It’s been almost 30 years since Tupac Shakur was gunned down on the streets of Las Vegas. And while no one has ever been officially held accountable, new revelations in the case keep surfacing. In a recent conversation with PEOPLE, Suge Knight, who was with the rapper that night, said that Tupac’s close friends actually smoked his ashes. The Death Row Records boss laughed it off, saying he was the only one in the group who didn’t partake, grateful to have been on probation at the time.
Tupac’s friends smoked his ashes, claims Suge Knight
Speaking from prison, Suge Knight, who’s incarcerated for a hit-and-run, recalled what went down the night Pac was cremated. He said Tupac’s mom, Afeni Shakur, didn’t want a funeral; she wanted her son cremated that same night. Suge claimed he gave $1 million in cash to make it happen. Later that night, a small circle of Pac’s people got together, passed around a big bag of ashes, some of them even rolled it into a blunt and smoked it. “His homies rolled him up. They smoked him.” After a long pause on the call, he added, “You gotta understand, that’s what made sense. It was symbolic. It’s like… You keep part of him.” Suge said he told Afeni he couldn’t join in because he was on probation and couldn’t risk it.
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Tupac and Suge were leaving after watching a Mike Tyson fight on September 7, 1996. They had a whole convoy behind them. The NYC-based rapper, fresh off new fame, was riding high. That’s when a white car pulled up next to them and someone inside opened fire; four shots hit him. Suge was also injured but made it out alive. He said he tried to drive Pac to the hospital himself, bleeding, tires flat, but somehow still made it, till the cops and ambulance arrived and they were rushed to the hospital. But after two surgeries and losing a lung, Tupac couldn’t recover. On September 13, 1996, he died in the hospital at just 25.
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But the story wasn’t over. According to Suge, while Tupac was in the hospital, barely hanging on, he begged everyone around him to just end it. He allegedly told Suge he’d rather die than go back to prison, referring to the casino fight earlier that night. He even asked his mom to help him die. Suge said Afeni gave Pac some pills, but doctors brought him back and warned her not to try that again. After that, she told them to let her son go in peace and rushed to get him cremated. Suge claimed he tried to push back because Tupac had told him he wanted a big funeral. “I told her, ‘Look, I don’t know if I can do that,’” he said. “He told me, ‘When I go, I want every rapper at my funeral to grab the mic. I want them to kiss me head to toe. Just like in ‘Life Goes On.’” Knight paused. “He didn’t want to be cremated.” But Afeni didn’t care. She looked at Suge and told him to get it done.
Suge himself has been the subject of many conspiracy theories around the murders of Tupac and his contemporary, The Notorious BIG.
