(AllHipHop Features) In their forthcoming documentary Justice for Tupac and Biggie, Lloyd “TaTa” Lake and Reggie Wright question if Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight could be an informant for the government and if that possible connection played a part in the unsolved murder investigations of the fallen rap stars Tupac Shakur & Christopher Wallace.
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[ALSO READ: EXCLUSIVE: Suge Knight Ex-Associates Lloyd Lake & Reggie Wright Discuss New 2Pac/Notorious B.I.G. Documentary]
Lake and Wright discuss why they believe Suge may have shared information will the feds in part two of AllHipHop.com’s exclusive interview.
On speculation Suge Knight is a government informant
Lloyd Lake: You gotta look at the Whitey Bulger case; these people that were long-time government informants. You don’t get paperwork when you work in that capacity for the FBI. They offered me that job before, and I said, “no thanks.” So I know that’s real that you don’t get paperwork. You just gather information for the FBI like Whitey Bulger was doing.
How I’ve come to the conclusion is it’s been a long list, not just attorneys calling me telling me, “Hey, you better watch yourself. I think that guy’s an informant.” That’s just one thing. Let me give you an example, during the Reggie Bush dispute, there’s an article by SportsByBrooks where they say how Suge was mentioning the Reggie Bush situation. It got everybody so afraid that his name came up in the situation, they ran to the FBI.
The FBI opened an extortion case on me. My mom went to the grand jury. An ex-girlfriend of mine went to the grand jury, and my sister spoke with the FBI. Not one time did they ever mention Suge Knight’s name. Not one time. If he’s part of an investigation they have to mention his name. They’re thorough, the FBI. So you tell me how they didn’t mention his name? Not one time? It’s not possible. The reason they didn’t mention his name is because they don’t want their informant coming out in court. So they didn’t mention his name.
Then every time I would go somewhere when the Reggie Bush situation was going on, Suge would always try and influence me. “Hey I got an address on his mom. You need to do something to his mom.” Things like that that don’t make sense. You don’t have a horse in the race to be trying to get me in the middle of a murder conspiracy.
Another example, one night [Suge] called me and said, “I need you to go push on Drake for me.” I already had in my mind this guy could be an informant, but the only reason I went down there was to check to see if I could figure out if he really was an informant and to see if I saw any FBI or anybody in the vicinity or in the club. Sure enough I did. They followed me everywhere I moved through there.
Same thing happened with Puff. About a month later he was at a club called Fluxx, and Suge was supposed to show up every time. One time his tire got flat. The next time he overslept, and it was FBI everywhere. Every time he called me for these things he was hatching up that he was trying to get me involved in. It’s more than that, but those are just a few to keep it Hip Hop right now.
Then he never goes to jail. Let me give you an example. He hit the guy three weeks ago. He didn’t go to jail. They robbed Yukmouth. He didn’t go to jail. Some guys ran in Detail’s house, took his jewelry, and said, “This is on behalf of Suge Knight.” How come he never goes to jail? How come it’s not a grand jury going if he’s committing all these crimes? Is the FBI just letting people do this? Look what they did with me and Reggie Bush saying I was trying to extort him. They went and got a grand jury opened up just from him saying that. Look at all the other things like from running in people’s house, robbing Yukmouth taking his chain. Look at things he’s implicated in, and he never goes to jail. That’s how I’ve come to the conclusion.
Let’s talk about Las Vegas when he’s standing over Melissa Issac, and he’s beating her with a knife in his hand and with drugs in his front pocket. He doesn’t go to jail. This is a slam dunk case. You got a cop as an eye-witness. You don’t have a better eye-witness than a police officer. And there’s no way Melissa can just say she doesn’t want to testify against him. They would have forced her to testify. They would have subpoenaed her. There’s no way out of those cases.
Reggie Wright: I wasn’t under the impression about him being an informant. I just know he has rat things in him. The two things that come to mind when I hear Lloyd speak on those issues is that I know he did do this or can do this.
