It’s 25 years since rap icon Tupac Shakur died following a drive-by shooting.
His 1996 murder in Las Vegas remains unsolved and there have been plenty of theories about what really happened to 2Pac, who sold 75million records.
A huge star in the music world as well as an established movie actor, he had the world at his feet and looked set to rise to mega-stardom when his life was cut tragically short.
To this day, his death remains a hotly discussed topic, with plenty of wild conspiracy theories.
Here, James Moore looks at some of the intriguing mysteries surrounding his death at 25…
Who killed Tupac?
(Image: GETTY)
Officially, Tupac was shot four times and died in hospital six days later.
His hip-hop rival Biggie Smalls – Notorious B.I.G – was suspected of hiring a hitman to kill his former pal.
But the 24-year-old was himself murdered in an unsolved shooting in LA in March 1997.
It has since been claimed Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, a member of the Southside Crips gang, was the shooter, following an earlier bust-up with Tupac. Anderson was killed in 1998.
More questions remain, such as why Tupac wasn’t wearing his usual bulletproof vest on the night of the murder and why a photo of him in the BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Suge Knight was dated the following day.
What happened to Tupac’s body?
(Image: FilmMagic)
Knight paid for Tupac to be cremated the day after his death. Mortuary records said he was 6ft, weighing 215lb, when Tupac was previously recorded as 5ft 10in and 168lb.
The person who carried out the cremation is said to have vanished and some fans believe it wasn’t Tupac’s body at all.
There were even claims hip-hop group The Outlawz smoked some of his ashes.
Is Tupac really dead?
There have been supposed sightings across the world, including in a yellow poncho at a 2011 New York protest. Some think he faked his own death fearing murder or to escape his fame.
A fellow rapper reported Tupac was living in Cuba, where his aunt resides.
There were wild claims of partying with Rihanna and even that Cuban leader Fidel Castro smuggled him in.
Suge Knight has since said Tupac is alive and “somewhere smoking a Cuban cigar,” while Knight’s son says the rapper is living in Malaysia after being spirited away by shadowy group the Illuminati.
Filmmaker Rick Boss reckons he fled to New Mexico to avoid murder.
Did Tupac leave clues?
(Image: Getty Images)
Tupac admired Italian thinker Niccolò Machiavelli, a fan of faking death as a strategy, and released his last album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory under the new stage name Makaveli. Rearranging the letters reveals: “AM ALIVE K”.
Tupac’s lyrics refer to his own murder, but in one he raps: “But that was fiction, some coward got the story twisted.”
Was his number up?
Officially, Tupac died on Friday 13. But the number 7 seems to have some creepy connections.
He was shot on September 7, aged 25 (2+5=7). The digits of his time of death, 4:03pm, add up to 7 and his birthday was June 16 (1+6 =7).
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
