Suge Knight, the onetime Death Row Records CEO, was reportedly shot twice early Sunday morning (August 24) at a West Hollywood nightspot. The imposing former label boss apparently walked out of a 1 OAK pre-VMA party hosted by Chris Brown on his own but was led to an ambulance by police, according to TMZ.
Details are few but the site broke the news, reporting shots were fired around 1:30 a.m. PT at 1 OAK’s Los Angeles outpost on the Sunset Strip. In a 61-second video obtained by the website, a man resembling the exec (born Marion Knight Jr.) is seen being wheeled out on a stretcher by emergency workers; a number of police vehicles are on the scene. Knight’s family and sources close to TMZ seem to confirm his injuries were not fatal and that he was undergoing surgery in the pre-dawn hours.
At 9 p.m. PT on Saturday, Brown — an MTV VMA nominee at tonight’s show — posted a promo for the 1 OAK bash on his Instagram, adding the anticipatory caption, “We bout to turn the [fu-k] up!!!!”
There were other celebs spotted at the bash, including Black Eyed Peas star apl.de.ap and model Tyson Beckford, who seemed to confirm the news when he retweeted a TMZ staffer’s post about the incident that mentioned him by name.
Knight assumed the chief role at Death Row Records in the early 1990s, essentially co-founding the label with rapper The D.O.C. and Dr. Dre, after — legend has it — quite forcefully helping to get the latter out of his prior contract. Death Row went on to dominate the West Coast rap game, signing acts like Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound and Tupac Shakur. Dre’s classic debut, The Chronic, was released in 1992 and became the blueprint for a sound and era that would become synonymous with Death Row.
But Knight reportedly ran the label with an iron fist (and his ever-present Cuban cigar), alienating artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop. The still unsolved shooting death in 1996 of Shakur helped fuel a violent East Coast/West Coast feud that pitted Death Row and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records against the other. Ultimately, high-profile defections and Knight’s stream of legal troubles, arrests and a lengthy prison sentence into the 2000s ended his music industry run.
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