Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations (2 page)

Combs had since gone on to oversee every aspect of Biggie’s career, co-writing and co-producing “Hypnotize” along with the subsequent
Life After Death
hits, “Sky’s The Limit” and “Mo Money Mo Problems,” tracks that owed much of their success to Combs’ flair for polished production. Combs would, in fact, go on to almost singlehandedly bring rap music into the mainstream, helping create the smooth, listener-friendly genre of commercial hip-hop, the most successful form of popular music since rock and roll.

But in the Shrine Auditorium that night it was hard to imagine that the gangster lifestyle celebrated in the music of Biggie Smalls could, by any stretch, be considered in conventional pop terms. What Biggie and Puff were formulating in the studio and on stage would redefine what constituted socially acceptable entertainment. It was raw, profane, and unapologetically in-your-face.

Its polarizing effect was underlined by the fact that not everyone in the audience that night greeted Biggie and Puff with ecstatic cheers. As they stood to present the award to Toni Braxton, scattered jeers and shouts of “West Side!” could be heard ringing out under the hall’s high ceilings.

“What up, Cali?” Biggie murmured, leaning into the microphone. But the booing only got louder as the tension rippled across the auditorium. West Coast gang signs were flashed in the glare of the TV lights. It was obvious that the Notorious B.I.G. and his mentor, Puff Daddy, were in hostile territory.

Biggie had, in fact, been camping on the enemy’s doorstep off and on for four months prior to the award show. He had wrapped up the recording of
Life After Death
in a Los Angeles studio and gone on to shoot the video for “Hypnotize,” a $700,000 outlaw-on-the-run fantasy co-starring Puffy Combs, using locations in downtown L.A. and Marina Del Rey.

Accompanying him everywhere was his large posse, including members of a rap group made up of assorted friends from his Brooklyn neighborhood, known as the Junior M.A.F.I.A. (Junior Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes.) Their 1995 debut album,
Conspiracy,
was produced by Biggie and featured the platinum-selling hits “Player’s Anthem” and “Get Money,” on which he is featured. Among those who had escorted Biggie to the West Coast was his cousin, Junior M.A.F.I.A. member James Lloyd, aka “Lil’ Caesar,” and Damien Butler, aka “D-Roc,” who was constantly at Biggie’s side.

The entourage had checked into the Four Seasons Hotel, where they stayed for two weeks before being thrown out after an altercation between the rap star and his then-girlfriend Tiffany Lane. They had bounced in and out of various hotels over the next several days, finally ending up at the plush Westwood Marquee just prior to the Soul Train Awards.

From the moment he had set foot in Los Angeles, Biggie was also surrounded by a phalanx of professional bodyguards. Puffy Combs had hired Ken Story, owner of the Los Angeles-based T.N.T. Protection Service, for round-the-clock security, beginning with Biggie’s arrival at the airport. Also on duty was Paul Offord, head of security for Bad Boy Records, and Reggie Blaylock, a moonlighting Inglewood police officer, retained by Story to provide additional muscle. As a result, there was never fewer than a half dozen heavyweights following the rapper and his crew wherever they went. “We take precautions,” Combs told
MTV News
in answer to a question about his retaining the services of an off-duty cop. “The people that defend this city, we hire them to protect and defend us.”

Combs had good reasons for insuring protection and defense. As rap music’s popularity began to take hold in the early nineties, its promoters and producers went to great lengths to downplay the controversial rivalry between the music’s West Coast and East Coast contingents. It was nothing more than a publicity stunt, they insisted, designed to sell more records by creating competition and letting fans choose sides.

The facts, as clearly heard in the music itself, suggested otherwise. Rap’s legitimacy as an authentic expression of street life and the gangbanging ethos could hardly be overstated. Given that credibility, it was hardly surprising that rap artists garnered intense identification with the gangs themselves and, just as inner city gangsters defended their turf, so, too, did the West Coast and East Coast crews defend their regional rap champions. Despite the protests of label heads and their publicists, the bicoastal conflict was very real and increasingly deadly.

