Who is Suge Knight? CEO of Death Row Records sentenced to 28 years in jail for manslaughter

FORMER hip-hop mogul Suge Knight is currently in jail serving a 28-year sentence for killing a man with his car at an LA burger stall.

But who is the man behind the explosive claims that he was the real target in Tupac Shakur’s murder, and why has he now been accused of orchestrating the killings of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G?

Who is Suge Knight?

Marion Knight Jr, aka Suge, was born in April 1965 in Compton city, Los Angeles, California, just a few weeks before violent rioting over police brutality in nearby Watts.

Soon after this, Suge’s neighbourhood turned into a ghetto blighted by gang violence as middle class people fled fearing rocketing crime.

But despite growing up in troubled surroundings, the young Knight, like his dad, was a noted American football player and he was a clever lad too. 

He was so good he went on to earn an athletic scholarship to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he did well academically.

During this time he began working as a bodyguard for rapper Bobby Brown and so began learning about the music industry.

How well did Suge Knight know Tupac?

By the late 80s Suge had his own publishing company and by the 90s he had launched Death Row Records, which had signed Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur.

He was with Tupac the night he was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in 1996.

Knight is currently behind bars and in September 2018 pleaded no contest to manslaughter over a 2015 hit-and-run in which he killed a man at an LA burger stall.

He was initially charged with murder and attempted murder after two men were run down following a confrontation on the set of Straight Outta Compton.

Suge will be sentenced to manslaughter on October 4 and has been jailed for 28 years.

What has he said about Tupac Shakur’s murder?

Suge Knight reportedly claimed Death Row Records’ former security chief Reggie White Jr and his ex wife killed Tupac while insisting HE was the real target of the infamous shooting in 1996.

Knight’s lawyer Thaddeus Culpepper is said to have written a signed affidavit stating: “Knight has known for many years that Reggie Wright Jr and his ex-wife Sharitha were behind the murder of Tupac and attempted murder of Knight”.

However, in an exclusive interview with The Sun Online, Sharitha, 49, dismissed the claims as “stupid lies” and called for people to use some “common sense”.

Knight is said to have spoken out after hearing the “salient points” of documentary, Tupac Assassination: Battle for Compton.

“When our book came out and we were working on the movie, we gave the salient points of the book to Thaddeus Culpepper, who read them to Suge Knight,” said co-director Richard Bond.

A source then claimed Knight backed the theories in the documentary and even tasked his own investigators to probe them, .

Why has Knight now been accused of orchestrating the murder of rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac?

Hollywood star Tom Sizemore told the FBI Suge Knight orchestrated the murders of rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac, according to leaked documents.

In a bombshell FBI file, obtained by Sun Online, the Black Hawk Down actor even told agents he’d be willing to wear a wire to try to help them crack the unsolved case.

Tupac was shot dead in Las Vegas in September 1996 while Notorious B.I.G. – also known as Biggie Smalls – was gunned down less than a year later in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles during the height of the East Coast v West Coast hip hop rivalry.

Sizemore, 57, who said he met Knight at an AA meeting once, goes on reveal that during a 2001 meeting at a nightclub, a gang member named “8-Ball” told him the rap mogul had arranged for both Biggie and Tupac to be killed, according to the transcript of a 2004 FBI interview.

During the interview – at a Fat Burger restaurant in Los Angeles – Sizemore reveals he knows another former gang member who also has information on the shootings and would try to find his number and pass it to the FBI.

He then reveals how he wants to help agents “take down” a crystal meth warehouse run by the Mexican mafia after his teen sister got hooked on the drug.

Knight, who ran Death Row Records, has long been at the centre of speculation that he in fact had Tupac killed because the rapper was planning to leave his record company – then had Biggie killed to deflect attention from the Tupac murder.

He has always denied any involvement in either murder and is currently serving a 28-year sentence for the death of a man in a hit and run incident in 2015.