Jealousy Over Gang Rivalry: Suge Knight Breaks Silence on Tupac’s Murder, Links It to Nipsey Hussle’s Death
By Marcus Hale, Entertainment Correspondent Los Angeles, CA – November 3, 2025
From behind the razor-wire confines of Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where he’s serving a 28-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, Marion “Suge” Knight has shattered nearly three decades of speculation surrounding Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder. In a bombshell prison interview with The Art of Dialogue podcast, released Sunday and viewed over 5 million times in 24 hours, the former Death Row Records co-founder dismissed longstanding gang rivalry theories as a smokescreen. Instead, Knight pins the blame on raw jealousy—envy from rap contemporaries both within and outside his label who couldn’t stomach Shakur’s meteoric ascent. “It wasn’t East vs. West, Crips vs. Bloods,” Knight rumbled, his voice gravelly over the phone line. “It was the green-eyed monster. Pac was untouchable, and that killed him. Same poison that got Nipsey Hussle years later.”
Knight’s revelation, his most detailed public accounting since Duane “Keefe D” Davis’s September 2023 arrest for Shakur’s killing, reframes one of hip-hop’s enduring mysteries. Shakur, 25, was gunned down in a drive-by on September 7, 1996, after attending Mike Tyson’s fight in Las Vegas. He succumbed six days later to internal injuries, leaving a void that fueled the East Coast-West Coast feud narrative—exacerbated by Shakur’s affiliation with Knight’s Bloods-leaning Death Row and the Notorious B.I.G.’s Bad Boy Records ties. Davis, a Southside Crips member, has pleaded not guilty, alleging in 2008 LAPD interviews that Sean “Diddy” Combs offered $1 million for the hit—a claim Combs vehemently denies.
But Knight, 60, insists the motive was personal, not territorial. Drawing from “conversations I had back then and since,” he claims insiders at Death Row—whom he refuses to name outright—grew resentful of Shakur’s dominance. “Pac dropped All Eyez on Me—double platinum out the gate—and suddenly everyone’s whispering about how he’s hogging the studio, taking the tours, the endorsements,” Knight said. “Jealousy is worse than hate. Hate, you see coming. This? It festers quiet till it explodes.” He alluded to Snoop Dogg, whose 1993 debut Doggystyle made him a star before Shakur’s 1995 signing to Death Row. “Snoop was family, but Pac’s light was blinding. Folks got uncomfortable,” Knight hinted, echoing 2025 accusations that Snoop tried bailing out Davis—claims Snoop dismissed as “Suge’s obsession from the cell.”
The interview’s second half pivots to Nipsey Hussle, murdered on March 31, 2019, outside his Crenshaw Marathon Clothing store by Eric Holder—a fellow Rollin’ 60s Crips member who pleaded no contest and faces 60 years to life. Knight draws a stark parallel: “Nip was Pac 2.0—hustling for the hood, dropping gems like Victory Lap, building schools and tech hubs while the vultures circled.” Holder, 33 at the time, allegedly snapped after Hussle called him a snitch over federal cooperation in a 2016 extortion case. Knight scoffs at the gang angle: “Loyalty to the set? Nah. It was resentment. Nipsey was rising—Grammys, Obama meetings, Wall Street Journal covers—and some couldn’t handle a Black king from the block outshining them. That green-eyed monster again.”
Knight’s theory isn’t new but gains fresh traction amid 2025’s hip-hop reckonings. In a July People exclusive, he alleged Shakur’s mother, Afeni, honored his hospital plea to “let me go” rather than return to prison post-shooting, even claiming friends smoked his cremated ashes in a “symbolic” ritual. Daz Dillinger, a Tha Dogg Pound alum, fired back in January 2024, denying Death Row jealousy: “We made Pac. Suge’s the one who was envious—controlling everything from jail now.” Snoop, responding to Knight’s February bail claims, accused him of bitterness over Snoop’s 2022 Death Row acquisition: “Suge’s stuck in the past, hating from a cage.”
Critics question Knight’s credibility. The 6-foot-3, 300-pound ex-linebacker has a rap sheet including assault convictions and ties to Shakur’s beating of Crips member Orlando Anderson hours before the shooting—Anderson, Davis’s nephew, long suspected as the triggerman (he died in 1998). LAPD’s cold case unit, revived under DA George Gascón, views Knight as a “person of interest” but lacks direct evidence. “Suge’s stories shift with the wind,” says hip-hop historian Michael Eric Dyson. “Jealousy fits the genre’s underbelly—envy fueled Biggie’s death too, per some accounts—but it’s no substitute for forensics.”
Yet, Knight’s narrative resonates in 2025’s climate of accountability. With Davis’s trial set for March 2026 and Hussle’s killer’s sentencing looming, it spotlights hip-hop’s toxic undercurrents: Success as a threat. Hussle’s estate, managed by his daughter Emani and partner Lauren London, continues his Vector 90 incubator, raising $100 million for Crenshaw revitalization. “Nipsey taught us elevation over elimination,” London said at a September vigil. Shakur’s Shakur Estate, helmed by Tom Whalley, greenlit the 2023 biopic All Eyez on Me sequel, eyeing Knight’s input despite the bad blood.
Online, #GreenEyedMonsterPac exploded with 3.2 million X posts by Monday, memes splicing Shakur’s “Hit ‘Em Up” with Othello quotes. Fans debate: Was it Diddy, jealous of Shakur’s crossover? Or internal, like Knight implies? The podcast clip—Knight naming “three insiders” in a teaser for a full drop—has streamers clamoring. “Suge’s dropping truth bombs from the tomb,” tweeted @HipHopHistorian. Skeptics retort: “Prison tales for relevance.”
Knight ended defiantly: “Pac and Nipsey rose too high for the snakes. But their light? Unkillable.” As Davis’s case drags—delayed by evidence disputes—Knight’s words hang heavy. Not gang war, but human frailty: Envy’s deadly bite. In rap’s hall of mirrors, where fame forges foes, this revelation isn’t closure—it’s a remix, forcing us to face the monster within. The full interview drops Friday. Until then, the streets whisper: Jealousy kills quieter than bullets.
