who hammered at several key prosecution witnesses so relentlessly that jurors sat shaking their heads and suppressing smiles. Secondly, one of Philip Woldemariam’s companions astounded the prosecution by changing his story, explaining in court that the Ethiopian had reached for his gun, and that, after the shooting, he and Woldemariam’s other companion removed the gun from their friend’s hand to ensure Snoop’s conviction. Thirdly, key evidence in the case that included bloody clothing and shell casings had been destroyed or removed from the property room at the LAPD’s Pacific Division.
The jury returned not guilty verdicts on all counts. Snoop was collected outside the Criminal Courts building by a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce dispatched by Suge Knight. That evening, Snoop joined Suge and his entourage for a party at Monty’s Steakhouse, where guests, who included not only Tupac and Hammer but also several members of the jury, dined on crab legs and lobster tails.
Though all smiles that evening, Snoop was badly shaken by his ordeal. Within a matter of months he would begin talking about the “change of direction” that resulted eventually in his parting of the ways with Suge Knight and Death Row Records. Others, though, would leave first. The only performer to meet Suge head-on was RBX, who also happened to be the single Death Row rapper who was a match for him physically. The beef between the two had started in a dressing room at the New Regal Theater on Chicago’s south side, over something so stupid that those who heard the story could barely believe it: Suge had become infuriated when RBX ate some fried chicken Knight had ordered for his homeboys. An incredulous RBX stayed right in Suge’s face until Knight pulled out a pistol and handed it to one of his homies. “If I whup your ass, this nigga’s likely to shoot me,” RBX observed. Violence was averted when Snoop Dogg reminded Suge that RBX was his cousin and said to please let it pass, but the incident raised serious doubts about Knight’s leadership. It had been obvious for some time that Suge was more concerned with how he looked to the Piru Bloods who made up his entourage than about maintaining good relations with his performers and musicians. To end his relationship with a rapper who had performed on records that sold millions of copies over nothing more than a few pieces of fried chicken, though, was flat-out insanity. And more than a few people listened when RBX began to say that Suge was not only a bully but a coward who couldn’t fight a man his own size without thugs on hand to make sure he finished on top.
The D.O.C. was the next to pull away, explaining that he had relocated to Atlanta because “there was too much drama out there in L.A.” Soon after, RBX made a final break with Death Row by refusing to perform as the voice of Satan on Snoop’s “Murder Was the Case,” a song about a murdered young man who returns to earth by making a deal with the devil. RBX signed shortly thereafter with Giant Records, where he promptly recorded an album that attacked Death Row in general and Dr. Dre in particular.
Several interviewers would force Dre to acknowledge that the departure of RBX from Death Row was similar to the way he had left Ruthless Records. Snoop Dogg, caught in the middle, broke with RBX and told an interviewer, “This is a family thang on Death Row, and Dre is the godfather.”
The godfather, however, was no longer happy in the Death Row family, either. Dre’s life was a debacle, and he had mostly himself to blame. During the past four years he had pleaded guilty to battery of a police officer in New Orleans, escaped criminal assault charges by settling out of court with former Pump It Up hostess Deniece Barnes, and pleaded no contest to breaking the jaw of rap producer Damon Thomas. After leading several LAPD squad cars on a high-speed chase that ended when he drove off a cliff, Dre was under house arrest for the third time since October of 1992. He owned a beautiful home in which to serve his confinement, but the place had burned nearly to the ground a few months earlier during a crapulous barbecue at which many of the guests were hard-core gang members. Suge’s Bloods had been turning Dre’s “swim parties” into melees for months, deafening neighbors with the thumping bass lines of their music, having public sex with groupies, weaving drunkenly through a neighborhood where most of the homes were surrounded by gates, and turning the living room of Dre’s own French Colonial into a boxing ring. Jerry Heller, who lived only a few doors down, described driving past when the house caught fire and seeing a drunken Dre in the street laughing with his friends. Dre moved temporarily into an apartment on Venice Boulevard, but was promptly evicted. Now the twenty-nine-year-old Grammy winner, who had just been dubbed by Newsweek “the Phil Spector of rap” was living with his mother.
Throughout the music industry, Dre was regarded as a talented producer and a dangerous fool. He never had been a real gangbanger, though, and a lot of people who knew Dre well said his personality was softer than that of almost anyone else at Death Row. When a judge threatened to put Dre in L.A. County Jail, Suge Knight told David Kenner, “He can’t go in there. Them motherfuckers will kill him. He ain’t from the street.”
Dre finally was ready to agree. In March of 1996 he put in a call to Jimmy Iovine at Interscope, said he wanted out of Death Row, and suggested starting a new label. “I don’t like it [at Death Row] no more,” Dre explained to an interviewer. “The mentality there is that you have to be mad at somebody in order for yourself to feel good or make a record.” Observers were astonished that Suge accepted Dre’s departure, though most understood this better when they learned that Dre had agreed to forfeit an enormous financial stake in the company in order to obtain his freedom.
At Death Row, however, Dre became almost as hated an enemy as Puffy Combs during the next few months. Everyone who wanted to stay with the label was required to revile him. All during that spring and into early summer, Tupac Shakur went out of his way to prove his loyalty to Suge by dissing Dre, accusing him in one interview of regularly robbing credit from other producers. “He was owning the company and chillin’ in his house,” Tupac said, “while I’m out here in the streets stompin’ nigga’s asses, startin’ wars and shit, droppin’ albums, doin’ my thang, and this nigga takin’ three years to do one song!” Tupac then accused Dre in not one but two new songs of being a closet homosexual—”
gay ass Dre,” he called his former producer on “To Live and Die in L.A.”
Shakur also joined in a brutal attack on one of Dre’s closest friends, producer Sam “Sneed” Anderson. The incident took place at Death Row’s offices in Westwood. Sneed had been summoned to the meeting supposedly to discuss working on a new album by Snoop Dogg. Things turned nasty very quickly, however, and after Suge accused him of being “slick,” Sneed was certainly beaten and possibly subjected to a sexual assault. “I don’t wanna go into that,” Sneed later told an interviewer. “A few people put their hands on me and I lost respect for all of them.” What Suge really wanted from Sneed, reportedly, was the name of Dr. Dre’s homosexual lover. When Sneed said he had never even heard that Dre was gay, an entire gang of rappers, Tupac included, fell on him, punching him to the ground, then kicking and stomping at him where he lay rolled up in a ball. He thought he was about to die, Sneed said, but Suge stopped the others short, and let him stagger out of the office with his face bathed in blood.
Suge continued to harrass Dre, phoning his house to demand that he surrender Death Row’s master tapes. Finally, “I sent somebody over to Dre’s house to get the masters,” Suge told The Source. When Dre wouldn’t open the door, he went over himself, Suge explained: “I come through the gate, see motherfucker’s runnin’ and hidin’.” Eventually a dozen LAPD squad cars were summoned to the scene. “But it wasn’t no thang,” Suge said. “I played a couple games of pool, got my shit, and left.”
LAbyrinth Page 10