The Hip Hop community has just entered the 12th year of the investigation into the unsolved murder of arguably the culture’s most important artist ever, Tupac Shakur. With the Las Vegas Metro Police failing to arrest, and the Clark County District Attorney’s Office failing to prosecute, anyone for the crime, countless magazine articles, books, and movies have surfaced over the last decade claiming possession of revealing insight in to who might have killed ‘Pac.
But alas, we are now 3,912 days removed from one of the darkest days in Hip Hop history and still without the answer to the seemingly simplest of questions: Who shot Tupac?
HipHopDX recently spoke with former Tupac bodyguard, Frank Alexander, and filmmaker RJ Bond, who last week released their attempt at finally answering that decade-old question, to get their insight into the case that has offered up many questions but unfortunately few answers.
HipHopDX: Your docu-DVD is entitled Tupac: Assassination – Conspiracy or Revenge. So which was it, conspiracy or revenge?
RJ Bond: Aww, it was conspiracy, baby, it was conspiracy. We followed what we call ocum’s razor, which is the simplest explanation tends to be the best. And in this particular case, it was true. The people that had the most to gain or lose by killing Tupac did it. We come right out and say it. And we hope there’s substantial enough proof to let the viewing public be the judge of whether or not there should be a reopening or a grand jury investigation on this.
DX: Frank, it’s been nearly six years since your last film about ‘Pac, Before I Wake, what motivated you to make another documentary now over a decade after ‘Pac’s murder?
Frank Alexander: Actually, after Before I Wake, I had a few more pieces of footage that had hit the cutting floor, and I said, “We’re gonna use this one day.” And RJ and I, we had been friends for 10 years or so, and we got to talking and he was like, “Let’s do a part two to Before I Wake.” And he and I both came up with the idea of what we would do, which would be like a 10-year anniversary documentary like about where Hip Hop has gone within those 10 years since ‘Pac has been missing from Hip Hop – what artists have come about, where those artists are at compared to where ‘Pac, had he not been killed, would’ve been at after 10 years. Well what happened was, we started putting everything together… The title actually changed three times. It started out to be Tupac Evolution. And that was gonna be the evolution of what has happened over 10 years with Hip Hop. Then we went from digging and looking at the material we had - interviews and things like that – and we started saying this is more of a revelation piece, ‘cause we started seeing a lot of new revelations through what we were doing. And then it got down to the very end [of the process], and all of the material, all of the information we had we talked about it, we came together and we said, “You know what, this is even deeper than evolution or revelation, this was an assassination.” So we went in that direction and we re-titled it for the third time. So it actually [started out as] a follow-up to Before I Wake, [but] after 11 years, we found out that the Las Vegas police department hadn’t turned over a few rocks. We turned over those rocks that they didn’t turn over and we found all of this information. We found people they hadn’t interviewed – other bodyguards, etc – so [that’s how] we came about with Tupac Assassination.
DX: Have you guys received the official blessing of Tupac’s mom, Afeni, to do this documentary?
RJB: There has not been one project that Frank Alexander has worked on that the estate has not given their consent and blessing to. Frank makes sure that whatever project he’s involved with that they know about it. In fact, I flew out to New York specifically to screen the movie for her attorneys, just to make sure that there was no conflict and no objection by the estate to any of the information [in the film]. And we got a very positive response. In fact, when we changed the title from Tupac Revelation to Tupac Assassination they were actually consulted because we didn’t want it to interfere with anything they may be working on as far as names go and all that. Yeah, we feel that we’ve got a good working relationship with the estate.
DX: The press release for this film says, “By the time this DVD ends, the smoke and confusion caused by unsubstantiated rumors, myopic myths and urban legends will dissipate and a clear picture will appear.” Is Suge Knight in that picture? Orlando Anderson? Who we seeing in that picture?
RJB: It’s like a cast of characters. To answer your question directly, every single one of those people are mentioned in the movie, and what we feel to be their roles were. Over the course of 11 years something that started off as a lie or a mistruth of some sort, or even just a misunderstanding, they get watered and fertilized and they become legends. And we actually just distilled them back down to their facts or lack of. Did we mention Suge? Well of course, he was there. He was part of what happened the night Tupac got killed, how could you not mention him? In terms of do we come right out and do we say [who] did it? We’re very clear in our movie about who we feel was responsible for it.
DX: In the title to the film you label the shooting an assassination. Isn’t that giving whoever the shooter was a little too much credit, to call him an assassin? Wasn’t this just your traditional unsavvy gang shooting?
FA: Well you know, you can look at it like that. And you can call it what you will. But in actuality, it was planned, it was plotted, and that’s what we found out from all of the information we came across. It’s no different than John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy, all of the presidents [who’ve been assassinated], even President Lincoln, and all of the political figures that have been assassinated in the past. If we were living in that time and era [when those assassinations took place] you could have called [those shootings] gang-related or a drive-by in the same manner. It’s just that we are in a different age and era of technology. Everything now is related to people in cars driving by, because their cowards.
RJB: We had an assassination expert who works for the federal government [in the film] illustrates all the elements to an assassination plot. Over the years [all assassinations] have so many things in common, in terms of all the steps you have to take to make an assassination work right. We ran down the list, and it was amazing how easily all the facts fit into that frame. It was absolutely an assassination just by definition.
DX: Are you guys putting forth the theory that others have previously that Suge somehow contracted ‘Pac’s murder out to Southside Crips?
RJB: Nope. In fact, we kinda fly in the face [of that theory]. What makes this DVD so different from Biggie & Tupac, some of the other movies that are out there, is the fact that when you watch the DVD you’re gonna find out that the answer’s been under their nose the entire time – including Russell Poole, and including Randall Sullivan and other people that have been involved in this [investigation]. And no one has stopped to even consider it. When you see all the facts in the way that they’re presented it becomes screamingly obvious.
