The Outlawz were thick as thieves at one point. Founded by 2Pac—who went by his alias Makaveli—the group has released numerous albums over the years, including their 1999 platinum-selling debut Still I Rise. As the only album on the Death Row label, the bulk of the songs featured posthumous lyrics from 2Pac. Understandably, the rest of the Outlawz had a steadfast loyalty to their dogmatic leader. Speaking to Art of Dialogue in a recent interview, former member Napoleon explained why he once spit on Shyne out of respect for the late Hip-Hop legend.
“When the East Coast-West Coast thing was at its peak, a lot of rappers from the East Coast would come to L.A.,” he said. “We’d see them and try to press them. We was at one of the Source Awards and we were deep, bro. We had the homies from Jersey, we had homies from Compton, from L.A. We had these red-and-white Outlawz shirts so you just see us coming, like 40 deep. And we looking for trouble. We had that mindset like we looking for trouble.
“I was sitting in the aisle seat and I happen to look over and seen Shyne. He was by himself. He was just with a female. I looked at him. He looked at me. I say, ‘What’s up?’ He says, ‘What’s up?'”
Napoleon still believes it could’ve been a setup, considering the organizers placed the Outlawz right across the aisle from someone affiliated with Diddy and Bad Boy Records, who had beef with 2Pac.
He continued, “I got up and the whole squad got up, started mouthing off. The security’s there, so I can’t really do much. The reason I gotta lot of respect for Shyne is because he stood up. He ain’t back down. He was by himself with a lady. I tried to get to him, but security was backing us up. So I spit at him. And he did it back. He spit at us. It was getting heated. It was really about to go down.
“From that day on, I really had a lot of respect for him. Years later, I spoke to him on Twitter. We had a very positive conversation about that event. I had to tell him, ‘Look I’m Muslim now. We both was wild, but it’s good to see you doing your thing now and that you’ve matured.’ He said the same thing. He said, ‘I love ‘Pac. To us, he was our first Barack Obama.’ We automatically thinkin’ that he our enemy because he’s with Bad Boy. He loved ‘Pac. He respected ‘Pac.”
Shyne was headed down a dark road when he was arrested for the 1999 NYC club shooting involving Diddy and then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez. Although Shyne claimed self-defense, he was convicted on two counts of assault and of reckless endangerment, and criminal possession of an illegal weapon. He was sentenced in June 2001 to 10 years in prison, without eligibility for parole until 2009. He served almost nine years in New York prison and was released.
Napoleon added how “courageous” he felt Shyne is and was also impressed by his current political career in Belize. Watch the full clip above.