Hip-hop's murky whodunit

Nick Broomfield's dishonest film "Biggie and Tupac" solves nothing about the rap world's most notorious murders.

By Eric Boehlert

Sep 27, 2002 | Nobody has yet suggested that a second shooter was perched on the grassy knoll, but that might be just a matter of time. It's been six years since rap heroes Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. were gunned down in a hail of bullets during two separate, operatic shootings that rocked the rap world in late 1996 and early 1997. Both murder cases remain unsolved, which means conspiracy theories among hip-hop fans are helping fill the void. (One online favorite: Shakur faked his death to escape the pressures of fame.)

Now, two new high-profile entries try to unravel the entertainment industry's unprecedented whodunits. Opening this week in several major cities is "Biggie and Tupac," a documentary film by director Nick Broomfield. It comes on the heels of a recent Los Angeles Times exposé. Each uses similar facts to come to completely different conclusions.

What we know for sure is that during the mid-'90s a deadly East Coast vs. West Coast rap rivalry erupted. It was fought between the New York-based camp of Sean "Puffy" Combs and his Bad Boy label, home to Brooklyn's Biggie Smalls (a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G., whose legal name was Christopher Wallace), and West Coast riders at Marion "Suge" Knight's Death Row records, home to Shakur. The feud quickly escalated from CD disses to real-life crime.

In 1994 Shakur was shot five times in the lobby of a New York recording studio. He recovered, but blamed Wallace for setting up the hit. The next year at the influential Source magazine rap awards, Knight insulted Combs from the stage. Months later, a Death Row bodyguard was killed outside an Atlanta nightclub; Knight blamed Puffy and his entourage, who were present.

That was the backdrop for the events of Sept. 7, 1996, in Las Vegas, where Shakur, 25, was gunned down, gangland-style, at a traffic light as he sat in the passenger seat of Knight's car. Six months later Wallace, 24, was sprayed with bullets while sitting in an SUV outside a Los Angeles music industry party. Neither crime has been solved. In fact, nobody has ever been arrested in connection with the killings.

"Biggie and Tupac" suggests that Suge Knight, with the help of crooked Los Angeles police, arranged Shakur's murder in Las Vegas because the multiplatinum rap star was about to bolt from Death Row and sign with another record company. (Months later, Broomfield suggests, Knight set up the Wallace killing as well.) The L.A. Times, meanwhile, argues that Shakur's killing was an episode in the long-simmering East-West feud and came with Wallace's personal blessing.

Ultimately, rap fans face a tough choice between the Times' conspiratorial account, which is hard to believe, and Broomfield's inferior documentary, which is hard to watch.

In 1998 the muckraking director scored notoriety for his documentary "Kurt and Courtney." In it he tried to prove, through interviews with a string of questionable characters, that rock singer Courtney Love played a role in the death of her husband, grunge icon Kurt Cobain, who police say committed suicide. (Love has adamantly denied the allegation.)

Broomfield's shtick is that he's something of a modern-day Lt. Columbo, schlepping around in a slightly disheveled state, stalwartly searching for the truth. Within minutes of the movie's opening, the filmmaker appears puckishly on-screen, where he remains for most of the movie, boom mike in hand, acting as both interrogator and cut-rate soundman. It's the low-budget, polish-be-damned style that's supposed to win viewers over, as Broomfield admits in "Biggie and Tupac" that he ran out of sound during one Q&A and apologizes for a cameraman who seems incapable of focusing on the subject during another crucial interview.

From the boyhood ghetto homes of Wallace and Shakur in Brooklyn and Baltimore to a California jailhouse interview with Knight, Broomfield crisscrosses the country questioning friends, family, bodyguards, investigators and teachers in an attempt to understand the men and the deadly rivalry that grew up between them. Broomfield does a nice job using old home videos and other obscure clips to bring the charismatic rappers momentarily back to life.

The problem, though, is that Broomfield's not a journalist, meaning he does not know how to conduct coherent on-screen interviews. It's no exaggeration to say that roughly half of the interviews in "Biggie and Tupac" are worthless, offering no new information or insights about the rappers or their deaths. And the film's much-touted jailhouse sit-down with Knight turns out to be utterly anticlimactic.

Next Page: "Crazy sex" with the LAPD -- and the wrong man is I.D.'d as the killer

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