Who is Marion Knight, Jr.? The entertainment and music world knows him as Suge Knight. Knight is the founder and CEO of Black Kapital Records and co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records. Death Row Records rose to dominate the rap charts after Dr. Dre's breakthrough album The Chronic in 1992. After several years of chart successes for artists including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Outlawz and Tha Dogg Pound, Death Row Records stagnated after Knight's incarceration on parole violation charges in September 1996.
Early life
Marion Hugh Knight was born April 19, 1965 in Compton, California. His name, Suge, derives from "Sugar Bear", a childhood nickname.[1] He attended Lynwood High School in nearby Lynwood, California, where he was a football and track star. He graduated in 1983. From 1983 to 1985, he attended El Camino College on a football scholarship.[2] In 1985, he transferred to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and played there for two years.[3]After college, Knight was not drafted by an NFL team, but was cut during training camp by the Los Angeles Rams. However, he became a replacement player during the 1987 NFL players' strike, and played two games for the Rams.[4] Later, he found work as a concert promoter and a bodyguard for celebrities including Bobby Brown.
Knight was arrested in October 1987 for domestic violence—he assaulted his girlfriend and cut off her ponytail on the street. On Halloween Night 1987, Knight was arrested in Las Vegas for auto theft, carrying a concealed weapon and attempted murder. He had allegedly shot a man three times while stealing his car. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge, and received two years probation.[2]
Two years later, Knight formed his own music-publishing company. His first big profit in the business came when Vanilla Ice (Robert Van Winkle) agreed to sign over royalties from Van Winkle's smash hit "Ice Ice Baby", because the song included material written by Knight's client Mario Johnson. Knight and his bodyguards confronted Van Winkle several times. On one occasion, Knight entered Van Winkle's hotel room, and allegedly dangled him by his ankles off the balcony. Van Winkle said only that Knight threatened to throw him off the balcony; the claim was resolved in court.[2]
Knight next formed an artist management company and signed prominent West Coast hip hop artists DJ Quik and The D.O.C. Through the former, he met several members of the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A.
Currently unmarried, Knight has six children—Taj 21, Arion 19, Jacob 17, Sosa 10, and Bailia 8.
Death Row Records
Dr. Dre and The D.O.C. wanted to leave both N.W.A. and their label, Ruthless Records, run by Eazy-E, another member of N.W.A. According to N.W.A's manager Jerry Heller,
Knight and his henchmen [5] Ultimately, Dre and DOC co-founded Death Row Records in 1991 with Knight, who vowed to make it "the Motown of the '90s".threatened Heller and Eazy-E with lead pipes and baseball bats to make them release Dre, The D.O.C., and Michel'le from their contracts.
Initially, Knight fulfilled his ambitions: he secured a distribution deal with Interscope, and Dre's 1992 solo debut, The Chronic, has sold over three million copies.[6] It also made a career for Dre's protégé, Snoop Dogg, whose debut album Doggystyle was another multi-platinum album.[7]
Meanwhile, Death Row had begun a public feud with 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell,
and when Knight traveled to Miami for a hip-hop convention in 1993, he
was apparently seen openly carrying a stolen gun. The following year, he
opened a private, by-appointment-only nightclub in Las Vegas called
Club 662, so named because the numbers spelled out MOB, which stands for Money over Bitches, on telephone keypads. In 1995, he ran afoul of activist C. Delores Tucker, whose criticism of Death Row's glamorization of the "gangsta" lifestyle may have helped scuttle a lucrative deal with Time Warner.Tupac Shakur, MC Hammer, Dr. Dre, and the Death Row Label
The same year, Knight offered to post a bail ($1.4 million) for Tupac Shakur if the troubled rapper agreed to sign with Death Row. Shakur agreed, setting the stage for his 1996 double album All Eyez on Me and the songs "California Love" and "How Do U Want It".
The label suffered a major blow when Dr. Dre, frustrated with the company's increasingly thuggish reputation and Knight's violent inclinations, decided to leave and form his own label. A stream of Dre-dissing records followed,
The Murder of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls: Theories Implicating Knight
Tupac Shakur was murdered on September 7, 1996, in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas and died six days later. When Shakur's East Coast rival, The Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls), was murdered in a similar fashion in March 1997, speculation arose that Knight was involved and that B.I.G.'s death was a revenge killing.[15] Former Death Row artists like Snoop Dogg would later state that Suge was involved in Tupac's murder as well.[16]A popular view implicating Suge Knight in the deaths of both Biggie and Tupac was that of ex-detective Russell Poole, whose theory inspired writer Randall Sullivan and filmmaker Nick Broomfield. The conjecture was that Knight had Tupac killed before he could part ways with Knight's Death Row label and then conspired to kill Biggie to divert attention from himself in the Tupac murder. [17] The convoluted Biggie murder theory implicated Suge Knight, a rogue cop, a mortgage broker named Amir Muhammad (whom was never a police suspect) along with the chief of police and the LAPD in a conspiracy to murder and cover up the murder of Biggie. The Biggie theory formed the basis of a 500 million dollar lawsuit by the Wallace family against Los Angeles. A key source for Poole's theory was Kevin Hackie. Hackie had implicated Suge Knight and David Mack. Hackie, a former Death Row associate, said that he had knowledge of involvement between Suge Knight and David Mack and other alleged crooked cops. His information was used by the Wallace family in their suit against the city of LA for Biggie's death. But Hackie later told Chuck Philips that the Wallace attorneys had altered his declarations. [18] The 500 million dollar suit of the Wallace family against the city of LA based on the Russell Poole theory was dismissed in 2010.
