The Killing of Tupac Shakur

Tupac Shakur was the most popular and best-selling rap musician of all time. He represented the political, rallying voice of urban black youth. Tupac pushed his life to the extremes of social convention and he predicted it would end abruptly. Shrouded in controversy, hauled up for shooting at police officers, later charged and convicted of rape, he still managed to outsell his musical rivals from inside his prison cell. Tupac was 25 years old when he died. In five years, he had produced five albums selling over ten million copies, and had starred and featured in seven blockbuster films, including the cult gangsta movies Juice and Poetic Justice. No one symbolised the violence at the heart of gangsta rap more than Tupac, and he ultimately fell victim to that violence, gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas on September 7th 1996. Cathy Scott's raw, no-holds-barred account discloses new information, including exclusive photo evidence about the unsolved murder of Tupac: the failed investigation, the rap wars, the killing of Biggie Smalls, the Bloods-Crips gang connection, and the many possible motives leading to the murder that rocked the hip hop world. Cathy Scott, a full-time police reporter for the Las Vegas Sun, has received more than a dozen journalism awards. Her articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, and have covered such topics as the Los Angeles riots and Republic of Panama drug interdiction programme.