| Suge Knight |
Website Links For Knight |
Information AboutSuge Knight |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT SUGE KNIGHT | |
| entertainers with bloods affiliations | |
| 1965 births | |
| living people | |
|
Marion Knight Jr., a.k.a '''Sugar Bear''', '''Suge Knight''' (, 1965 , in Compton, California , is an entrepreneur in the Hip Hop Music industry and co-founder of Death Row Records with Dr. Dre . The Record Label rose to dominate the charts after Dr. Dre 's breakthrough success '' The Chronic '' in 1992 . After several years of outstanding chart success for artists including Snoop Doggy Dogg , Tupac Shakur , Tha Dogg Pound and at one time even MC Hammer , Death Row Records disintegrated after Knight's incarceration on Parole violation charges in 1996. EARLY LIFE Knight's father was a custodian and his mother was a school-teacher. He went to UNLV on a sports scholarship from 1985 to 1987. It was during his UNLV football playing days that he was dubbed Suge, short for Sugar Bear. It was a fellow team mate dubbed Cuspus Crispy that first started to call him by his now present moniker. After setting up operations in Las Vegas he moved back to L.A. and played Football as a replacement player for the Los Angeles Rams during the NFL strike. He then retired from professional sports and decided to become a bodyguard for musicians like Bobby Brown , when, according to him, he learned that the key to artistic and financial freedom is owning your masters. ACCUSATIONS OF VIOLENCE A physically very large man, standing 6 feet and 4 inches (1.93 m) tall, {Link without Title} Knight has been accused of acts of violence including forcing business rivals to drink urine and having extensive ties to Street Gang s, specifically the Bloods . Rapper Vanilla Ice has accused Knight of dangling him out of a window of a high-rise building several stories up. Ice claims that he was forced to agree to grant him a majority of Ice's own royalties from his signature hit " Ice Ice Baby ", which a friend of Suge's claimed he had written. Even though Suge Knight had business relations with him, Ice later denied the whole balcony story or has told a toned-down version. ALLEGED INVOLVEMENT IN MURDER Knight has frequently been implicated in the murder of Death Row artist Tupac Shakur and his business rival The Notorious B.I.G. In 2002, British documentarian Nick Broomfield made a film called '' Biggie & Tupac '', which explored the theory that Suge masterminded Tupac's killing because he was planning on leaving Death Row and wanted to retain his unreleased tapes and royalties, and that Biggie's murder was a cover-up to make Shakur's death look like part of an East Coast-West Coast conflict. In fact, Shakur had fired Death Row attorney David Kenner and formed his own production company, Euthanasia, to the ire of Knight. Suge has vehemently denied this on several occasions, calling Tupac his "brother," but former Death Row bodyguard Frank Alexander said Knight invited Shakur out to the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon fight in Las Vegas as a peace offering and to show there were no hard feelings about him leaving the company. Whilst in the film Broomfield never explicitly accuses Suge himself, when asked "Who killed Tupac?" in a BBC Radio interview dated March 7 , 2005 , Broomfield stated "The big guy next to him in the car...Suge Knight." A former policeman who investigated Biggie's murder testified that he had been told that Knight confessed to arranging it. Of course, a potential criticism of this theory relates to the fact that Suge Knight was also hit with a glancing bullet (some say it was only a glass fragment) wound to the side of his head in the 1996 shooting that ended Tupac Shakur's life -- the effect that this fact has on the validity of the theory is debatable. Still, questions were not asked, such as: Why did Knight insist Tupac ride alone with him in the car as they drove to Knight's nightclub 6-6-2? And why was Tupac in the lead car? Protocol has always been for high profile personalities, especially volatile ones such as Knight and Shakur, to be in the middle, protected in the front and back, by security. Alexander, now in hiding for fear of retaliation from Knight, said the entire incident was staged. It started at MGM Grand Garden, when Shakur, Knight and their entourage attacked Orlando Anderson in the lobby before Shakur's murder, to provide an alibi for Knight. A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine [http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/8898338/the_unsolved_mystery_of_the_notorious_big/?rnd=1146414788516&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1040 not only supports that theory, but says immediately after the altercation, Knight can be seen -- at the sight of the "attack" on Anderson for supposedly wearing a Death Row chain that he stole -- making a call on his cellphone. Shortly after, the hit on Shakur takes place. Anderson was murdered in 1998 and it went unsolved. Yula Fula, 25, Tupac's best friend who said he could identify Shakur's killer, was murdered in a New Jersey housing project and also remains unsolved. The Los Angeles Police Department, in a recent federal court ruling, has been accused of being complicit in the cover up of what happened in the Shakur and B.I.G murders because of law enforcement ties with the Piru Bloods street gang. Even Snoop Dogg, an original Death Row artist whose now a nemisis of Knight's, told police after he was attacked by some of Knight's associates soon after his departure from Death Row that the same person behind his assault was the same person who'd had Shakur murdered -- Suge Knight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZpKTBiIRkQ&search=snoop FURTHER TIME IN PRISON In 2001, Suge Knight was released from prison and tried to re-start his label by signing new artists such as Crooked I, Krucifixx , Tha Realist, Eastwood, and, under the Pseudonym "N.I.N.A.", the late Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of TLC , before her untimely death in a car accident in 2002. However, in December 2002 he was jailed again for violating his probation by associating with gang members. After his release, he was arrested and jailed yet again in 2003, for assaulting parking lot attendant Mehdi Lazrak, even though Lazrak was punched in the back of the head and was admittedly unable to identify the perpetrator. Knight was released on April 23, 2004. Original artist Kurupt is now the label's headliner, and his new LP Against the Grain is currently on hiatus. After his release, Knight announced Death Row Records would join with other labels to produce a Christmas hip-hop album to benefit both the families of soldiers serving in Iraq and the relatives of those who died. However, as of early 2006, no such album has been released, despite a gap of nearly two years from the time of the announcement. RECENT HISTORY Suge claims to be developing an autobiography entitled "American Dream/American Nightmare". However, a targeted release date of fourth-quarter 2005 came and went with no biography being released. He has hinted that he will describe his experiences as a bodyguard and rap impresario and relate stories about John F. Kennedy, Jr. , Jennifer Lopez , and the "scoop" on Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre , as well as his first public statement about the deaths of Tupac and Biggie. Suge also claims to be planning a movie to tell the "real story" of Death Row. {Link without Title} In October 2004, despite having not been formally invited, Suge attended the VIBE Awards -- ostensibly to support Petey Pablo , whom he manages. That night Dr. Dre was to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. With Suge in the audience, a man approached Dr. Dre shortly before Dre was called up for the award and feigned interest in an autograph before punching Dre. In the resulting scuffle, G-Unit rapper Young Buck stabbed the man. Immediately, stories pointed fingers at Suge, who went on ''The Late Late Show'' and insisted he supports Dr. Dre. The man, Jimmy James Johnson, faces life in prison due to the Three Strikes Law in California, after Dre insisted he be charged. Johnson is now claiming that Suge paid him $5,000 to punch Dre in order to humiliate him before Dre received his Lifetime Achievement Award from Quincy Jones and Snoop Dogg . On the evening of February 5 , 2005 , Knight was arrested in Barstow, California after police pulled him over for making a U-turn and found Marijuana in his Ford pickup truck. He was booked on suspicion of violating his parole. Sheriff's officials detained Knight pending his transfer to state prison, where it was to be decided whether Knight would be charged or released, but he was released shortly thereafter. {Link without Title} Recently, Suge and , with whom Suge has had troubled relations for several years following their fallout over Death Row Records. Early Sunday morning on August 28 , 2005 , the day of the MTV Video Music Award s, Knight was shot in the leg in Miami Beach, Florida during a party held in honor of Kanye West 's G.O.O.D. Music record label. He was taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center where he was treated for a fractured femur resulting from the gunshot wound. Authorities have said that their investigation hasn't turned up anything yet on the assailants, but that they are still talking with eyewitnesses. On April 4, 2006, Suge Knight filed for 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. He has to pay $110 million dollars to the Harris family. TRIVIA Co-Founder of Death Row Records along with Dr. Dre . Frequently smokes a Cigar . Former Bodyguard . EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|