Nothing underscored the lethal potential of the rap wars more than the drive-by death of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996. Despite Biggie’s enormous popularity, it was Tupac who had been slated for global rap stardom, thanks to his charismatic good looks and intense, driven, and volatile rap style. At the Soul Train Awards, it was Tupac’s multi platinum
All Eyez on Me
that would be honored, albeit posthumously, as the year’s best album. His murder had thrown into sharp relief the intense rivalry between Puffy Combs’ Bad Boy empire and its West Coast counterpart, Death Row Records, owned and operated by the Compton native and one-time UNLV defensive lineman, Marion “Suge” Knight. Just as Biggie was the crown jewel in the Bad Boy roster, Tupac had been Death Row’s premier asset. The persistent buzz on the street was that the shooting, still unsolved six months after the fact, was motivated by the ambition of Puffy Combs to rule the rap world by eliminating the competition and establishing East Coast dominance once and for all. While Puffy has seemingly been unwilling to dignify the rumor with a response, a statement he made after another shooting incident targeting Shakur in 1994, in which Puffy was also rumored to be involved, might best sum up his attitude toward such accusations. “This story is beyond ridiculous and completely false,” he insisted.

Whether or not Puffy actually had a hand in the rapper’s death, Tupac, for his part, provided more than enough provocation. On “Hit ’Em Up,” his 1996 single, for example, he attacked the whole East Coast rap establishment, calling out several key figures, including Biggie, Lil Caesar, and Puffy, by name. “Die slow, motherfuckers” he snarled on the song’s extended outro. This was something ominously new, even for hard-core gangster rap. On tracks like “Hit ’Em Up” and others, Tupac was doing more than simply joining in the bragging-rights game that most rappers played. He was throwing down the gauntlet, humiliating his rivals in public and all but daring them to come after him.

In this escalating war of words and rhythm, dependable security was more than simply prudent. It was a matter of life and death. But Puffy might have inadvertently ramped up the risk inherent in coming to California by reportedly choosing sides in another long-running gang conflict, this one between L.A.’s notorious Bloods and Crips. While on the West Coast performing on the 1995 Summer Jams tour, Combs was said to have hired Crips to act as bodyguards for stadium stops in Anaheim and San Diego. Among the most prominently and persistently named was Duane Keith Davis, a Compton native known on the streets as “Keffe D,” and his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.

Employing Crips like Keffe D and Baby Lane was another stubborn rumor that Combs dismissed out of hand. “We never used Crips,” he asserted to
MTV News,
“or any other gang faction to do security for us.” In a subsequent interview, when asked whether he might have been introduced to Keffe D and others without being told they were Crips, Combs insisted, “Being a young black celebrity you have thousands of acquaintances…I can’t say who I’ve met… it’s not like all gang people wear colored rags on their heads.” But a press agent for his record label was more equivocal. When pressed as to whether it was Biggie who might have, unbeknownst to Puffy, hired Crips as muscle, the publicist responded, “As a family, Bad Boy did not use them,” begging the question of who, exactly, was a member of the family.

Perhaps the reason the rumor took root and spread was that such a move would have made a certain kind of sense. Davis and his crew were well-documented, active members in one of Compton’s most violent gangs, cold-blooded career thugs, born and bred on the meanest streets of South L.A. If anyone knew the turf, and how to navigate it, it would be Keffe D and his posse.

If Puffy actually had hired Crips as his west coast muscle, he would have put himself squarely in the middle of one of the most violent feuds in American criminal history, the savage war between the Bloods and the Crips. Death Row’s mastermind, Suge Knight, had a long and close association with a subset of the Bloods called the Mob Piru. By recruiting Crips for security, Combs would have effectively chosen sides against the Bloods and, more specifically, the Mob Piru, who served as Suge’s fiercely loyal enforcers. It’s yet another consideration lending credence to the contention that Puffy hired gang members as muscle. “If Death Row is being represented by Bloods,” maintains former Tupac Shakur bodyguard Frank Alexander, “it might be understandable to have the rival gang in your employment. It’s logical because these guys wouldn’t hesitate to fight against the adversary.” Under such circumstances, Puffy Combs would have been stepping into a hornet’s nest of his own devising and bringing Biggie into it with him.

