Did Puff really have ‘Pac set up?
Damn near 15 years after the fact, and these 'Pac stans are still trying to throw the Notorious B.I.G. under a bus. You'd think that after a while they'd just give in to the fact that 2Pac was an inferior artist, and a douche, and that if it wasn't for his BS, both him and Biggie would still be alive today. But apparently not.
Today, the LA Times is running with a story that suggests that Biggie and Puffy (he really should go back to calling himself Puffy) had something to do with 'Pac getting set up, robbed, and shot in the lobby of the Quad recording studio in 1994, as 'Pac himself often suggested in the wake of the incident.
According to the story by Chuck Philips, Jimmy Henchmen, whom you'll recall manages The Game these days, Haitian Jack, one of the guys who caught a rape charge with 'Pac but somehow avoided doing time (hmm...), and this Italian kid whose father was supposedly a boss with the Colombo crime family were trying to get 'Pac to sign with Bad Boy, but 'Pac wasn't feeling it.
So in retaliation, these guys had 'Pac set up that night at Quad. 'Pac's boy Randy "Stretch" Walker let them know when he'd be arriving at the studio. They were just gonna beat him up and rob him, but 'Pac pulled a gun out and shot himself in the nuts, so they shot him four times - maybe because they feared he'd shoot them, or maybe because they felt any guy who shoots himself in the nuts deserves to get shot four times on GP.
Obviously it's hard to say for certain, but I'm hoping it's the latter.
Where Big and Puff fit into this is that they were both on the 10th floor of the building where this took place, and supposedly they'd been made aware that this was gonna happen beforehand. They could have told 'Pac, but they didn't. And the reason we know this is because there was a guy there who was an FBI informant. Supposedly, he was up there with Big and Puff when the shots rang out, and the two of them didn't seem surprised in the least bit.
Hmm...
This story actually isn't altogether different from the version of the events that emerged way back when - the main difference being the Jimmy Henchmen trying to sign 'Pac to Bad Boy angle, and the testimony by this FBI informant that Big and Puff knew about the plot beforehand. As far as I'm concerned, this version of the events doesn't seem right for a couple of reasons.
First of all, if Jimmy Henchmen and the rest of these guys really were trying to sign 'Pac to Bad Boy, how come we're just now hearing about it? As much as 'Pac loved to talk shit in general, let alone about his beef with Bad Boy and this incident in particular, I've never heard such a thing. And I've been following this shit since I was in high school. You'd think that this would have been a vital aspect of his side of the story, no?
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to believe that Jimmy Henchmen had something to do with this, since he was there and since his reputation precedes him. But how come it couldn't just be that 'Pac was running with Henchmen and the rest of these guys because he had a tendency to align himself with bad people; and that Henchmen and his crew had 'Pac set up not because he wouldn't sign to Bad Boy, but because he was wearing a $40,000 chain and he looked like a mark?
As far as whether or not Big and Puff had anything to do with it, I'm gonna suggest that they didn't, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm a Biggie stan to the end. Second of all, Chuck Philips' main evidence that this is the case comes from an unnamed FBI informant, and my tendency is to not want to believe any claims made unnamed FBI informants. For all we know, this could just be some jail house snitch looking for time off of his sentence.
And if you notice, that's the closest thing Philips has to an actual smoking gun here. There's no taped phone calls of this guy and Diddy talking about how Diddy knew 'Pac was about to get robbed. There isn't anyone else from the staff of Bad Boy at the time corroborating the claim that they were trying to sign 'Pac. We don't even know who this informant is. For all we know, it could be one of the numerous people Diddy has beaten over the head with a champagne bottle over the years.
You'll recall that this guy Chuck Philips tried to pull something similar back when I was in college. There was another big story by him in the LA Times, claiming that Biggie was in Las Vegas the night 'Pac got shot there, and that he paid some Crips to do it. I'm pretty sure his source that time was just some Crip who made that shit up. Diddy actually ended up producing the logs from the studio showing that Biggie was in New York at the time recording that song "Nasty Boy."
Which of course begs the question: Why is it that Chuck Philips keeps trying to pull this same bullshit again and again, years after the fact? My guess, especially after reading this most recent story, punctuated as it is with quotes from the Makaveli album, is that this guy Chuck Philips is just that committed a 'Pac stan. I bet if you went to his house, he'd have a big-ass shrine to 2Pac in his garage. Just like that cop who killed Biggie.
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