Tupac Shakur was shot in a drive-by shooting in Paradise, Nevada, on September 7th, 1996, resulting in his death six days later. Suge Knight, who was in the car alongside him at the time, has claimed he was cremated, with his friends smoking his ashes.
Following his passing, Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, allegedly wasted no time and immediately got her son cremated. Knight claims he paid $1million in cash to meet her wishes, with those close to him gathering that night to smoke his ashes as a tribute.
“A bag with his ashes was passed around,” he told People. “His homies rolled him up. They smoked him. You gotta understand, that’s what made sense. It was symbolic. It’s like… you keep part of him.”
Knight says he was the only person who didn’t smoke the ashes, as he was on probation then and didn’t want to face any repercussions. “I was so happy to say I was on probation — I couldn’t smoke,” he said. “I told his mother, ‘Moms, I’d love to, but if I hit that, I’ll get in trouble.’ I was probably the only one who didn’t hit him.”
2Pac was shot four times, and Knight was grazed in the head. Speaking on the night of the shooting, Knight said, “I got out and tried to tell the officers what happened while I was bleeding everywhere. I then was getting Tupac out the car, even when the door was open. I had to go over there bleeding everywhere, take the seat belt off him.”
The legendary rapper’s final album, All Eyez on Me, was released on Knight’s Death Row Records in February 1996. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 566,000 copies in its first week.
Knight is behind bars at the Richard J Donovan Correctional Facility in California. He’s serving a 28-year sentence for a fatal hit-and-run in 2015.