DX: And Frank I just have to ask, was this theory something that you’ve always held to be your belief, or was this something you just uncovered as you progressed through the process of making the film?
FA: From the time I had become Tupac’s bodyguard to the time [his murder] had taken place, over the course of that year, me being on the inside and watching everything I really didn’t have any clue to what was motivating the rumors and the stories that were coming about, even then when he was alive as he was trying to leave the record label. I had no knowledge of those things, other than overhearing it or being privileged to certain conversations. But nothing to where it would’ve led me to believe that somebody within side the record label was actually trying to have Tupac killed. After we started researching, and after the storm had calmed down over a period of ten years, I did a little bit more soul searching. And I had to go really back into my memory – RJ helped me a lot with that – ‘cause I had forgotten so much stuff over the course of 11 years. And once I started looking at all of the evidence, and all of the documentation, as we were working on this project I started seeing everything in a different light. I started seeing how the stage was being set, even way back then as I was being set up, being strategically placed in situations and being told different things, I could see that it was more of a plan, more of a plot.
DX: I understand that the film focuses on statements given by yourself and other bodyguards who worked for Death Row. I just have to ask, not to insult the profession of bodyguard, but what insight can you and the other bodyguards possibly provide regarding specifics of the murder plot?
FA: It’s not so much that we provided specific information, because from the course of writing my book, Got Your Back, and then [making] Before I Wake, I had something to say and I told what I had to say through the book. And then with Before I Wake I talked more about the personal side of my relationship with Tupac. But with this particular movie, it’s not that I came out and said so-and-so assassinated Tupac. It’s just the fact that other bodyguards were never interviewed. They never had their chance to speak and say what they had known. That’s what was brought to the table this time around.
RJB: We interviewed a bodyguard by the name of Michael Moore in the movie. Now, Michael Moore was directly taken off duty of Tupac [the day he was killed]. And the things that he had to say, those situations – calling him up in his room, and all the things that happened to him during that time - that provides a lot of information. So when you say, hey, how could a bodyguard add any information to this, or how could they contribute? Everything that happened to them as a result of the orders being given, that’s all testimony, and those are all facts that they give in support of that.
DX: Are you guys in any way suggesting that employees of Wrightway Security were involved in the plot?
RJB: We lay out all the facts as we know them, and we let the audience decide. But in our video we present a significant amount of evidence that Reggie Wright was at the heart of the incident. The fact that Frank wasn’t given a radio [that night] but Reggie made sure he had a radio, and he didn’t even need one. [Reggie] taking the bodyguards’ weapons away, and making sure they were in front of an attorney when they told the bodyguards that they shouldn’t carry any weapons. That way that conversation would fall under attorney-client privilege and they didn’t have to talk about it. There’s no coincidence in all of this.
DX: And I just have to ask, was there an FBI agent named Kevin Hackie present that night?
FA: It wasn’t so much that he was present [the night Tupac was killed], it’s that Kevin, from 1992 up until 1996, was working for the FBI in an undercover capacity to infiltrate Death Row Records [to investigate claims of] racketeering. So as everything was coming about Kevin was undercover. And that night, no he was not with us. The radio that Kevin Hackie had in Los Angeles was supposed to have been my radio. Kevin didn’t come to Las Vegas, therefore I didn’t get the radio. He and Reggie Wright had a fight that Friday. It was a big fallout [between them] and Kevin didn’t show up with the radio.
DX: Did you know back in ’96 that Kevin was working for the government?
FA: No, absolutely not.
DX: I guess I just have to ask then, were you also working as an undercover FBI agent?
FA: [Laughs] I plead the fifth. [Laughs] No, for the record, I was not.
DX: Well the FBI clearly hasn’t displayed any interest that I’m aware of in this investigation. I understand that the film delves into the failures of law enforcement in general in this case?
RJB: When you line up a group of bodyguards and witnesses that say they were never interviewed by the police, and yet they were there the entire evening, and they were there to witness events that happened up until that evening that [established] motive [for the murder], yeah I’d say they’re not doing their job.
DX: Hackie apparently believes this, but do you believe anyone will ever be arrested and charged for Tupac’s murder?
FA: If not, it’ll be sad. Justice needs to be done. The killer himself, many think it was Orlando Anderson, but no one can prove that because there was never a trial. And Orlando Anderson is dead and he can’t speak for himself. He never went before a judge and jury and be found guilty or innocent. The police in Las Vegas, they let him go. They didn’t feel he was a suspect. Why? We don’t know. Hopefully we’ll find that out. But whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen.
DX: Switching gears here, in addition to the film DVD and soundtrack CD for sale on the website, I noticed there were also “Who Shot Tupac?” t-shirts for sale. Do you worry at all that people are gonna view this merchandising of a murder as vulturous?
RJB: We’d love to have all the money in the world to put out billboards [for the movie], and encourage people to talk about the case. That’s what our DVD does, it’s a call to action. At our press release we actually had reporters stand up and say, “Now what do we do?” Now to the t-shirts, I can’t put a billboard in the sky [that says] remember our friend ‘Pac, and remember all the joy he’s brought people through is music. Neither I nor Frank can afford to put billboards all over the place saying remember this and talk about it – talk to your friends about it, talk to the police about it, and do what you can to get involved. So, what we did was put walking billboards [out there]. And we did it provocatively, ‘cause we do want to provoke people to talk about [the murder].
DX: And Frank, do you have any current plans for future books or films on Tupac or the murder investigation?
FA: Yes we do. We’re coming out with a book entitled Tupac Assassination. And it’ll be a little bit more in depth than what the DVD is. And we are working on other projects as well for the future.
