ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 11, 1997 TAG: 9703110088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Though no one has been arrested, the rap world is full of speculation that Tupac Shakur's death has been avenged.
There was a lot of bad blood between gangsta rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.
Now, the blood of both has been spilled on the streets. Sunday, six months after Shakur was shot to death in Las Vegas, his arch rap rival, Notorious B.I.G., was gunned down in Los Angeles.
Both were gang-style hits, car-to-car.
And though no one has been arrested in either killing, the rap world is full of speculation that Shakur's death has been avenged and more violence will follow.
Many of Shakur's supporters believed Notorious B.I.G. - a 6-foot, 300-pound ex-crack-dealer-turned-hip-hop-artist from Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, N.Y. - was behind Shakur's September 1996 death and a previous shooting he survived in New York in 1994. Now B.I.G.'s violent death will be seen as retaliation, said Cathy Scott, a Las Vegas Sun reporter who's writing a book on the Shakur killing.
Until the killings, rap rivalries had been largely wars of words, not unlike pro-wrestling - half substance, half show.
They pitted lyric against lyric in the contrasting styles of East and West Coast, spiked with trademark sexual braggadocio, ballistic bravado and street-hardened mob style.
Now, many rap-scene observers wonder whether the music and its makers have sparked a real war on the streets from which they came. A war that threatens rappers on both coasts and the future of the recording industry's most lucrative genre.
``The whole thing is scaring the hell out of me,'' said ``Big'' Mike Harris, president of the Philadelphia-based Pro-Fan Sports and Entertainment, who attended the Los Angeles party where B.I.G. made his last appearance. ``I think there's going to be some revenge.''
B.I.G., 24, who also went by the name Biggie Smalls, began life as Christopher Wallace. He was killed around 12:35 a.m. Sunday as he sat in the passenger seat of his parked Chevrolet Suburban sport utility vehicle outside a celebrity-studded party celebrating Friday's Soul Train Music Awards.
``Someone just rolled by and started shooting,'' said witness Kevin Kim, who was standing in the parking lot of the Petersen Automotive Museum, where the party was held. Kim witnessed the shooting with Wallace's estranged wife, Faith Evans, who Shakur repeatedly bragged had slept with him.
Police said the suspects pulled alongside Wallace's Suburban and opened fire. Wallace apparently was their only target, police said. He was rushed in the bullet-riddled vehicle to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
Police do not know whether Wallace had anything to do with Shakur's death. And they said Sunday night they did not know whether Wallace's death was related to the Shakur killing.
But there had been a long, bitter feud between the two rappers, made public in their interviews and recordings.
Some observers say it began when Shakur felt Wallace had been trading on his style. Others say it was a battle of the coasts - between the heavier, gang-inspired gangsta rap of Shakur and West Coast cronies of Death Row Records and the high-life, put-down style of Wallace and East Coast rappers under New York-based Bad Boy Entertainment.
Then it got personal.
In 1994, Shakur was shot five times and robbed of $40,000 in jewelry as he left a New York recording studio.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB