The attack came just six months after the drive-by murder of Tupac Shakur, fueling speculation it was part of a battle between East Coast and West Coast rap camps. The speculation is so far just that. Police have not made any arrests in either killing; they say they’re pursuing the feud angle, among others. Shakur recorded for L.A.-based Death Row Records, run by Marion ““Suge’’ Knight, who last month was sentenced to nine years in prison after violating his probation for a 1992 assault. Biggie recorded for New York-based Bad Boy Entertainment, run by Sean ““Puffy’’ Combs. Knight is a former NFL hopeful linked to the Bloods street gang; in a few short years he has become–unjustly, he protests–the menace of the music industry. Combs is a cocky 26-year-old who can rub people the wrong way. Representatives for Knight and Combs did not respond to requests for interviews, but a source close to Death Row told NEWSWEEK, “"[Suge] despised Puffy so much I can’t explain it. A lot of it was jealousy.''
For the past three years, the two camps have been in a state of open conflict. When Shakur was shot five times in the lobby of a New York recording studio in 1994, he accused Biggie of setting him up. Wallace promptly released a song called ““Who Shot Ya,’’ which appeared to be taunting Shakur, though Biggie said it was not aimed at him. Shakur followed with an even more inflammatory rap: ““I f—ed your wife, you fat motherf—er.’’ Hip-hop magazines like Vibe and The Source milked the escalating feud for provocative copy; fans followed it like the sports news, the apotheosis of an art form built on the dozens. ““This was a car accident we were all watching happen,’’ says Reginald Dennis, a former Source editor now launching a rap magazine called XXL. ““We wanted Tupac and Biggie to make records that were as close to homicide as possible. We got that and more. Are we bloodthirsty? I have to agree.''
Knight has maintained that his tough-guy reputation is all image, but the carnage around him and his rival has been real. At a 1995 awards ceremony in New York, Knight openly invited Combs’s acts to defect to Death Row. A month later, Jake Robles, a close friend and bodyguard for Knight, was killed at a party in Atlanta. No arrests were made, but sources close to Knight say he blamed Combs for the shooting (Combs has denied any involvement). Biggie seemed to want no part of the battle; he did not rise to Shakur’s taunts. Rather, says Rivera, he wondered, ““Why does he hate me so much, Un?’’ But last March, the two camps faced off, guns drawn, backstage at the Soul Train awards.
By last week, though, the New York crew was feeling relaxed. Biggie was showing off a new mood and a new tattoo, a passage from Psalms: ““The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the truth of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?’’ Puff Daddy was celebrating his No. 1 hit single, ““Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down.’’ Combs and Death Row rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg had gone on TV to declare a hip-hop truce. Besides, Knight was in jail. ““We were proceeding like things were back to normal again,’’ says a Bad Boy employee who was with the crew. ““We forgot where we were and what had went down before. We thought we’d won something, and in the end we lost.’’ On Saturday night, the whole crew went to a Vibe party at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Fairfax. After the party broke up, Biggie sat in the passenger seat of a GMC Suburban, idling behind Combs’s car. Witnesses say a black man from another car started firing. Combs believes that he was the intended target, the Bad Boy staff member told NEWSWEEK–and that the bloodshed may not be over. Other rappers on both coasts are also worried. Snoop Doggy Dogg postponed a scheduled tour ““because he doesn’t want to be next,’’ according to a tour promoter. West Coast star Ice-T, in New York last week, announced over the radio, ““This is the first time I ever felt unsafe.’’ As rappers went into hiding, record stores hastily raised their orders on ““Life After Death.''
On his recordings, Biggie was a Runyonesque chronicler of life in the ghetto margins. A former crack dealer, he spun amoral, bluntly direct fables of drugs and mayhem, sex and more sex. ““He would have written about park benches and trees blossoming if he could have sold 2 [million] or 3 million albums doing it,’’ says Rivera. Instead he walked on the wild side and became the biggest rapper in New York for it. He fashioned himself after a Chicago mobster, rhyming about his Lexus and Rolexes. ““Beneath all the ethnic specificity,’’ says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, ““these rappers are really imitating the lifestyle of white gangsters. They have chosen white role models.’’ Biggie was coldly without an agenda. In one song, gangstas might come to a sorry end; in the next, they’d ride to nihilistic glory and wild swordsmanship. He brooded over his own death, a big man in a world made too small by his success: ““All them niggas I got to fight one/All them ho’s I got to like one/My situation is a tight one/Whatcha gonna do, fight or run.’’ Where Shakur seemed to tempt his fate, Biggie seemed on the run from his.
His death, coming so close to Shakur’s, has shaken the hip-hop world. All last week rumors flew that Knight had been stabbed in his cell. Though a source in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department told NEWSWEEK that the rumors were true, the department officially denies them. Rappers looked for a place to breathe. ““This industry has a problem with people thinking there isn’t enough room for everyone,’’ says the producer Jermaine Dupree, a friend to Combs. ““It’s this attitude that if you got it, I can’t have it, so I am going to take it. That’s why these deaths are happening.’’ The Rev. Al Sharpton and the Nation of Islam vowed to take the fight to the white executives making fortunes off rap, including bigwig Democratic contributor Ted Field, whose company, Interscope, distributes Death Row. (Field refused to comment on the controversy.) From the inside, executives like Bill Stephney, who is black, are pushing the industry to pump $10 million into community programs. ““It’s patronizing to say the [white executives] are accountable because these people should know better,’’ he says. At the same time, though, ““what are we doing with the profits to change the environments these kids come from? That has to be dealt with.''
As Brooklyn prepared to mourn Christopher Wallace last weekend, rap fans took stock of their loss. ““Biggie being dead,’’ said Jason Weaver, 14, of the Bronx, ““is like rap being dead for me.’’ Chuck D of the political rap group Public Enemy put the deaths in a less lofty perspective. Tupac and Biggie, he said, ““are hot now, but three years from now the new generation won’t remember. That’s the saddest part. These guys are dying for nothing.’’ That’s grimmer than any rhyme on any rap album.
