The east coast/west coast rivalry between Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls is easily hip-hop’s biggest feud, first sparked back in 1994 with the attempted murder of 2Pac. But the official identity of the assailants behind the assault has remained one of music’s mysteries…. until now.
Billboard reports that former hip-hop mogul James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond has admitted his involvement in the incident on the night of November 30th 1994, in which two armed men robbed Tupac Shakur at New York’s Quad Recording Studios, shooting him five times and nearly leaving him for dead. At the time, Shakur accused Christopher Wallace aka Biggie Smalls and his associate, Sean “Diddy” Combs, for the attack – leading to the coast-to-coast feud that eventually led to Shakur’s murder.
Though he’s consistently denied his alleged involvement for nearly two decades, Rosemond has now admitted he was responsible for arranging the 1994 hit on Shakur during proffer sessions last August over a separate investigation linking Rosemond to drug trafficking.
A former CEO off Czar Entertainment, the management company for big name hip hop acts like 50 Cent, The Game, Akon and boxer Mike Tyson; Rosemond is well-known amongst the rap community for his criminal involvement as much as his professional CV (perhaps he was part of the craziest hip hop conspiracy theory of them all too?) but it’s only until now that he’s paying for his crimes.
The mogul was convicted by a Brooklyn Federal Court earlier this month for running a cocaine rig worth millions of dollars, while he was also charged with arranging the murder of, Lowell Fletcher, an associate of 50 Cent’s.
It was during interrogations for these crimes that Rosemond admitted he was also behind the organised 1994 attack on Tupac.
Despite being implicated as the ringleader behind the shooting many times, Rosemond has never been convicted. Dexter Isaac, one of the armed assailants, was quoted by All Hip Hop last year as saying “James Rosemond hired me to rob 2Pac at the Quad Studio,” while investigations into the murder of Shakur from 2008 turned up FBI reports that implicated Rosemond.
The Californian rapper himself even accused Rosemond for the crime in the track “Against All Odds”, the pre-1996 track has 2pac spitting the line, “Promised a payback, Jimmy Henchman, in due time.”
Despite his recent admissions, Rosemond will not be tried for the crime because of a statue of limitations on New York trials that means the court case has already expired, but the former CEO will still face a life sentence over the recent drug case and murder-for-hire charges handed down by Manhattan judges.