For his part, Biggie also had security on his mind as he made the rounds of interviews and press appearances in the run-up to the Soul Train festivities. “Rappers’ lifestyles should be more protected,” he told a reporter from
the Los Angeles Times
, with the recent death of Tupac clearly on his mind. The two had, once upon a time, been close friends. “A drive-by shooting ain’t supposed to happen.”

The Notorious B.I.G. was himself no stranger to criminal malfeasance. In 1991, he had been arrested in Raleigh, North Carolina, and pled guilty to three counts of drug possession. Four years later, in Camden, New Jersey, he was picked up for robbery and assault. He racked up another assault charge in New York City in 1996, adding to it a count of weapons possession. Biggie had also been followed to Los Angeles by NYPD investigators looking into narcotics and weapons charges as part of a multi-agency grand jury investigation out of Teaneck, New Jersey, where the rapper maintained a palatial home.

Despite the less-than-rapturous reception Biggie and Puffy received at the Soul Train Awards, the rest of the evening had passed without incident. If the rapper was shaken by the catcalls at the Shrine, he didn’t show it. He didn’t have the time. There were a flurry of details that needed his attention in the days leading up to the release of
Life After Death
. He had initially been set to fly to London for advance promotion of the album, but canceled at the last minute to finish up final touches in the studio. That night he had also agreed to add a verse to “It’s All About The Benjamins,” a remixed track from Puffy’s album
Hell up in Harlem
, a title later changed to
No Way Out
. His busy schedule also included a Vibe magazine interview back at the Westwood Marquee.

While watching the delayed broadcast of the awards show on television, Biggie answered the reporter’s questions in his characteristic deep and resonant baritone. He seemed in a particularly thoughtful mood that night, candidly revealing, among other things, his ambivalent feelings toward his estranged wife, Faith Evans.

He had met the Florida singer and songwriter at a photo session when Puffy signed her in 1994 as the first female artist on Bad Boy Records. Nine days later they were married and, in October 1996, they had a son, Christopher Jr. By then, however, the relationship was already falling apart. Biggie regularly stepped out on Evans and had a brief, tempestuous affair with Kimberly “Lil’ Kim” Jones, whom he had known from her singing stint with Junior M.A.F.I.A. In fact, one of the more stinging humiliations on Tupac’s “Hit ’Em Up” was the rapper’s boast that he had had sex with Faith Evans while she was still Biggie’s wife.

Biggie’s troubled relationship with women was in marked contrast to his utter devotion to his mother, Voletta Wallace. He would call her nearly every day during his L.A. stay, keeping her up-to-date on the latest developments in his whirlwind career. It’s hardly surprising, considering that the Jamaican-born Voletta was not only his biggest fan, but had raised him by herself from the age of two. The enduring ghetto tragedy of the absent father — in this case a welder and low-level Jamaican politician named George Latore — created the intense bond between mother and son so common in broken families. It would only be strengthened by Voletta’s two bouts with breast cancer and her fervent embrace of Jehovah’s Witness doctrine, which, among other tenets, stated that those ascending to heaven after Armageddon would number a strict 144,000.

In her phone conversation with him that night, Voletta expressed surprise that her son was still on the West Coast, instead of on his way to London as planned. He had canceled the trip, he replied, over concerns that U.K. security arrangements were inadequate, but went on to assure her that he was being well protected in Los Angeles. “We have off-duty cops guarding us,” he told her, apparently referring to the lone Reggie Blaylock.

Whatever fears and false comforts Biggie may have expressed in his phone call to his mother, they seemed to have faded as the night wore on. Afterward, he and his posse would venture out to take in a late show of
Donnie Brasco
, the Johnny Depp vehicle about a cop infiltrating the mob only to find his identity swallowed up in his assumed life. The early hours of the morning found Biggie back in the studio, working on cuts for Puffy’s new album, adding dialogue and imagery from the movie he had just seen, all in his rich, rolling flow.