While Tupac Shakur’s fatal shooting, which occurred on September 7th, 1996, unfolded in Las Vegas, it was over in Compton where its true impact was felt hardest. A gang war broke out in response to Pac’s murder, and it raged for ten days, claiming multiple lives and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
According to Robert Ladd, a one-time Compton detective who was involved in investigating Pac’s murder, as well as the violence that erupted in response to it, there were 55 gangs throughout Compton in 1996, each laying claim to territory. “There wasn’t one residential street in Compton that wasn’t claimed by a gang,” he claimed to the LA Times in 2023.
This is important to bear in mind, as Tupac, through his new association with Death Row Records and its boss Suge Knight, was, by ’96, now intimately involved in the goings-on of Compton’s gang activities, even though he wasn’t actually from the city himself. Suge was affiliated with the Mob Piru gang, which was a part of a wider Piru gang alliance, which, itself, was part of a larger Bloods alliance…