Before the second of two emergency surgeries, including one to remove Shakur's right lung to stop internal bleeding, he made a chilling request. As he lay in his hospital bed, fading in and out of consciousness,
Knight claims Shakur allegedly turned to him, desperately begging to be killed. He spoke with eerie clarity, suggesting they could even capture it on camera, that he’d record a will or even lay down a song explaining everything. It wouldn’t matter, Shakur said. The world would still make Knight pay the ultimate price for it.
Knight recalls them both laughing, but beneath the nervous laughter was a hard truth: Shakur believed he was going to be sent back to prison once the chaos subsided, a payback for the brutal casino beatdown caught on security footage hours before the brutal shooting.
Prison, to Tupac, wasn’t just a fear — it was a fate he believed was worse than death. "I’ll die before I go back," he allegedly told those around him. Still, suicide was off the table. According to Knight, he believed taking his own life would bar him from heaven, a line he wouldn't cross.
So instead, he turned to his crew — and then to Knight. "Kill me. Shoot me," he urged. Knight says he refused. “No, Pac. We can’t do it.”...
...According to Knight, who was by the rapper’s side as he lay wracked with pain and failing fast,
Shakur pleaded with his mother to help him end his life. Knight claims she allegedly gave him pills in an attempt to honor his wishes.
“The doctors came in and brought him back,” Knight recalls. “And his mom [allegedly] said, ‘Don’t ever do that again. If he’s having complications, don’t touch him. Don’t bring him back. Let him go.’” It was a mother’s raw act of mercy, Knight says — a final promise to her son to respect his suffering.
What followed, Knight claims, was as surreal and raw as Tupac himself.
Immediately after his death, Knight says Afeni, who died at age 60 in May 2016, turned to him and insisted her son be cremated, right then and there. “She came up to me and said, ‘Get it done. Now,’” Knight remembers.
“I told her, ‘Look, I don’t know if I can do that.’” He said he hesitated not out of defiance, but because Shakur, just weeks earlier, had allegedly laid out a different vision for his send-off. They had talked about it in the studio. “He told me, ‘When I go, I want every rapper at my funeral to grab the mic. I want them to kiss me head to toe. Just like in ‘Life Goes On.’” Knight pauses. “He didn’t want to be cremated.”
But Afeni wouldn’t hear it. “She gave me one of those mama looks, like, ‘Shut your a-- up and do what I said.’ Then she started cussing me out. ‘Get this sh-- done!’” Knight says. He did what she asked. “I paid someone a million dollars cash to take care of it.”...
...Years later, Knight finally got the confrontation he'd imagined. In June 2007, he says the moment he'd long anticipated finally arrived: an alleged face-to-face with Combs. But this wasn’t some back-alley confrontation in Compton or backstage standoff, it happened at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, with Prince allegedly playing puppet master.
“I’m sitting there, eating,” Knight recalls, leaning into the memory like a punchline. “And everybody’s always thinking the gangster’s the guy in the room looking all hard and tough. But let me tell you, the gangster was Prince.”
According to Knight, the icon himself sent someone mid-show to summon him. “They come over and say, ‘Man, Prince is performing right now, and he wants you to come watch the show.’ Who gonna say no to Prince? Sh--” Knight says, laughing. “You already know.”
Escorted through the venue, Knight was led to a special table Prince had set aside, which was prime real estate in a packed house. “Prince comes up playing the guitar, I never seen Prince smile so much in my life,” Knight remembers. “Laughing, happy. And I tell him, ‘We both had two of the best rappers in hip-hop.’”
Then, Knight saw the seating arrangement.
“He set me down at this table where Puffy was there. Nas was there, other people. Prince knew what he was doing. Must’ve been pissed at Puffy. I think he [allegedly] planted me at that table on purpose.”
Knight claims the tension cracked soon after. “I got under Puff’s skin,” he says, claiming he whispered some things in his ear, it probably hit a nerve. “I told him, ‘Let’s go to the restroom together and get it out of the way.’ You know, settle it.”
But Combs, Knight claims, wasn’t interested in squaring up.
“He stood up, heated. That’s when I realized he wasn’t ready for it — 'cause not only did they rush him out, they [allegedly] threw coats and shyt over his head so you couldn’t see his face and had jackets to hide him.”...
...“After Tupac’s passing, I exited the music business. 'Cause there was just... no way. I didn’t wanna be in the studio with another artist. I didn’t wanna go on tour with another artist. I didn’t wanna. I lost trust in so many people. I lost trust in hip-hop.”
Suge Knight Reveals Bombshell New Claims About Tupac's 1996 Death — Including Alleged Connections of Rapper's Mother and Diddy (Exclusive)
