• He was a mediocre rapper. His reputation far exceeds his actual skills. He was way worse than Biggie Smalls. He was even worse than MC Eiht, you West Coast partisans.
• He was a fantastic hypocrite. Dear Mama, respect women, blah blah blah. Then, on the other hand, fuck the world! Some people have enough artistic skill to pull this off as the mere wrestling of the angels and demons that live within us all. Tupac didn't, so he just sounded like he was lying.
• He was a thug by choice. Thug Life, yea, rah rah. Tupac went to art school. He was a born actor. He started out as a happy-go-lucky backup dancer for Digital "Humpty Dance" Underground. He certainly ended up as a thug, but it's not like it was his destiny.
• The whole Tupac fetish thing. This is really the problem with Tupac. He got murdered as a young man with a lot of selling power left in him. That caused people with an interest in his career to pimp out his legacy to an insane extent in search of sales. Tupac, like many of us, was a fucked up guy. But he was no great artist, and he was no great role model.

  You know what his legacy has been, ultimately? White kids shouting "Thug Life!" out of their SUV windows. Which is what has led to the slow decline of hip hop music in general. Which was the most important new form of music America has seen in the last 30 years. Tupac was okay. The mythology of Tupac is ridiculous. And the aftermath of Tupac has done more to hurt the music he loved than MC Hammer ever did. Many other people in music have sucked more than Tupac; but nobody else in recent memory has had such a detrimental legacy.

Bring back Rammellzee!

[Blender]

• The Real World season one, obviously. I mean, zeitgeisty to the extreme.
• He was a writer for Vibe magazine. All about pop culture things!
• He wrote a famous cover story about Tupac Shakur. You may have Tupac on one of your t-shirts!
• Headlining a Powell for Congress fundraiser tonight: Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Beat that, bitch.
• He's the preferred candidate of AfroPunk skaters.
• "Mr. Powell’s campaign has advertised a mixtape they created featuring excerpts of his campaign speeches remixed on top of songs by Tupac, Talib Kweli, Mobb Deep and Kanye West."

Needless to say we're fuzzy on what Mr. Powell stands for politically, since we've already made our judgment in his favor based solely on his pop culture history. But he does support Barack Obama—the same guy that cool young people elsewhere support! Fuck you, Jesse Helms' ghost! We knew Kevin was in for big things way back when he was the most businesslike guy in the house:

"It has never been proven that Christopher Wallace was not in Las Vegas on the night Tupac was shot," Philips wrote in response to a reader's question. "Bad Boy produced some computer-generated documents purporting to place him in a recording studio in New York, but they were not time-stamped. Bad Boy said it was going to produce video of Biggie there. They never did that. I have since learned that federal officials conducted interviews in Las Vegas to determine whether Wallace was present. My sources were there and say he and other East Coast figures were in Las Vegas on the night the Southside Crips killed Tupac."

[via MTV.com]

TSG says that the supposed FBI reports implicating Puffy et al. do not in fact exist in the FBI's database. The spelling mistakes, use of incorrect abbreviations, and the use of typewriter on the reports (authentic modern FBI documents are created on computers) coincides with Sabatino's own M.O. in the court filings he's done since he's been in jail.

The suspect documents contain information supposedly provided to agents in the FBI's New York office by an unnamed "confidential source." The records, which Sabatino himself has distributed, conveniently contain black redaction marks covering up the name of the agent (or agents) who prepared the "302s" as well as the corresponding FBI case number...

Additionally, an examination of the three documents revealed that the bodies of the respective "302s" were actually created on a typewriter (the "frame" of the reports is consistent with an authentic "302" template). In some instances, you can see where one letter was typed on top of an existing character, a so-called overstrike. In an interview, Bruce Mouw, a former FBI supervisor who headed the bureau's pursuit of John Gotti, estimated that agents ceased using typewriters about 30 years ago...

A comparison of the "302s" and Sabatino's own court filings shows that the authors of each set of documents share remarkably similar spelling deficiencies. For instance, the word "making" appears as "makeing" in both the "302s" and Sabatino's pro se court pleadings. Similarly, the authors also have difficulty with the word "during." It appears as "durring" in both sets of documents.

The LAT now says it's launching its own investigation into the matter. Puffy denied the LAT's initial story. If it does turn out to be the victim of a hoax, the paper could be facing one of the most dramatic challenges to its credibility ever.

[TSG]

The statements:

"This story is beyond ridiculous and is completely false. Neither Biggie nor I had any knowledge of any attack before, during, or after it happened. It is a complete lie to suggest that there was any involvement by Biggie or myself. I am shocked that the Los Angeles Times would be so irresponsible as to publish such a baseless and completely untrue story." - Sean "Diddy" Combs

"In the past 14 years, I have not even been questioned by law enforcement with regard to the assault of Tupac Shakur, let alone brought up on charges. Chuck Phillips, the writer who in the past has falsely claimed that the Notorious Biggie Smalls was in Las Vegas when Tupac was murdered and that Biggie supplied the gun that killed Tupac — only to be proven wrong as Biggie was in New Jersey recuperating from a car accident, has reached a new low by employing fourth-hand information from desperate jailhouse informants along with ancient FBI reports to create this fabrication. I simply ask for all Rap fans and fans of Tupac to analyze this fiction for what it is along with Phillips' motives behind it. I am baffled as to why the LA Times would print this on its website when a simple and fair investigation would reveal that the allegations are false. I am currently consulting with my attorneys about my legal rights regarding this libelous piece of garbage." - Jimmy Rosemond

[via XXL]

Biggie's two verses on "Who Shot Ya?":

Who shot ya?

Seperate the weak from the ob-solete

Hard to creep them brooklyn streets

Its on nigga, fuck all that bickering beef

I can hear sweat trickling down your cheek

Your heartbeat soun like sasquatch feet

Thundering, shaking the concrete

Finish it, stop, when I foil the plot

Neighbors call the cops said they heard mad shots

Saw me in the drop, three in the corner

Slaughter, electrical tape around your daughter

Old school new school need to learn though

I burn baby burn like disco inferno

Burn slow like blunts with ya-yo

Peel more skins than idaho potato

Niggaz know, the lyrics molestin is takin place

Fuckin with b.i.g. it aint safe

I make your skin chafe, rashes on the masses

Bumps and bruises, blunts and landcruisers

Big poppa smash fools, bash fools

Niggaz mad because I know that cash rules

Everything around me, two glock nines

Any motherfucker whispering about mines

And im, crooklyns finest

You rewind this, Bad Boy's behind this

(Hook)

I seen the light excite all the freaks
Stack mad chips, spread love with my peeps
Niggaz wanna creep, got ta watch my back
Think the cognac and indo sack make me slack?
I switches all that, cock-sucker gs up
One false move, get swiss cheesed up
Clip to tec, respect I demand it
Slip and break the, 11th commandment
Thou shalt not fuck with raw c-poppa
Feel a thosand deaths when I drop ya
I feel for you, like chaka khan Im the don
Pussy when I want rolex on the arm
Youll die slow but calm
Recognize my face, so there wont be no mistake
So you know where to tell jake, lame nigga
Brave nigga, turned front page nigga
Puff daddy flips daily
I smoke the blunts he sips on the baileys
On the rocks, tote glocks at christenings
And my cock, in the fire position and...

[via Lyrics Freak]

The Times obtained FBI records that say the attack was masterminded by manager James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond and promoter James Sabatino. Rosemond was a thug-turned-music businessman, and Sabatino was a young promoter whose father was in the mob. They offered Tupac $7,000 to record a track at the studio—where Puffy and dozens of Bad Boy associates were also recording that night—and then hired some guys from Brooklyn to beat and rob Tupac. He pulled a gun, and ended up getting shot, but surviving.

On Nov. 29, 1994, two dozen Bad Boy executives and associates gathered on the 10th floor of the Quad to record songs for a debut album by Junior M.A.F.I.A., a group formed by the Notorious B.I.G., Bad Boy's leading artist.

On hand were Combs, B.I.G., Rosemond, Agnant and Sabatino. Also present, among others, were rapper James "Lil' Cease" Lloyd and music executive Andre Harrell.

Rosemond had booked an adjacent studio to produce a recording by rapper Little Shawn, whose career he managed. This was the session at which Shakur was to be paid $7,000 for a guest vocal.

In fact, Rosemond never intended to record the session, according to the FBI informant and the other sources.

He had enlisted a trio of his friends from Brooklyn to ambush Shakur in the lobby of the Quad, the sources said.

Agnant and Sabatino helped plan the attack, working out the timing, arranging for the three assailants to be driven to the studio and mapping out their escape route, according to the informant and the other sources. Sabatino informed Combs and Wallace in advance that a trap had been laid for Shakur, the sources said...

The FBI informant said the shots were audible in the 10th-floor studio. "Sabatino, Rosemond and Combs did not seem concerned about this," the informant told the FBI, though others in the studio "were very upset."

The Times contacted the three guys who sources told them did the crime, all of whom are in prison on unrelated charges. One denied it; "one of the men said that Rosemond orchestrated the ambush. Another was cryptic. He wrote that the statute of limitations for the assault had expired, and he offered to produce, for an unspecified fee, the medallion stolen from Shakur."

Puffy declined to comment. Tupac was murdered in September of 1996; Biggie Smalls, Puffy's greatest rapper, was murdered the following March. Puffy is now a mainstream star; needless to say, this could further complicate his already complicated image.