The Rap Beef That Stole Two Legends

East Coast vs West Coach

Sometimes in life you notice the universe will send objects in a trajectory that there’s no return from. It was almost inevitable that the two largest titans in the rap game would clash and collide. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object? This is what happened in the mid 1990’s at the height of the Gangsta Rap era. LeSane Parrish Crooks aka Tupac Amaru Shakur and Christopher George Latore Wallace aka Notorious BIG endured a rap beef that would eventually end up costing them both their lives and sparking bad blood between two coasts. 2Pac would represent the West Coast, always repping Los Angeles as his home town, setting the bar impossibly high for later geneations. Biggie was Brooklyn’s favorite son, leaving a huge imprint in the New York rap game for years to come. These two would be often imitated, but never replicated. It would take years after their death for rappers to form a new identity and let the rap game develop.

Friends To Enemies – Riches & Jealousy

Before the two stars emerged to the fore front of the Hip Hop industry, these two rappers were friends. They would even often stay over at each other’s apartments, and have performed on stage together before. It’s hard to imagine this now in retrospect, knowing how their bloody history ended. It all started in California when Biggie was introduced to Tupac by a local drug dealer. The two hit it off right away thanks to their shared love of rap, guns, and marijuana. They would forge a friendship in which Biggie would stay at Pac’s place when he was in town. When Pac was in New York, he would swing by to pickup Biggie in his limo and shoot dice with the locals. During this time, Pac had released two studio albums and appeared in Hollywood movies, and was incredibly well known. Biggie was still little known outside of Brooklyn, and Pac served as a mentor to him on how to make it in the rap game. Pac would eventually try to groom Biggie and let him perform at his concerts. During this rise to fame it is believed that Biggie became jealous of the life style 2Pac already had. Rumors state that 2Pac was weary that Biggie was stealing his lyrics during some of the gigs he performed.

On a late November night in 1994, Tupac Shakur was robbed and shot five times in front of the Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan, New York. This happened while Notorious BIG and Puff Daddy were inside the studios. Suspicions emerged when Tupac’s Rolex was not stolen, which didn’t make sense during a jewelry robbery. The men who shot Tupac were wearing military fatigues which were common of the Bad Boy crew. Tupac strongly believed he was setup by Puffy and Big, and accused them of the shooting. This prompted Tupac to release 2 of Amerika’s Most Wanted in which he confronts a fake Biggie about the issue.

https://youtu.be/Qb4V4jfHOO8

Notorious BIG didn’t shy away from the accusations. He released the song Who Shot Ya in which they reference five gun shots throughout the song. The beef reached a fever pitch when Tupac decided he was not going to get shot at and then ridiculed by his rivals. Tupac targeted Biggie’s wife Faith Evans and slept with her, and then bragged about it on his song Hit Em Up with an now infamous opening line. In the months that followed, both artists would release diss tracks and eventually involve their entire crews as Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records repeatedly took shots at each other with some of the most violent lyrics of the 90s.

Both Legends Murdered In The West Coast

At the height of the beef, Tupac left the MGM Grand in Las Vegas with Huge Knight after a Mike Tyson fight in 1996. In the lobby, they stomped out a rival Crip member, and hours later Tupac would be gunned down on the Boulevard. At 11:15 pm, the BMW Tupac and Suge Knight were in was shot by multiple armed assailants. Tupac was shot four times and Suge was hit in the head by fragments. Six days later Tupac would be pronounced dead at the hospital. Till this day the police have yet to find any clues about who the shooters could of been. Many believe it could of been affiliates of Bad Boy records.

As the old saying goes, Blood begets more blood. In 1997, Notorious BIG was larger than life. Working on his studio album Life After Death, Biggie travelled to Los Angeles to film a music video for Hypnotize. Some had warned him that this was not a good idea, many believed it was still hostile territory. Biggie believed that he was the King Of Hip Hop, and it wouldn’t make sense for anyone to harm him at this point. At 12:15 am at night, Biggie was traveling in a GMC Suburban down L.A. when a Impala pulled up next to him and drew a 9mm pistol that hit Biggie with four bullets, the same amount that hit Tupac. Shortly after he would be pronounced dead. The police have also been unable to identify the potential shooter who killed Biggie.

In both cases, the two legend’s murders are unsolved and clouded in mystery. But it did end the war between East Coast and West Coast. In the years to come, it left a giant void in the rap game, but many new artists found a new identity. Hip Hop is vastly different today than in the mid 90s. However the impact these two had forged the inspiration of some of our generations greatest stars. It is sad to the mother of both rappers that there has been no justice for the slaying of their sons. It was a moment of rejoice for the hip hop community to see them together on the stage during the 1999 MTV Music Video Awards with Will Smith.