The murder cases of legendary rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG will be examined in a live show that will tour Australia.
Tupac Shakur, 24, was shot dead in his car on a Las Vegas street in 1996 by an unknown gunman during a drive-by shooting. Six months later, 25-year-old Christopher Wallace, popularly known as Notorious B.I.G. and Biggie Smalls died a similar death after being gunned down in Los Angeles.
The tour kicks off in Brisbane on July 26th and will last until August. The Murders of Tupac and Biggie: A Night with Greg Kading features the lead detective on the murders, Greg Kading, where he'll recount the controversial unsolved killings in the mid 90s.
He told the Today Show how despite various conspiracy theories the case of the rappers’ killings was “relatively simple” to crack. “Tupac was shot and killed by a guy named Orlando Anderson. He was a Crip (gang) member out of California,” Kading claims. “He was a guy who got into a fight with Tupac earlier that evening and he came back and retaliated along with the rest of his crew.”
Kading says Biggie Smalls’ killing in March 1997 during a drive-by shooting was retaliation by Tupac’s then record producer Marion ‘Suge’ Knight, who is currently serving a 28-year prison term. “That night he hired a hitman of his own and shot and killed Biggie as he was leaving a party.”
Both Shakur and Smalls were cultural icons and fierce rivals at the time of their deaths – a period when rap was at its height. Kading says it’s made the mystery around their unsolved killings enduring. “Back in the 1990s, rap music, especially gangsta rap music was all the thing. It was very popular at the time. It had a huge fan base.
“Then these tragic murders happened, and then out of that, these two individuals, as big as they were, become larger than life. They have been memoralised not only in the music but in the mysteries that shroud around their murders.”
Kading wrote the book Murder Rap about his experiences investigating the murders, eventually leading to the Netflix true crime drama series Unsolved starring Josh Duhamel as Det. Greg Kading. The ten-episode mini-series details and dramatises the real-life investigations into the murders of rap icons Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.
Tickets for the national tour are on sale now. Click here to get tickets.