Audio By Carbonatix
Independent Journalism in Miami Needs You
We need to raise $10,000 by August 9 to support the reporting our community depends on. Reader support keeps us independent and is playing a larger role in funding local journalism and shaping what comes next. If you believe independent local journalism matters, make a contribution today.
At six feet, four inches, and nearly 300 pounds, Suge Knight was once hip-hop’s most respected feared label executive.
The Death Row Records capo was often ruthless, and his questionable business practices regularly involved physical violence. Rumors that he threatened to throw Vanilla Ice off a hotel balcony still swirl to this day, and questions of Knight’s alleged ties to the murder of Notorious B.I.G. remain unanswered.
But Knight’s dubious morals hit an all-time low when the big man took an unprovoked cheap shot at former Death Row artist Tupac Shakur.
During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Knight blasted Tupac for being an alleged homophobe. He also claimed that Dr. Dre is “bisexual.”
Knight says that Tupac told Dr. Dre, “I don’t want to be doing songs with a guy who’s pounding other guys in the butt,” and walked out of a meeting.
Say what you will about Pac. But despite his shortcomings (violent temper, Loyal to the Game, etc.), the rapper was anything but a homophobe.
In fact, TMZ reports that Shakur’s family is denying all of Knight’s “totally false” claims, citing Tupac’s friendship with Gianni Versace.
Here are three more signs that prove Tupac was not a gay basher, homophobe, or bigot.
The Nutcracker
In his book with the unnecessarily lengthy title, LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. The Implication of Death Row Records’ Suge Knight and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal, journalist Randall Sullivan digs deep into Pac’s childhood and reveals that the would-be gangsta rapper appeared in several Shakespeare plays and was the “Mouse King” in The Nutcracker while attending Baltimore School of the Arts.
Would a homophobic individual subject themselves to the Nutcracker or Henry V?
Suge Knight: 0
Tupac: 1
Boy George and Broadway
If Carrie Golus’s Tupac biography, Tupac Shakur, doesn’t prove that Shakur was down with the LGBT, we don’t know what does.
He liked English and Irish pop. Among his favorite artists were Kate Bush, Culture Club, Sinead O’Connor and U2. He once said that his favorite piece of music was the theme song from the Broadway musical Les Misérables.
Suge Knight: 0
Tupac: 2
“Changes”
We gotta make a change.
It’s time for us as a people to start makin’ some changes.
Let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we live,
and let’s change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do what we gotta do,
to survive.
Suge Knight: 0
Tupac: 3
