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There are so many questions about Tupac Shakur’s death even 23 years later after his death. There are plenty of theories about Tupac’s murder. Mob James is a lifelong Death Row associate and childhood friend of Suge Knight. In a new interview with VladTV, he provides some fascinating insight into the Death Row CEO, Tupac’s death and killer, and how Puff Daddy put hits on his enemies back in the day. In a recent
Mob James was a Compton gangster member of a street gang called the Piru’s going back to the early 1980s. He was shot four times during his gang days, once by a .38 in the chest, a shotgun in 1982, he got shot with a .45 at a house party, and he was grazed by a bullet. He was a gangbanger who went to prison and who was a childhood and high school friend of Suge Knight. James has known Suge since they were both 14-years-old.
James said Suge wasn’t gang-affiliated in high school and he went to UNLV to play football as a defensive lineman.
“Suge was getting an education, Suge don’t know about my homies. Suge didn’t give a f*ck about us. Suge didn’t know what gangbanging was truly about. Suge didn’t go to none of the funerals of the little homies. He probably can’t even name five who died. Putting Tupac into the situation, he didn’t give a f*ck. We lost 15, 11 homeboys in this Death Row shit and nobody’s family got taken care of, not even my brother.”
Suge met back up with James in 1988 and hired him to do security for a gig. VladTV asked James about the infamous Vanilla Ice incident. Mob said that Suge coerced Vanilla Ice to sign a contract with Knight, which included Robert Van Winkle agreeing to sign over royalties from his smash hit Ice Ice Baby. James doesn’t recall Suge Knight or any of his men holding Vanilla Ice dangling over a hotel balcony and threatening to kill him.
Suge Knight and Puff Daddy were beefing because they were stealing each other’s artists. Puffy wasn’t about to let Suge bully him around like he had done to so many others. Diddy “had killers too, he had people ready to go,” Mob said of the Bad Boy boss.
James said Puffy aligned himself with the Southside Crips and there was $10,000 bounties on anyone wearing a Death Row chain. “That’s when it really got serious,” James said. “Suge knew what he was doing, Puffy knew what he was doing, now you’ve got two gangs fighting each other and they’re sitting back letting it happen and they’re getting paid at the same time,” Mob told VladTV.
James said Tupac was “cool at the beginning.” Tupac got a tattoo that read: “MOB,” which can mean “Money Over Bitches,” but James said Tupac was trying to be a gangbanger and it meant “Member Of Bloods,” but James said Tupac didn’t earn the respect of the Blood street gang.
James was in Las Vegas at the time of Tupac’s murder. James was running the door at Club 662, a nightclub Suge opened in 1994. “We already knew it was gonna happen, that they were coming to Vegas. When they came, they pulled up to 662,” James said of the Southside Crips scoping Suge’s club before driving off.
James blamed Tupac’s death on Suge Knight because Shakur didn’t know any Southside Crips. “This is one of my problems with Suge, this dude is an artist, this man is worth millions of dollars to you, and you let him go over here to fight a gangbanger, a man he knew jacksh*t about, and this how he get killed because he’s running into a hitter,” Mob said during the interview.
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Mob talks about Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson and how Tupac sealed his fate by starting trouble with gang members. “This ain’t your business,” James said. “He was a young hitter,” Mob said of Anderson. “If it wasn’t for Suge, none of this would have ever happened, Southside would be in their neighborhood, MOB would be in their neighborhood,” James said. “Tupac would still be here, all of this is Suge Knight.”
Earlier in 1996, Anderson and some Southside Crips robbed a member of Death Row at the mall and took his chain. At the night of the Mike Tyson fight, the Death Row member noticed Anderson at the MGM and told 2pac that he was the one who robbed him earlier. Death Row enforcers and 2pac beat up Anderson.
When Orlando Anderson was jumped at the MGM, he allegedly told Suge, “F*ck you and your money!” James said, “You see Tupac in front of everyone, you just signed your death away.”
Mob doesn’t believe the conspiracy theories about Tupac’s death like the police wanted Shakur dead or Suge plotted Tupac’s shooting and it was done while Knight was in the car with him. James said Orlando Anderson killed Tupac Shakur. Anderson was “stomped out by a gang of Bloods” and he and his Southside Crips wanted revenge, so they wanted to murder Tupac.
James does want to know how Tupac’s killers were able to get away from a crime scene that was so populated and full of traffic. “It’s fight night, Vegas is packed,” Mob said. “Las Vegas Boulevard is packed, gang of people, how did they get away?”
James was at Club 662, where Tupac and Suge were supposed to go after the Mike Tyson fight. Eventually, Suge made it to the nightclub and assured everyone there that Tupac was going to survive the drive-by shooting because he had been shot on a number of different occasions. When people were ready to stop partying, Suge told the crowd, “No, he gonna be alright, he was hit in his medallion.” James said, “So everyone kept partying.”
Days later, “They said, ‘Tupac was dead.’ So it was like, ‘Wow, y’all said he was gonna live, but now he’s gone.” Tupac died six days after the drive-by shooting from the four fatal gunshot wounds. Tupac Shakur’s murderer has yet to have been brought to justice. You can read conspiracy theories that say Tupac Shakur is still alive HERE.
[VladTV]