Who killed Tupac is the great unsolved mystery of Hip Hop. As part of his birthday celebration week, Vice tackled the six theories of Pac's death, and advanced a seventh fairly new one. The existing theories on who killed Tupac are:
1. Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, the Crip whom Tupac had fought with hours before his death. 2. Suge Knight. 3. Crips paid by Biggie. 4. The Government. 5. Puff Daddy paid Duane "Keffe D" Keith Davis a million to take out Pac and Suge. 6. Tupac is alive.
The seventh story comes from highly respected ex-LAPD detective Russell Poole. It's pretty complicated, and you can read about all of it on Vice's site.
Here's the short of it: Poole believes Sharitha Knight, Knight's soon to be ex-wife, and Reggie Wright Jr., head of Death Row security, cooked up a plot to take out Knight and Pac and take control of Death Row. Suge was about to divorce Saritha, but if he died before that happened she would inherit most of the company.
So they got the brothers Malcolm and Danny Patton and a Long Beach Crip named Donald Smith to shoot up Pac and Suge's car in Vegas. Smith rapped for Death Row under the name Lil ½ Dead, and according to Poole he also had his own reason for wanting to be in on the hit.
The Poole theory holds that Lil ½ Dead possessed his own motive to kill Shakur. According to the story, the teenaged Lil ½ Dead first met 20-year-old Tupac in 1991, when the latter was recording his debut, 2Pacalypse Now. ½ Dead supposedly passed on his demo to the rising star and never heard from him again. According to the confession, Lil ½ Dead's demo allegedly contained "Brenda's Got a Baby," which Tupac ostensibly stole and turned into his first hit single.What do you think? Was Pac done in by Suge Knight's wife and a guy who thought Pac ripped him off?
Lil ½ Dead is still around, but declined to be interviewed for Vice's article. (Which you really should read if you're interested in this.)