Suge Knight: has time run out for hip-hop's real 'Teflon Don'?

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/30/suge-knight-hip-hop-teflon-don

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During the 1990s, Suge Knight was the most feared man in rap, reigning over Death Row Records with a clenched fist and at times suspected of involvement in the murders of both Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur. And there may still be reason to fear him, as evidenced by his arrest Friday under suspicion of murder. Following a promotional shoot for the upcoming NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, he allegedly ran over a pair of men in Compton with his red Ford F-150 Raptor, killing one of them. Knight’s lawyer denied the murder charge, insisting that Knight was being attacked and only ran over the man in an effort to escape. The really scary part? The deceased, a man apparently involved with the film production named Terry Carter, has been described as Knight’s “close friend”.

Related: Suge Knight takes gangsta rap literally and founds Death Row Records

Growing up in a Bloods-controlled section of Compton, the man born Marion Knight wasn’t a gangbanger and wasn’t considered aggressive. His nickname, Suge, spoke to his huggable “Sugar Bear” nature, and he was thought of as a smart kid bound for college; indeed, he played defensive end for University of Nevada, Las Vegas, before returning to the Los Angeles area to try to break into the record business. He served as a bodyguard for Ruthless Records, the Compton-bred record label run by Eazy-E that birthed NWA. Mainly guarding breakout rapper The DOC, Knight was paid the princely sum of $70 per day, according to NWA manager Jerry Heller. Meanwhile, Knight grew close to the group’s producer Dr Dre, and the two ultimately defected to start their own label, Death Row Records.

The only problem was that Eazy-E had Dr Dre and DOC under contract. And so, the legend goes, Knight, surrounded by enforcers brandishing Louisville Sluggers, coerced Eazy-E into signing away their rights. Though these tactics wouldn’t stand up in court, a deal was eventually worked out, paving the way for Dr Dre to craft for Death Row two of the most groundbreaking albums in rap history, his own The Chronic in 1992 and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle a year later. These works made Knight wealthy, but he became increasingly involved with Compton Bloods and didn’t hesitate to use physical force against any rappers, producers or record-label employees who got in his way. He’s most famously accused of holding rapper Vanilla Ice upside down by his ankles over a balcony to convince him to sign over his publishing to a songwriter Knight represented named Chocolate, but that story is probably apocryphal.

Related: The life and times of Suge Knight

Before long, Dr Dre, wary of the violent shenanigans, departed to start his own label, Aftermath, while Snoop defected to Master P’s No Limit label. Knight formed an alliance with New York-bred rapper Tupac Shakur, who was jailed in 1995 for sexual assault. Before the year was over, Knight, with the backing of Interscope Records, put up Tupac’s $1.4m bail in exchange for his signing with Death Row, leading to Tupac’s diamond platinum magnum opus, All Eyez on Me. Not long after its 1996 release, Tupac was dead, the victim of a Las Vegas shooting following his altercation with a group that included Compton Crip Orlando Anderson. Knight was in the shot-up car next to Tupac as well, but survived and has since been dogged by rumours that he was somehow involved with the murder. No one has been convicted in either that case or in the murder of Tupac’s great rival Biggie Smalls, who was murdered in similar fashion six months later in Los Angeles. Knight became a primary suspect in the LAPD’s Biggie case, though eventually it was dropped.

Knight was involved with the Vegas brawl as well, which sent him to prison until 2001, owing to a probation violation. This, along with Tupac’s death, led to Death Row’s diminishment, and things got worse when a judge ordered Knight to pay $107m to a woman named Lydia Harris, the wife of imprisoned former drug dealer Michael Harris, who claimed to have put up the initial Death Row seed money. Knight filed for bankruptcy and eventually sold Death Row, though he has since talked of a reboot.

Knight is no longer an important music industry player, but he appears to be tied up with criminal elements. In August, he was shot in West Hollywood at a party hosted by Chris Brown, and in October he was arrested with comedian Katt Williams, whom he manages, on suspicion of stealing a photographer’s camera. Something of a “Teflon Don”, Knight has managed to evade lengthy prison sentences for years, but that may change with this latest incident. After he turned himself into West Hollywood police late last night – emerging from his lawyer’s car in bright red running shoes, chomping on a cigar – his bail was set for $2m.