A 2005 story by Philips, showing that another main source for the Poole/Sullivan theory of Biggie's murder implicating Amir Muhammed, David Mack, Suge Knight and the L.A.P.D. was a schizophrenic known as "Psycho Mike" who later confessed to hearsay and memory lapses and falsely identifying Amir Muhammed, a central figure in the Poole-Sullivan theory.[19] John Cook of Brill's Content noted that Philips' article "demolished" [20] the Poole-Sullvan theory of Biggie's murder.
At about the same time as the Sullivan-Poole theory of Tupac's murder (also implicating Knight) came out in 2002, Los Angeles Times Pulitzer-prize winning investigator Chuck Philips wrote a two-part series called “Who Killed Tupac Shakur?” The series resulted from of a year-long investigation reconstructing the murder of Tupac Shakur and the events leading up to it. It was based on police affidavits and court documents as well as interviews with investigators, witnesses to the crime and members of the Southside Crips who had never before discussed the killing outside the gang.[21][22]
Evidence gathered by Philips indicated that “the shooting was carried
out by a Compton gang called the Southside Crips to avenge the beating
of one of its members by Shakur a few hours earlier. Orlando Anderson,
the Crip whom Shakur had attacked, fired the fatal shots. Las Vegas
police discounted Anderson as a suspect and interviewed him only once,
briefly. He was later killed in an unrelated gang shooting”.[21]
The article implicated East Coast music figures, including Christopher
"Biggie Smalls" Wallace, Shakur's nemesis at the time, alleging that he
paid for the gun.[21] Before their own deaths, Smalls and his family and Anderson denied any role in Shakur's murder. Biggie's family[23]
produced documents purporting to show that the rapper was in New York
and New Jersey at the time. The New York Times called the documents
inconclusive stating:Mark Duvoisin, Assistant Manager of the LA Times wrote that Chuck Philips account had withstood all attacks to its credibility including Sullivan's and remained "the definitive account of the Shakur slaying" [25]
In Tupac Shakur: Before I Wake, a documentary by Tupac Shakur's bodyguard, he and writer Cathy Scott said that Knight would not have placed himself in the path of bullets he knew were coming, in line with L.A.P.D. police documents reviewed in Philips LA Times 2002 series. On her website Archived Letters Scott responds to a reader of her book stating that she felt there was never evidence to link Knight to Tupac's murder.
A 2006 an investigation of "Biggie Smalls" murder, headed by LAPD detective Greg Kading, led back to the murder of Tupac and corroborated Chuck Philips findings. In his 2011 book, Murder Rap,[26] LAPD Detective Kading reported speaking to Duane "Keefe D" Davis, a member of the "Crips" street gang, who confessed to riding in the car involved in the Las Vegas drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur.[15][27] As Chuck Philips noted in his earlier LA Times exposé, the Crips had been offered a million dollars by Sean Puffy Combs and Bad Boy records for the killing of Tupac. Kading also added that a bounty was additionally offered for Suge Knight murder,[15] an allegation that Philips has never commented about.
According to Kading's book which corroborated Philips earlier account of Tupac's murder, while in Las Vegas he and a group of fellow Crips accidentally crossed paths with a limousine carrying both Knight and Shakur.[21] The fatal shots were fired by Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson because he was on the side of the car closest to limousine.
