Thanks to the release of the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, an interview Marion “Suge” Knight did on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2003 is getting revived.
During the interview, Kimmel was wearing a bulletproof vest and Knight offered up what he thought was going to be a funny anecdote, but sounded more like an admission of injecting Eric “Eazy E” Wright with the AIDS virus in an attempt to murder him.
“Technology is so high. If you shoot somebody, you go to jail forever. So the kids, you don’t want to go to jail forever right? They have a new thing out. They have this stuff they called — they get blood from somebody with AIDS and they shoot you with it. That’s [a] slow death. The Eazy-E thing, you know what I mean?”
In April, the former manager of N.W.A. and co-founder of Eazy E’s Ruthless Records, Jerry Heller, admitted that he thought he had done this world a disservice. During a meeting with Eazy in the 90’s, he claims he talked the “godfather of gangsta rap” out of killing Suge Knight, a scene that was depicted in Straight Outta Compton.
“I think, even more so now, that Suge Knight is an evil human being,” Jerry Heller said. “And I always said when Suge Knight started to get involved — because he was a bodyguard at Ruthless [Records]. He drove [Dr.] Dre around sometimes. Usually he was with The D.O.C., who I feel was probably the greatest, pure rapper. He and Rakim were the two greatest pure rappers that I ever heard. But [Suge Knight] was a bad guy. He was a bad guy then and he’s a worse guy now. The guy is lucky. I think, like they say in Vegas to O.J. Simpson, ‘It’s payback time, man.’
“Eric [Wright] knew he was a problem from the beginning and that was that meeting when I talked him out of doing what he felt that he wanted to do and if you know Eric, he was very firm in his ideas,” Heller added. “Actually, it turned out that he was right and I was wrong.”
In a 2003 interview, Heller elaborated on that meeting he had with Eazy where he persuaded the rapper to reel it in on the idea of murdering Knight.
“Eazy said, ‘You know this guy Suge Knight?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Well, I’m gonna kill him.’ He said, ‘This guy is gonna be a problem and I think I should kill him.’ I said, ‘Let me think this thing through. I said, ‘First of all, we’re doing $10 million a month with six employees. We don’t even have a typewriter in the office.’ I said, ‘We’re the most successful start-up record company in the history of the music business and you want to kill this guy?’ I said, ‘That just doesn’t make any sense to me.’ You know something? I should have let him kill him. I would have done the world a favor. He would have done it, for sure, by himself. He always rolled by himself and he was fearless… I think that he was gonna go do it.”
Hindsight is always 20/20, but in this case you have to agree with Heller, right? A lot of people (Tupac!?!) may still be around if it weren’t for Suge Knight backing his portly ass into their business.
Most recently, Terry Carter felt the wrath of Knight after he crashed the set of Straight Outta Compton and ended up running over Carter with his truck, killing him. For that incident, Knight is awaiting his trial on murder charges where, if convicted, he will face life in prison.
While it may be a stretch to say that Tupac would still be alive if Eazy E killed Knight, it isn’t a stretch to say Carter would be. So that, in and of itself, is enough of an argument to agree with Heller that Eazy should have, in fact, killed Knight back in the 90’s.
