The Fall of Suge Knight

He sold America on a West Coast gangster fantasy — and embodied it. Then the bills came due. But is Suge Knight’s reign as the ‘most feared man in hip-hop’ over? Rolling Stone Magazine writes  

On March 20th, inside the high-security wing of Los Angeles’ Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Centre, the man once called “the most feared man in hip-hop” is looking more like the 50-year-old with chronic health issues that he is. Suge Knight sits in shackles, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and chunky glasses, his beard flecked with gray, listening impassively. It’s the end of the day’s proceedings, and Judge Ronald S. Coen is announcing the bail for Knight, who is facing charges of murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run: “In this court’s opinion, $25 million is reasonable, and it is so set.” A gasp erupts from Knight’s row of supporters — some of whom sport red clothing or accessories, a colour associated with the Bloods and Piru street gangs. The most shocked are Knight’s family, who have attended nearly all of his court dates: his parents, along with his fiancee, Toilin Kelly, and sister Karen Anderson. “He’s never had a bail like that before!” Anderson exclaims.

This could finally be the end of the road for the record-label head who, a generation ago, helped bring the West Coast gangsta rap of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur to the mainstream, pushing aside the pop rap of artists such as MC Hammer and Tone-Loc and putting low-riders and gang signs into heavy rotation on MTV. In the process, Knight established himself as a legendary music-biz tough guy. His exploits — some mythic, some real — during the heyday of Death Row Records have become part of hip-hop lore: In the early Nineties, he allegedly shook down Vanilla Ice into handing over publishing profits, walking the rapper out to a hotel-room balcony to show him how far his fall would be. (“I needed to wear a diaper that day,” Ice said later.) In his memoir, former N.W.A manager Jerry Heller alleged that Knight and his cohorts, bearing baseball bats, intimidated Eazy-E into releasing Dre from his Ruthless Records contract. (The claims have never been substantiated.) Knight was sitting next to Tupac when he was gunned down in 1996 in Las Vegas; his participation in a fight on the night of the shooting would land him in prison for five years on a probation violation.

“I watched Suge decline the last 10 years,” says Cash Jones, a.k.a. Wack 100, a former Death Row “foot soldier” who now manages Ray J and the Game. Knight already has two prior violent felonies on his record: If any of his current charges stick, under California’s Three Strikes law, he could be going to jail for the rest of his life.

“Suge lost focus of the business, and who he is,” says Jones. “He could’ve been a lot of things, but he chose not to.”

Knigt’s most recent troubles apparently began like many Suge Knight Stories: with him thinking that somebody owed him money. The upcoming N.W.A biopic, Straight Outta Compton — co-produced by Dre and Ice Cube, and due out in August — was getting attention after a teaser leaked in December. “People working on the set were calling and telling Suge, ‘Hey, man, this movie is really [becoming] a Death Row movie,’ with a Suge look-alike in the movie beating up people in the studio and all that,” says Reggie Wright, a childhood friend of Knight’s who worked at Death Row from 1994 to 2002. “Suge felt like they were using his likeness in this movie without consulting him.”

On the afternoon of January 29th, Knight drove up to the production’s base camp in his red Ford Raptor pickup, breezing past the film’s security. Dre’s bodyguards would not move him while Knight was on the premises, leaving producers in a panic. Cle “Bone” Sloan – a “nonactive” gang member who was working as a technical adviser to the movie – stepped in, confronting Knight. Sloan said later that he had heard there was a “problem” between “[Knight] and Dre or somebody.” The confrontation turned into a shouting match. Sloan said he told Knight, “Why don’t you leave so we can move forward? You got the white folks scared!” Eventually, Knight left the set.

Shortly after clearing out, Knight received a call from a respected South Central entrepreneur named Terry Carter who was at the shoot that day and was perhaps hoping to mediate the dispute. Carter, 55, was a self-made man who, after losing his mother and brother in the space of a year when he was 18, had built businesses in music, cars and real estate — most notably co-founding Heavyweight Records with Ice Cube in 1998. “Ice Cube and Dre would come by the house like it was nothing,” says Carter’s daughter Nekaya about her childhood. Carter was a family man, with three children; he had also taken in his sister-in-law’s five kids when she couldn’t care for them. People who knew Carter call him a “peacemaker.”

