On September 13, 1996, the world of music said goodbye to one of the most famous rappers of all time, wounded a few days earlier with four gunshots during an ambush in Las Vegas. The son of two members of the Black Panther Party, he also addressed social issues such as racism, police violence and drug abuse in his songs. Only in 2026 did a conviction for his murder arrive
30 years have passed since, on September 13, 1996, the world-famous rapper Tupac Shakur died in hospital, at the age of 25, a few days after being wounded by four gunshots during an ambush in Las Vegas. Considered one of the greatest rappers of all time, despite his short career, and an important political activist for black America, he has sold more than 75 million records worldwide. And the trial for his murder reached a turning point in September 2026: here is his whole story.
Son of the Black Panther
Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on June 16, 1971 in New York, in the East Harlem neighborhood. The name on the birth certificate is Parish Lesane, but the child is renamed in honor of Túpac Amaru II, a descendant of the last Inca ruler, executed in Peru in the late 18th century after leading a revolt against Spanish rule. The future rapper's parents, as well as his godmother and godfather, had all been active members of the Black Panther Party, the historic Black Panther organization that fought against discrimination against African Americans.
Studies and friendship with Jada Pinkett (Smith)
During the 1980s his mother faced drug addiction problems, and in 1984 the family moved to Baltimore where Tupac studied acting, poetry, jazz and dance at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Here he also formed a deep friendship with Jada Pinkett, Will Smith's future wife, who would say of him: "He was like a brother. For us he was more than a friendship. The type of relationship we had, you only find it once in a lifetime". Pinkett appears in Shakur's music videos for Keep Ya Head Up and Temptations and also created the concept for the video for California Love.
Debut album: 2Pacalypse Now
After some experiences with the Digital Underground group between the end of the Eighties and the beginning of the Nineties, on November 12, 1991 Shakur released his debut album 2Pacalypse Now. A much discussed album which with its lyrics addresses social issues such as racism, police violence, poverty, teenage pregnancies and drug abuse. The album was certified gold and many successful rappers such as Nas, Eminem, The Game and Talib Kweli have indicated it as a source of inspiration for their works.
Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z...
Two years later, in 1993, Tupac released his second album, entitled Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z... A commercial and critical triumph (certified platinum in 1995), containing hits such as Last Wordz with Ice Cube and Ice-T, I Get Around, Keep Ya Head Up and Papa'z Song. 1993 is also the year in which Shakur becomes friends with Notorious B.I.G., who often performs with him. A bond that will last until the Quad Studios shooting in 1994.
The Quad Studios shooting
On November 30, 1994, Tupac was in New York and was contacted by manager James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond, who asked him if for 7 thousand dollars he could go to Quad Studios to record a verse for one of his clients. Once he arrives, however, he is attacked and robbed by three armed men who shoot him five times. A year later, in an interview with Vibe, Tupac accuses Sean Combs, Jimmy Henchman and Notorious B.I.G. of having organized the ambush, thus fueling the hip-hop rivalry between East Coast and West Coast and compromising the relationship with B.I.G. In 2011 Dexter Isaac, a murder convict, said he was one of the gunmen who attacked Shakur at Quad Studios.
The prison
The day after the Quad Studios shooting, Tupac appears in court in Manhattan, bandaged and in a wheelchair, to hear the jury's verdict in a sexual abuse case for which he was accused a year earlier. The rapper is convicted of two counts of first-degree sexual abuse and bail is set at $3 million. Unable to pay, Tupac formally handed himself over to the authorities at the Bellevue Hospital Jail Ward, where he was recovering from his injuries from the shooting. In January 1995 he was transferred to Rikers Island and two months later to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. In October of the same year, pending appeal, he was released after Suge Knight, CEO of Death Row Records, paid a bail of 1.4 million dollars.
Me Against the World, All Eyez on Me and The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory
While Tupac was in prison, his third album, Me Against the World, was released in March 1995, considered one of the greatest and most influential works in the history of rap thanks to singles such as Dear Mama, So Many Tears and Temptations. The album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold 240,000 copies in its first week alone. Then came All Eyez on Me in 1996, an album in which Tupac abandoned political messages to focus on the story of "gangsta life". These are also the years in which the rivalry between the East Coast and the West Coast and between Death Row and Bad Boy Records grows, so much so that the former releases the Shakur track Hit 'Em Up as the B-side of How Do U Want It: it is a song that threatens revenge against everything related to Bad Boy - including B.I.G. and Sean Combs – and the East Coast rap scene. All Eyez on Me was certified 9x multi-platinum in June 1998 and 10x in July 2014 (posthumously). In the summer before his death, Tupac also finished his fifth solo album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, under the pseudonym Makaveli: it is a record full of anger, pain and revenge which was released posthumously in November 1996. Will the R U Still Down albums also be released posthumously? (Remember Me) (1997), Until the End of Time (2001), Better Dayz (2002), Loyal to the Game (2004) and Pac's Life (2006).
The murder
On September 7, 1996 Tupac is in Paradise, near Las Vegas, to see a fight between Bruce Seldon and Mike Tyson at the MGM Grand, together with Suge Knight. Also found in the hotel lobby is Orlando Anderson, a member of the South Side Compton Crips who is fingered by an associate of Knight as being responsible for an attempted robbery that had occurred months earlier and, as recorded by the MGM Grand cameras, is attacked by Suge's entourage and Shakur. Then the latter gets into the car with Knight to reach the "Club 662" nightclub. At 11.15pm a white Cadillac pulls alongside the car where the rapper is and one of the men on board hits Tupac with four gunshots. Shakur was taken to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where he died in the intensive care unit on September 13.
The sentencing of Duane 'Keffe D' Davis
In September 2026, Clark County jurors issued a guilty verdict for first-degree murder against Duane 'Keffe D' Davis, 63 years old and former leader of the Compton Crips, held responsible for having orchestrated the rapper's death, as he himself recounted in a 2018 memoir. If at the time the murder was traced back to the historical rivalry between two Los Angeles gangs or to the war between West Coast and East Coast rappers, the trial revealed that Davis he allegedly ordered the assassination because a few hours earlier members of Shakur's entourage had beaten his nephew, Orlando Anderson. And it would have been Anderson himself, who himself died violently in 1998 and was never tried for the crime, who fired the shots that killed Shakur. "Duane Davis, in the gang culture, couldn't let it go," said prosecutor Binu Palal: "So what did he do? He bought a gun, gathered his gang and sent them after Tupac."
Film career
Tupac also had a career in film. His first appearance on the big screen dates back to 1991 and was a cameo as a member of the group Digital Underground in the film Nothing but Trouble with Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Chevy Chase and Demi Moore. Shakur's real film debut came in 1992 in Juice, where he played the story's antagonist, Roland Bishop. The following year the rapper starred alongside Janet Jackson in John Singleton's film Poetic Justice, while in 1994 he played the character of Birdie in Above the Rim. Tupac also starred in Bullet (released a month after his death), Gridlock'd (released in early 1997), and Gang Related, his last film appearance (released in 1997).
