Author Jake Brown has woven a tale of intense drama that paved the way for some of the world’s biggest stars, including: Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog. The Suge Knight and Death Row Story details the visionary entrepreneur’s life story, encompassing his meteoric rise to the top of the charts after partnering with Dre to found Death Row Records. It tells you where Suge intends to take Hip Hop in the new millennium and features insightful interviews with business associates, family members and artists who speak candidly about his life.

The infamous Suge Knight, former Death Row Records CEO, and Keffe D are the only living eyewitnesses to the deadly confrontation on the Las Vegas strip between the occupants of our two vehicles. A violent confrontation that led to the deaths of two of Hip-Hop's biggest stars (Tupac Shakur & Christopher 'Notorious B.I.G.' Wallace) and changed Hip-Hop history forever. There's a strict code on the streets. One that real street players live, kill, and die by. Compton Street Legend reveals the street-level code violations and the explosive consequences when the powerful worlds of the streets, entertainment, and corrupt law enforcement collide. More than twenty years after the premature deaths of Tupac and Biggie there have been numerous TV specials, documentaries, books, magazine and newspaper, and social media dedicated to the subject. But at the end of the day, none of the private investigators, retired police officers, informants, Hip-Hop heads, actors, or academics that have weighed in on the topic truly know what happened and the reasons behind it, because none of them were there. Duane 'Keffe D' Davis, a native of Compton, California, admittedly lived most of his life as a gangster; a real gangster that did the shit that real gangsters do. He rose up the gang-banging ranks to become a shot-caller for the notorious Southside Compton Crips, while running a multi-million dollar, multi-state drug empire. Keffe D has been a central figure in both the Tupac Shakur and Biggie murders for the past 20 years. COMPTON STREET LEGEND will add valuable information about two of the biggest "unsolved" crimes in American history. It will serve as the missing piece of the puzzle that Hip-Hop Fans have been waiting for. On the surface, COMPTON STREET LEGEND will look like a story based on violence and hate, it is actually a story about Love, Family, Brotherhood, Loyalty, Trust, and Honor. It's time to set the story straight. Fasten your seatbelts.

The powerful and compelling true story of corruption, coercion and murder surrounding the Tupac Shakur & Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace homicides brought to 2014. With contribution by former Los Angeles Police Detective Russell Poole, the original Wallace homicide investigator, Michael Douglas Carlin, Director of "American Federale" and Richard "RJ" Bond, director of the "Tupac Assassination" movies take you inside the 18 year odyssey of the derailed murder investigations. Tupac 187: The Red Knight" goes back to the beginning of the investigations-the original police files-and re-examines the people and evidence who have been previously corrupted or ignored. We decided to strip the Death Row Records disinformation machine of its fallacies, and re-paint the witness disparagement campaigns by the Los Angeles Times with the color of truth. When all is laid out raw and exposed under the book's harsh light, "187" clearly evidences the power of the media-both of 1996 and of today- to not only report news-but to make it. Moreover, Tupac: "187" exposes leaks in the Los Angeles Police Department that may have fatally crippled the investigations in both cases; covert operations to collect up investigation notes and findings, key credible witness testimony hidden in detective's desk drawers, complaints of Los Angeles Police employees of their work literally disappearing from their computer files-along with their computers-it's all brought to light. Even in the last year, witnesses took new information to four key L.A.P.D. brass, only to see the body of evidence leaked by one of those in the meeting, to end up on the Internet-risking lives and attempting to sabotage the new information. This book is what you get when you combine the work of the LAPD Detective that found justice for Bill Cosby's son and who broke the infamous LAPD Rampart Scandal to the world, the filmmaker who dared to follow the Mexican Federale that killed drug lord Pablo Acosta and the award-winning filmmaker who produced the classic "Tupac: Assassination" documentary? You get a whole new group of suspects, motives that support a completely new understanding of the Tupac Shakur and Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace homicides ("187" of the title is the California Penal Code section for Murder) that some in the law enforcement community would rather you not know about. Through actual police and court documents never before published, never released recorded phone conversations from 1996, an unearthed 1998 confession letter and all new and never before released witness interviews, Bond and Carlin follow the cold trail of those responsible for the loss of two of the music industries greatest hip-hop legends. Where they lead will stun and shock the senses. Never before has there been a level of detail in these cases that has been made public; Bond and Carlin, with the help of Poole, go back to the very beginning when leads were new and unbiased, and publicly flush out the Death Row Records dis-information machine that turned good witnesses into targets of smear campaigns, and took the lives of countless witnesses and suspects. Prepare to challenge all you thought you knew about both cases, and get ready to learn new information that will forever change the way you view police, the law and the killings of Shakur and Wallace!

