Facing a maximum 25-year sentence, Tupac knew it might be his last recording session for some time. On Wednesday November 30, 1994, Tupac Shakur was ambushed and shot inside the lobby of a recording studio in Manhattan's Times Square.
Stretch teaming with 2Pac
2Pac's group Thug Life
November 1994 shooting
— Tupac Shakur, Vibe magazine, April 1995
— Randy "Stretch" Walker, Vibe magazine, 1995
Stretch's murder
2Pac wrote this letter to explain "is THUG LIFE DEAD?"
Watch part of the VIBE.COM interview where 2Pac explains what he meant by THUG LIFE IS DEAD
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While Tupac filmed his breakthrough role in Juice, Stretch and Treach, of rap group Naughty By Nature, were extras. Once Tupac's trailer was robbed of jewelry, they delivered a beatdown on set.[2] In late 1991, after studio recordings, live shows, and TV appearances with Stretch, 2Pac put out his debut album, 2Pacalypse Now, with two tracks, including "Crooked Ass Nigga," where Stretch produces and raps.
Recently unable to put a track on Juice's soundtrack,[3] 2Pac saw his album sell modestly,[4] but Juice's release in 1992 sent his star on the rise. In 1993, 2Pac's second album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., found Live Squad producing and featured on "Strugglin'," while featured, along with Treach and rapper Apache, on "5 Deadly Venomz." That was produced by Stretch, who produced two more tracks, "The Streetz R Deathrow" and, featuring Live Squad, "Holler If Ya Hear Me."
Stretch made cameo appearances in music videos for the Mac Mall song "Ghetto Theme," directed by Tupac, and, in 1993, for the Above The Law, Money B, and Tupac song "Call It What You Want," as well as in movies, Ed Lover & Doctor Dre's 1993 film Who's the Man? and Tupac's 1996 film Bullet.[5] In March 1994, on The Arsenio Hall Show, 2Pac and Stretch performed "Pain," a track on the Above the Rim soundtrack's only cassette version and merely a single's B side, but swiftly a rap favorite.
In 1992, with rapper Big Syke, 2Pac and Stretch recorded "Thug Life."[6] In 1993, that song still unreleased, Tupac expanded the group, named Thug Life, and got it on Interscope Records, releasing in 1994 the group's only album, Thug Life: Volume 1. Here, Stretch produces and raps on "Thug Music" and the lead single, "Bury Me a G." Amid controversy over lyrics, the label cut "Out on Bail", which Tupac and Stretch performed at The '94 Source Awards, anyway, and "Runnin' from tha Police", featuring Biggie Smalls.[7]
In 1993, Tupac had met Biggie, a promising young rapper from Brooklyn, on his visit to California, whereupon Tupac supported and mentored him, a prospective member of Thug Life.[8] During 1993, Live Squad, 2Pac, and Biggie performed a joint set at Maryland's Bowie State University, in Prince George’s County, Maryland.[9] and recorded "House Of Pain," unreleased, for Biggie's debut album in the making. Biggie's debut album would arrive, without the song, in 1994 as Ready to Die. But the alliance would be severed through events on the night of November 30, 1994, at the Times Square building of Quad Recording Studios.
In late 1994, Tupac was reportedly hired by fledgling music manager James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond to record a verse for rapper Lil' Shawn's single "Dom Perignon." Arriving with Stretch and two others, they reportedly found rapper Lil' Cease—a member of the Bad Boy record label's circle via Biggie's side group Junior M.A.F.I.A.—watching the sidewalk from above and greeting them. But in the lobby, three men pulled pistols to rob Tupac, who, resisting, was shot five times.[1] Suspecting shooting as the primary motive,[10] Tupac pointed to, among others, Henchman and Biggie.[11][12] Blaming Henchman for the setup, Tupac accused Biggie of withholding prior knowledge.
The very day after the shooting, Tupac was convicted, in a Manhattan court, of sexual assault. And on February 14, 1995, he was sentenced to at least a year and a half in prison. In March, 2Pac's third album, Me Against the World, was released with Stretch removed from its track "So Many Tears." In a jailhouse interview published in April, Tupac discusses the November shooting and Stretch, incidentally 6'8":[1] "I was, like, 'What should I do?' I’m thinking Stretch is going to fight; he was towering over those niggas. From what I know about the criminal element, if niggas come to rob you, they always hit the big nigga first. But they didn’t touch Stretch; they came straight to me."[11][12] In the interview, Tupac also reflects,
No strong evidence emerged to implicate Stretch in the crime. Publicly responding, Stretch contends, "Pac's saying all this shit in the interview, like, 'I thought that Stretch was gonna fight. He was towering over them.' Now, that nigga know I ain't never going out like no bitch. But I ain't dumb. I ain't got no gun, what the fuck am I supposed to do? I might be towering over niggas, but I ain't towering over no slugs." Meanwhile, some reporting would suggest forensics evidence that Tupac had shot himself. Stretch offers, "Me personally, I only heard one shot. ... Tupac got shot trying to go for his shit. He tried to go for his gun, and he made a mistake on his own. But I'll let him tell the world that. ... He tried to turn around and pull the joint out real quick, but niggas caught him. Grabbed his hand when it was by his waist."[8][13][14]
Bill Courtney, retired New York Police Department officer, once with its infamous "Hip-Hop Squad," suggests that the stickup answered Tupac's comments, published in New York's Daily News,[15] about Jimmy Henchman's associate Haitian Jack, big in the Queens nightlife scene and criminal underworld. Haitain Jack and two other men had been indicted with Tupac for the November 1993 sexual assault, on a woman in Tupac's hotel room, whereby Tupac was convicted on December 1, 1994. By then, Haitain Jack had taken a misdemeanor plea deal for no jail time, and the newspaper published Tupac's gripe. The onetime "Hip-Hop Squad" officer hazards, "A message was being sent to him not to name-drop." Jimmy Henchman has since commented, "Nobody came to rob you. They came to discipline you."[8][16]
On June 15, 2011, the day before what would have been Tupac's 40th birthday, Dexter Isaac, imprisoned for murder, sent from Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center to AllHipHop.com a confession.[12] Isaac stated that he had been one of the men who in November 1994 robbed and shot Tupac at Jimmy Henchman's behest.[12]
On October 21, 1995, with bond posted via Suge Knight, CEO of Death Row Records, and pending appeal, Tupac was released from prison in upstate New York. Joining the label in Los Angeles, Tupac feverishly recorded his fourth album, All Eyez on Me. Two tracks, in particular—"Ambitionz Az a Ridah" as well as "Holla At Me"—have lyrics against Stretch, one envisioning his death.[17] But by the album's release on February 13, 1996, Stretch was already dead. Released a few months later, in July 1996, the sophomore album, It Was Written, by rapper Nas, from Queensbridge in Queens, would have Live Squad production on two tracks, "Take It In Blood" as well as "Silent Murder," from Stretch's final recording session exactly one year after the November 30, 1994, shooting of Tupac.[18]
On November 30, 1995, leaving the Nas recording session at midnight, Stretch on his way to a Biggie Smalls event, dropped off his own brother Majesty at his Queens Village home. Two or three men in a black car pulled up beside and chasing Stretch's green minivan, fired at it. Stretch crashed at 112th Avenue and 209th Street, just after 12:30 AM, and was found dead at the age of 27 via four bullets to his back.[1] In one theory, Stretch had robbed "a big drug dealer of over 10 bricks" and, despite the "pressure on the street," refused to return the over 10 kilograms of cocaine, why "a hit was issued."
2Pac Interview