However, in contrast to Chuck Philips, who has never identified the shooter of Biggie, Kadings reports that Suge Knight hired Wardel "Pouchie" Fouse to hit Puffy Combs' most valuable star, Biggie Smalls, a hit accomplished following a party at the Peterson Automotive Museum. Pouchie later survived one assassination attempt but died in a drive by shooting a year following the first attack. Despite the task force's findings, charges were never brought and the task force wound down and disbanded for reasons of "internal affairs."[26]
After the death of Tupac Shakur and the release of Tha Doggfather, Snoop Dogg openly blasted Suge Knight for the murder of Shakur and decided to leave the label, which he did in 1997, moving to Master P's No Limit Records and then forming his own record label, Doggystyle Records. In 2002, Snoop released the song "Pimp Slapp'd", in which he repudiated Suge and Death Row. In 2006, Snoop again attacked Knight verbally, charging him for the death of Tupac Shakur. Suge responded, stating that Snoop is a "police informer" as he "never goes to jail".[citation needed]
End of Death Row Records
On April 4, 2006, Suge Knight filed bankruptcy
due to civil litigation against him in which Lydia Harris claimed to
have been cheated out of a 50% stake in Death Row Records. Prior to
filing, Knight had been ordered to pay $107 million to Harris.[28] Under questioning by creditors, he denied having money tucked away in foreign countries or in an African
company that deals in diamonds and gold. Bankruptcy documents filed
showed Knight had no income this year from employment or operation of a
business. According to financial records, his bank account contained
just $12, and he owned clothing worth $1,000, furniture and appliances
valued at $2,000, and jewelry worth $25,000. He also testified that the
last time he had checked the label’s financial records was at least 10
years prior. Knight’s lawyer said that his client was still “at the
helm” of Death Row and had been working on securing distribution deals
for the label’s catalog. Harris told reporters she had received a $1
million payment but had not agreed to settle the matter. "I'm telling
you, I didn't do a settlement for $1 million. That's ridiculous. Let's
keep it real," she said.[29]Knight skipped a meeting with his creditors after injuring himself in a motorcycle accident. Another scheduled meeting with the creditors had been missed after Suge said he had experienced a death in his family. Finally on July 7, 2006, the federal judge, Ellen Carroll, ordered a bankruptcy trustee takeover of Suge Knight's Death Row Records, saying the record label had undergone a gross amount of mismanagement.
He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which allows a company to continue business operations while restructuring. Death Row was being operated by Neilson during the bankruptcy proceedings, while Knight oversaw his bankruptcy estate as a debtor in possession.
In June 2007, he placed his seven-bedroom, 9½-bath home in Malibu on the market for $6.2 million as part of his "financial makeover". The mansion was finally sold in December 2008 in bankruptcy court for $4.56 million.[30]
In June 2008, he sold Death Row Records to New York-based company Global Music Group, which confirmed it had purchased the firm in a statement to the Associated Press news agency.[31][32]
On January 25, 2009, an auction was held for everything found in the Death Row Records office after the company filed for bankruptcy, including some of Knight's personal items. Of note was the Death Row Records electric chair which sold for $2,500. Some of Knight's personal items appeared in an auction during the debut episode of A&E's Storage Wars, and a vault full of items (including a coat) was purchased by featured buyer Barry Weiss.[33]
Personal and legal troubles
In 1996, Knight was sent to prison for a probation violation. In February 1997, he was sentenced to nine years for the violation. He was released on August 6, 2001.[34]
In 2003, he was sent to prison again for violating parole when he struck a parking lot attendant.[35]
Death Row Records' income rapidly declined due to Knight's
incarceration. It managed to save itself from complete bankruptcy by
releasing archived Snoop Dogg compilation albums and posthumous Tupac
albums. Despite signing new artists, Suge never released any of their
albums.In 2006 Knight was engaged in another dispute with former friend and ex-associate Snoop Dogg after Snoop insulted him in Rolling Stone.
On May 10, 2008, Knight was involved in an altercation involving a monetary dispute outside of a nightclub in Hollywood. He was knocked out for 3 minutes, taken to the hospital, and reportedly did not cooperate with the LAPD.
On August 27, 2008, Knight was arrested on drug and ecstasy and hydrocodone. As of October 31, police and prosecutors had still failed to contact Isaac, and no formal charges have been brought against Knight.[36] On December 5, 2008, Suge Knight was cleared of all charges. Knight’s attorney, David Chesnoff, said the prosecution had "discovery problems and witness problems". Prosecutor Susan Benedict did not immediately return a call for comment. When Knight was asked about the positive verdict he replied "God is good, Happy Holidays".
As part of an October 30, 2008 bankruptcy claim, Suge also filed a lawsuit against Kanye West and his associates. The lawsuit concerns an August 2005 shooting at Kanye's pre-Video Music Awards party, where Knight suffered a gunshot wound to the upper leg.[37][38] The lawsuit cites damages of mental and physical pain caused by the shooting, costs of surgery, loss of income and the theft of a 15-carat (3.0 g) $147,000 diamond earring.
In late March, 2009, Knight was implicated in the robbery of Akon producer, Noel "Detail" Fisher. According to Christopher Walker, an employee of Detail, on the morning of March 25, 2009, five armed men broke into Detail's house, stating that they were collecting a debt on behalf of Knight. $170,000 worth of jewelry was stolen, along with a locked safe, stereo equipment and the key to a Mercedes vehicle. Walker claims the incident is related to the altercation at the W Scottsdale Hotel in February.
 | |
| Storage Wars |
Remaining items from Knight's personal property were auctioned in the first episode of Storage Wars on , which aired on December 1, 2010.
A&E
On February 8, 2012, Suge Knight was arrested in Las Vegas, after police found marijuana in his car and several warrants for prior traffic violations. Suge is currently on three years unsupervised probation for driving with a suspended license.
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