Suge Knight, the onetime Death Row Records CEO, was reportedly shot
multiple times early Sunday morning (August 24) at West Hollywood
nightspot 1 Oak. The imposing former label boss apparently was able to
walk out of the unofficial pre-VMA party hosted by Chris Brown but was
led to an ambulance by police, according to TMZ.
Details
are few but the site broke the news, reporting that four shots were
fired around 1:30 a.m. PT inside 1
OAK’s Los Angeles outpost on the
Sunset Strip. In a 61-second video obtained by the website, a man
resembling the exec (born Marion Knight Jr.) is seen being wheeled out
on a stretcher by emergency workers; a number of police vehicles are on
the scene. Knight’s family and sources close to TMZ seem to confirm his
injuries were not fatal and that he was undergoing surgery in the
pre-dawn hours.
At 9 p.m. PT on Saturday, Brown — an MTV VMA nominee
at tonight’s show — posted a (since deleted) promo for the 1 OAK bash
on his Instagram, adding the anticipatory caption, “We bout to turn the
[f--k] up!!!!” But by Sunday morning, Brown had taken to Twitter
to vent about the aftermath of the shooting, writing, “It’s
disappointing that we as a society can’t have fun or enjoy ourselves
without any altercations sometimes. Miss me with the bullsh–!!!”
There
were other celebs spotted at the bash, including Black Eyed Peas star
apl.de.ap and model Tyson Beckford, who seemed to confirm the news when
he retweeted a TMZ staffer’s post about the incident that mentioned him by name.
Knight
assumed the chief role at Death Row Records in the early 1990s,
essentially co-founding the label with rapper The D.O.C. and Dr. Dre,
after — legend has it — quite forcefully helping to get the
latter out of his prior contract. Death Row went on to dominate the West
Coast rap game, signing acts like Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound and Tupac
Shakur. Dre’s classic debut, The Chronic, was released in 1992 and became the blueprint for a sound and era that would become synonymous with Death Row.
But Knight reportedly ran the label with an iron fist
(and his ever-present Cuban cigar), alienating artists like Dr. Dre and
Snoop. The still unsolved shooting death in 1996 of Shakur helped fuel a
violent East Coast/West Coast feud
that pitted Death Row and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records against
the other. Ultimately, high-profile defections and Knight’s stream of
legal troubles, arrests and a lengthy prison sentence into the 2000s ended his music industry run.
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