(NEW YORK) — It’s the rivalry that has defined hip-hop for a generation. And, according to many in law enforcement, it has claimed the lives of at least two of rap’s brightest stars.
Sean “Diddy” Combs vs. Marion “Suge” Knight.
Their names are synonymous with the explosion of hip-hop, and the bad blood between the two moguls emerged as a central pop culture plotline of the 1990s. Inside the music industry, their respective record labels – Combs’ Bad Boy Records and Knight’s Death Row — vied for market share. On the streets of cities like Los Angeles and New York, their personas clashed and their allies fought as part of what came to be known as the battle between the East and West Coast rap scenes.
In the East, Combs stood tall. Bad Boy Records boasted the top talent of the Notorious B.I.G. – aka Biggie Smalls – and, authorities said, often hired members of the Crips street gang for security. In the West, it was the domain of Knight and Death Row Records, which, police said, had long-standing connections with the Crips’ rivals, the Bloods. Atop the Death Row roster was Tupac Shakur.
The grudge between Combs and Knight was a key focus of testimony Tuesday at Combs’ ongoing sex-trafficking and racketeering trial in Manhattan, in which Combs has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. On the stand, Combs’ former personal assistant, David James, said one night in 2008, he spotted Knight and his entourage eating at Mel’s Diner in Hollywood. He testified that Combs, upon hearing that, wanted to confront the rival group.
“I was really struck by it. I realized for the first time, being Mr. Combs’ assistant, that my life was in danger,” James testified. A short time later, he gave his notice and left the company.
The enmity between Knight and Combs was fueled by insults – perceived, real and even put to lyrics – and in the era of hip-hop getting hot in the mainstream, the two groups feuded on stage, and in the streets.
Taking the stage at the August 1995 Source Awards in New York City, Knight hurled a thinly-veiled insult at Combs, publicly taunting Combs for allegedly stealing the spotlight from the artists whose music he produced.
In June 1996, Shakur released “Hit ‘Em Up,” which called out Biggie, Combs and Bad Boy by name, and bragged about sleeping with Biggie’s wife. The song further inflamed the feud.
“The East Coast, West Coast rivalry led to a lot of bad blood between Suge, Death Row, and Puffy and Bad Boy. Both were big at the time,” said retired NYPD Det. Derrick Parker, the first cop assigned to investigate crime in the hip-hop world. Parker was known on the streets as the “Hip-Hop Cop.”
“As soon as these guys started to become big in the industry, they started aligning themselves with certain people – they started bringing in the gangs, people affiliated with the gangs, and then came the diss records,” Parker said.
“The beef between them started to go on wax, on records, on tapes, on music. And it just got worse,” Parker said. “And the beef got louder and louder, it got more problematic, more violent.”
The rivalry turned deadly in the fall of 1996. On Sept. 7, Shakur was riding around Vegas in a BMW driven by Knight when a fusillade of gunfire rained down on them. Six days later, Shakur was dead.
The only man ever arrested in connection with the killing has previously alleged that Combs requested the murder: Duane “Keffe D” Davis told police Combs put a bounty on the lives of his rivals, Knight and Shakur.
Combs has repeatedly denied any involvement in the killing and has never been named as a suspect or a person of interest by authorities in connection with the homicide.
Davis, in police interviews, the pages of his own co-authored memoir and in media appearances, has previously told a different story – one he now denies.
“I’ll give anything for those dude’s heads,” Davis said Combs told him months before Shakur’s death, according to a police report on their interview with Davis in 2008. His accounts of alleged conversations with Combs came during interviews with police in 2008 and 2009, obtained by ABC News, and later in on-camera interviews and the 2019 memoir with his name on it, “Compton Street Legend.”
Amid mushrooming violence and tensions between the two groups, Combs worried about “retaliation” and “began to solicit Davis to kill Knight and Shakur,” according to the police report on Davis’ 2008 interview.
More than once, Combs repeated the offer, Davis alleged: summoning him at a Hollywood eatery, Combs “again told Davis he [Combs] needed to get rid of Knight and Shakur. Combs offered Davis $1,000,000 to handle the problem. Davis remembers Combs being very afraid of Knight,” the report said.
Tensions had already begun boiling over months before Shakur’s killing when a fight broke out between a number of Bloods and Crips over a coveted Death Row medallion. Among the scuffling group was Davis’ nephew, Orlando Anderson, according to police interviews and grand jury testimony. It was an act of “war” between the two groups that would warrant “retaliation,” a Crip affiliate testified before Davis’ indicting grand jury.
On Sept. 7, 1996, gang members and glitterati alike convened in Las Vegas for a Mike Tyson fight. In the crowds, Shakur and Knight caught sight of Davis’ nephew and identified him as the would-be medallion snatcher, according to prosecutors. A brawl ensued. That beatdown gave Davis and his crew “the ultimate green light” to take revenge, his memoir said – and which prosecutors have quoted. Paired with the request he said Combs had made, vengeance for his nephew was a “double whammy,” motivating him to seek out Shakur and Knight, according to the memoir.
Davis, behind bars and awaiting trial for orchestrating Shakur’s killing, now insists he is “innocent.” In his first interview since being arrested in September 2023, Davis told ABC News in March that he’s “never read” the memoir ascribed to him, and only confessed to his purported role in the crime because he was getting paid to lie.
His trial for Shakur’s murder is set for February 2026. He has pleaded not guilty.
Six months after Shakur was killed, Biggie Smalls was gunned down in Los Angeles, in what detectives have theorized was orchestrated revenge for Shakur’s murder. Smalls was killed after leaving through a rear entrance of an overcrowded awards afterparty that was also attended by Combs. The rapper and the mogul were in separate cars.
The hip-hop icons’ back-to-back deaths would punctuate years of escalating hostility and traded barbs between the groups.
“The rivalry between the gangs was all part and parcel of that East Coast-West Coast war,” Parker said. “This was how the rap world was. It was very violent, very turbulent at that time. That beef between them marked the hip-hop scene for more than a generation.”
Knight is currently in prison, serving a 28-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter stemming from a 2015 fatal hit-and-run. That case is not connected to Combs, Shakur or Smalls. He did not respond Tuesday to questions about the Combs trial.
Referring to the fact that he, Knight and Combs were all locked up at the time, Davis told ABC News in March: “All three of us are f—ed up now. All three of us are in jail. Me, Suge, and him.”
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