Minutes later, Knight pulled up outside the Tam’s parking lot, where Carter and at least one other man had already gathered. According to Sloan’s interview with police, Knight started bad-mouthing Sloan — just as, unbeknownst to Knight, he pulled up. “He was talking shit,” Sloan recounted, “and I just popped out like a jack-in-the-box.” Sloan came at Knight saying, “Let’s do it!” and began throwing punches at Knight through the Raptor’s window.

Knight’s vehicle lurched into reverse, knocking down Sloan. Then he put it into drive, running over Sloan and crushing his ankles. Knight’s pickup kept surging forward, plowing into a fleeing Carter, killing him. (The entire gruesome, abrupt series of events was captured on a grainy, soundless surveillance video, which was obtained by TMZ.com.)

“Every day, I try to forget it,” Sloan said later. “I screwed up, and Terry’s dead.” Knight turned himself in to police about 12 hours later, around three in the morning. Knight’s initial counsel in the case, James Blatt, told the Los Angeles Times that Knight was “heartbroken” over Carter’s death. A subsequent lawyer, Fletcher, has suggested that Carter helped lure Knight into a deathtrap. Carter’s friends and family are still deep in mourning. “It was a tragedy,” says Lydia Harris, an early Death Row partner. Nearly 2,000 people attended Carter’s funeral.

Marion Hugh Knight Jr. grew up on the east side of Compton, in what was, by all accounts, a strong, loving family. “The irony is that you would think this guy comes from a broken home,” says former Death Row publicist Jonathan Wolfson, “but his parents have been married to this day, and they are the nicest.”

A charismatic, gifted athlete, Knight wanted more than his parents’ two-bedroom home. “As soon as I was old enough,” he toldThe Guardian in 2001, “I told myself that I’d never live or end up dying in a place like that. I made up my mind that I wanted everything, and nothing would stop me.” Knight started playing on the Lynwood High football team; he was fast as well as strong. Knight has said he sometimes saw bodies in the alleys on the way to school — but “gangbangers didn’t mess with the athletes,” says Wright.

Interestingly, Wright attributes some of Knight’s unpredictability and rage to diabetes, which has shadowed him throughout his life. “A lot of people don’t know Suge has diabetes real bad,” Wright says. “He doesn’t have the correct medication to treat it, or go to the doctor to get it controlled correctly. So a lot of the times when he gets angry, it’s because his sugar is up.”

He also still inspires loyalty in some former associates. “Quite frankly, with all the headaches that I had with Suge through the years, the good outweighed the bad,” says Wolfson, who now manages Hall and Oates. “I truly owe him a debt of gratitude for actually allowing me to make decisions at the highest level.”

Meanwhile, Knight’s former circle is debating the outcome of his current situation. “The lowest I can see him getting, realistically, is 20 to 30 years,” says Jones. “Worst-case scenario, he’ll get life. Either way, he’s out of business.”

After hiring and firing a number of lawyers in rapid succession — including Fletcher and, for a brief reunion, Death Row’s infamous legal consigliere in the Nineties, David Kenner — Knight has recently retained the powerful Mesereau, who successfully defended Michael Jackson in his 2005 child-molestation case and has represented controversial figures ranging from Mike Tyson to actor Robert Blake. “I am convinced of Knight’s innocence, and I am convinced these cases should not have been filed. I look forward to defending him,” Mesereau told Rolling Stone. “All I am going to say at this point is that he was defending himself at all times, and should not be facing any charge of murder, attempted murder or hit-and-run. If I had been driving the truck, I would not even have been charged with a misdemeanour. And as far as his robbery case goes, it’s utterly ridiculous.”

As many of his associates have noted, Knight has gotten out of seemingly impossible situations before. “I still consider Suge a friend, but I can’t deal with that nigga — he’s crazy,” says Wright. “He’s been knocked out three or four times, and he’s still walking and talking like he’s the baddest brother around. He’s got some wiggle room, though. Don’t count him out yet.”