Rap Mogul Linked to 1997 Slaying
WASHINGTON POST — BY SHARON WAXMAN
Published · reached Usenet April 21, 1999
Rap Mogul Linked to 1997 Slaying
Death Row Label's Suge Knight Implicated in Star's Killing
By Sharon Waxman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 1999; Page C01
LOS ANGELES, April 20�Police searched the offices of the once-prominent Death Row Records today in connection with the 1997 killing of rapper Notorious B.I.G., and have identified the jailed hip-hop impresario Marion "Suge" Knight as a suspect in the slaying.
The murder of the recording star as he left a music industry party here in March 1997 remains unsolved. Police have speculated that the shooting was linked to a rivalry between East and West Coast rappers, but in two years have made no arrests.
Local media reported that police now believe the killing of the New York-based Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was a murder-for- hire plot linked to Death Row founder Knight, who was behind bars at the time serving a nine-year prison term for an unrelated attack on two rappers in 1992.
One of Knight's stars, Tupac Shakur, was gunned down in Las Vegas just six months before Wallace's slaying. That killing also remains unsolved. In the past, executives both at Death Row and at New York-based Bad Boy Entertainment -- which recorded Wallace -- have denied that there was any real rivalry between New York and Los Angeles rappers, calling the supposed disputes media hype.
As had Bad Boy founder Sean "Puffy" Combs and Knight, Wallace and Shakur had baited one another in public, with their bodyguards getting into a scuffle at a music awards show in 1996. Shakur accused Combs of being behind a 1994 mugging in which Shakur was shot.
Police spokesman Jason Lee said that detectives with warrants searched four Los Angeles locations today, confiscating materials related to their investigation, including a Chevrolet Impala that may have been used in the drive-by killing of Wallace.
The car matches descriptions by eyewitnesses of the vehicle driven during the shooting, when a dark sedan pulled alongside Wallace's GMC Suburban and a gunman fired at least seven shots into the car.
Lee said details of the searches would be released Wednesday.
Death Row officials and Knight lawyer David Kenner could not be reached for comment at press time. A former publicist for the label, George Pryce, said he was surprised at news of the searches. "This is a shock to me -- but who knows what's true," he said.
Knight has continued to run Death Row Records from jail, but the label has fallen from its once-dominant position in the hip-hop industry. Death Row has moved twice in the past few years, from opulent Beverly Hills offices to more affordable accommodations in Los Angeles.