The one thing is when he was doing his time in jail for the probation violation on the state side. He knew he had a six months tail on the federal side, and he actually reached out to the U.S. Attorney that was handling the matter for his six month probation violation and said, “Y’all been trying to get me to cooperate on David Kenner. I’m willing to do that now, because I don’t wanna go six months. I’m ready to get out of here.”
He had me call the U.S. Attorney. I did. The U.S. Attorney advised me that, “I can’t talk to you Reggie. You’re not his attorney of record. I would have to hear from his attorney.” Which at the time [the attorney] handling the federal matter was David Chesnoff out of Las Vegas. So I called David Chesnoff and told him Suge wanted to do the six months and cooperate against David Kenner… David Chesnoff told me, “I represent tough guys from the Mafia. One thing I don’t do is represent rats that would do any type of telling, so you tell Suge if that’s what he wants to do then he needs to remove me or I’ll remove myself as his attorney of record.”
The second incident that I learned of was when the feds came, and they were doing the investigation on the Biggie and 2Pac matter. A LAPD officer on the task force showed me this crack pot attorney named Theresa Bingham, who got caught up there at the prison having sex with her cellmate. Suge had Bingham go and file this police report against me alleging that I was making terrorist threats against her. I made some phone calls to her, but it wasn’t threats. It was mainly that she was going around bad mouthing me in the music industry, and I had some opinions about her doing that.
The cop asked her, “What does you boss, Suge Knight, feel about you filing this police report?” She said, “He was the one that told me that do it. Let’s try and get Reg in jail. You need to go up there and make this report.” And he was giving her advice on what to say.
My issue is that he tries to portray that he’s this gangster and he don’t do no ratting and all of that when that’s far from the truth about him. He’ll do all the stuff behind the scenes. He’s the one who testified against Akon’s bodyguard when he got assaulted. If he wouldn’t have gave any information, he wouldn’t have to do any time for assaulting him in Arizona during the Super Bowl weekend. It’s stuff like that that causes us to say he’s not who he says he is. I hesitate to say the word “informant,” but I know that he’ll tell if the situation presented itself.
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On whether there are other government informants in Hip Hop & if the government played a role in the deaths of 2Pac and Biggie
LL: Yeah, I think they have a lot of informants out there in the Hip Hop community, just because of the lifestyle. Most of the entourages are ex-gang members. The police worry about that, and the influence that rapper’s have. Any government wants to control how people think, and when you get rappers like Biggie and 2Pac that are so influential, I don’t put anything past the U.S. government. I don’t know if they played a part in the [murders] or just turned a blind eye. Did they know it was going to go down and make sure the coast was clear? I want to look into all that.
I would like to see Biggie’s mom come out and put a little pressure on the federal government on how long this guy’s been cooperating, cause what if [Suge] was a federal informant during the time of the murder. He’s a guy, I can tell you, he’s not going to jail at 10, 20, or 40. A guy like that, that can’t do time and who’s a sissy like him, he might have been telling since he had first ever been arrested and nobody knew.
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On whether they worry about blowback from anyone because of their documentary
LL: My only blowback I worry about is from the government, but I’ve been at war with the government for a long time. That’s the reason why this is happening right now. It’s a constant pursuit. They used Suge, and they used him too aggressively. I’m not worried. In the last five years, they’ve probably tried to set me up over thirty different times.
If somebody would ask them to open up my file right now, you’d see set-up after set-up that went wrong, because I’m not into breaking the law. I’m not a kid anymore. I do things the right way. I don’t do nothing. That’s what I’m worried about if anything – the government. If Biggie’s mom puts pressure on the government or us just putting the facts out there about their high-priced informant, that’s not good. That’s the only blowback I worry about.
Part 3 of AllHipHop.com’s interview with Lloyd Lake and Reggie Wright will be published tomorrow.
For more information about the Justice for Tupac and Biggie documentary visit kickstarter.com.
Follow Lloyd Lake on Twitter @Lloyd_TataLake