A journalist’s story of corruption in the LAPD and hip-hop’s most infamous murders—“the most thorough examination of these much-publicized events” (Renée Graham, The Boston Globe). Acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan follows Russell Poole, a highly decorated LAPD detective who, in 1997, was called to investigate a controversial cop-on-cop shooting, eventually to discover that the officer killed was tied to Marion “Suge” Knight’s notorious gangsta rap label, Death Row Records. During his investigation, Poole came to realize that a growing cadre of outlaw officers were allied not only with Death Row, but with the murderous Bloods street gang. And incredibly, Poole began to uncover evidence that at least some of these “gangsta cops” may have been involved in the murders of rap superstars Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. Igniting a firestorm of controversy in the music industry and the Los Angeles media, the release of LAbyrinth helped to prompt two lawsuits against the LAPD (one brought by the widow and mother of Notorious B.I.G., the other brought by Poole himself) that may finally bring this story completely out of the shadows.

In this “triumphantly funny” (AV Club) memoir, comedian Jensen Karp tells the story of how, as a Jewish kid from the L.A. suburbs, he became a rap battle legend—and then almost became a star. “The funniest person I follow on Twitter finally got smart and wrote about his unlikely—and hilarious—odyssey as teenage rapper Hot Karl.”—Kevin Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Tough Sh*t When twelve-year old Jensen Karp got his first taste of rapping for crowds at his friend’s bar mitzvah in 1991, little did he know that he was taking his first step on a journey that would end with a failed million-dollar recording and publishing deal with Interscope Records when he was only nineteen. Now, in Kanye West Owes Me $300, Karp finally tells the true story of his wild ride as “Hot Karl,” the most famous white rapper you’ve never heard of. On his way to (almost) celebrity, Jensen shares his childhood run-ins with rock-listening, Southern California classmates, who tell him that “rap is for black people,” and then recounts his record-breaking rap battling streak on popular radio contest “The Roll Call”—a run that caught the eye of a music industry hungry for new rap voices in the early ’00s. He also introduces his rap partner, Rickye, who constitutes the second half of their group XTra Large; his supportive mom, who performs with him onstage; and the soon-to-be-household-name artists he records with, including Redman, Fabolous, Mya, and will.i.am. Finally, he reveals why his album never saw the light of day (two words: Slim Shady), the downward spiral he suffered after, and what he found instead of rap glory. Full of rollicking stories from his close brush with fame, Karp’s hilarious memoir is the ultimate fish-out-of-water story about a guy who follows an unlikely passion—trying to crack the rap game—despite what everyone else says. It’s 30 Rock for the rap set; 8 Mile for the suburbs; and quite the journey for a white kid from the valley.

Preeminent rap journalist Ronin Ro exposes Death Row Records: an empire built on greed, corruption, murder, and exploitation. 16 photos.

A groundbreaking exposé about the alarming use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence to convict and incarcerate young men of color Should Johnny Cash have been charged with murder after he sang, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"? Few would seriously subscribe to this notion of justice. Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted liberally from his album Shell Shocked. Mac was sentenced to thirty years in prison, where he remains. And his case is just one of many nationwide. Over the last three decades, as rap became increasingly popular, prosecutors saw an opportunity: they could present the sometimes violent, crime-laden lyrics of amateur rappers as confessions to crimes, threats of violence, evidence of gang affiliation, or revelations of criminal motive—and judges and juries would go along with it. Detectives have reopened cold cases on account of rap lyrics and videos alone, and prosecutors have secured convictions by presenting such lyrics and videos of rappers as autobiography. Now, an alarming number of aspiring rappers are imprisoned. No other form of creative expression is treated this way in the courts. Rap on Trial places this disturbing practice in the context of hip hop history and exposes what's at stake. It's a gripping, timely exploration at the crossroads of contemporary hip hop and mass incarceration.