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      Testimony in Tupac Shakur Murder Case Gives New Details

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      Grand jury witness testimony describes how hyperlocal clashes between warring gang factions spilled into a fatal dispute that would alter the course of hip-hop history.In the adrenalized aftermath of a Mike Tyson prizefight in 1996, a black BMW carrying the rapper Tupac Shakur pulled up to a red light just off the Las Vegas Strip, thrilling the women in the car next to him.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.As Mr. Shakur hung out of his passenger-side window, his friends in the Lexus behind him assumed that he was inviting the women to his record label’s new nightspot, Club 662 — its numeric name a barely disguised telephone code for “MOB.”The women pulled away and a white Cadillac took their place. A large, muscular arm emerged from its rear window and fired a barrage of shots from a .40-caliber Glock pistol into the BMW. Mr. Shakur was hit four times.The driver of the BMW, the Death Row Records impresario Marion Knight, better known as Suge, was grazed by the gunfire. But he managed to take off, making a U-turn over a traffic median and driving the wounded Mr. Shakur in the opposite direction before pulling over.Malcolm Greenidge, a rapper and close friend of Mr. Shakur’s who had been following them in the Lexus, rushed out of the car to check on Mr. Shakur, he testified this summer to a Las Vegas grand jury. Mr. Shakur seemed less concerned with his wounds than with Greenidge’s safety as armed police officers approached the chaotic scene, he recalled.“Get on the ground, they’re going to shoot you,” Mr. Shakur told him, Mr. Greenidge testified. Mr. Shakur would die less than a week later, at 25.In the 27 years since, accounts of what happened on Sept. 7, 1996, have existed in an unwieldy tangle of news reports, true crime specials, street gossip, internet innuendo and dubious self-mythologizing. The case went cold.But with last week’s indictment of Duane Keith Davis, a former Compton gang leader known as Keffe D, who has been saying publicly for years that he was in the white Cadillac when the fatal shots were fired, prosecutors have begun to map out the most detailed narrative yet of the chain of events they say led to Mr. Shakur’s death, one that will be tested in court.While the broad outlines of Mr. Shakur’s killing and its possible motive have long been known, hundreds of pages of grand jury witness testimony reviewed by The New York Times — given under oath and with surprisingly vivid descriptions for a decades-old case — offer new details of how hyperlocal disputes between warring gang factions had spilled into an ultimately fatal rap beef that would alter the course of hip-hop history.The son of Black Panther parents and a onetime performing arts student turned hip-hop backup dancer, Mr. Shakur had broken out as a solo artist in the early 1990s with a unique blend of introspective street poetry and young man’s fury. A proud antihero whose popularity only grew as he became mired in violence and rivalries, Mr. Shakur transformed in death into a hip-hop icon and pop culture martyr.Duane Keith Davis, 60, a former Compton gang leader known as Keffe D, during a court appearance on Wednesday after he was arrested in Mr. Shakur’s killing. Pool photo by Bizuayehu TesfayeOn Wednesday, Mr. Davis made his first appearance in Clark County District Court for a scheduled arraignment, which the judge postponed because Mr. Davis did not have a lawyer present, saying that his longtime California-based lawyer, Edi Faal, could not be there. In a brief phone interview, Mr. Faal said Mr. Davis, 60, intended to plead not guilty; he declined to discuss specifics about the case, saying he was in the process of getting Mr. Davis a Nevada lawyer.“Like in all cases, I think we should allow things to play out in the courtroom,” Mr. Faal said.Some of the new evidence challenges the conventional wisdom that had formed around the killing. While Mr. Davis had previously told law enforcement officials that the gun had been fired by his nephew, Orlando Anderson, who was killed in a gang-related shooting in 1998, two witnesses shared accounts with the grand jury casting doubt on the widely believed narrative.Those close to the case have reacted to news of Mr. Davis’s arrest with a mixture of shock and relief.Allen Hughes, who directed two of Mr. Shakur’s early music videos and worked with his estate on “Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur,” a documentary series about the rapper and his mother that was released this year, said the family had wondered if there would ever be accountability for his death.“All these years, we all knew what it was,” he said. “Just because law enforcement didn’t close the case, doesn’t mean we didn’t feel we knew who the true culprits were.”Now someone has been indicted in his death. And Greg Kading, a retired Los Angeles police detective who began to reinvestigate the killing in 2006, said, “Tupac Shakur’s murder will never again go down as an unsolved mystery.”Mr. Shakur performing in 1994 in Chicago.Raymond Boyd/Getty ImagesBrawls and RetaliationMr. Shakur’s music and public persona had taken on a darker edge following his 1993 arrest and subsequent conviction for sexual abuse, as he aligned himself with the gangster rap label Death Row Records and its leader, Suge Knight, who orchestrated his $1.4 million bond pending appeal.While still awaiting the verdict in the case, Mr. Shakur had been ambushed, robbed and shot in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio, an attack he later blamed on his former friend the Notorious B.I.G. and affiliates of the New York-based label Bad Boy Records, including Sean Combs, known then as Puff Daddy. (They denied involvement, with the Notorious B.I.G. claiming that his taunting track “Who Shot Ya?” had been written before the incident.)After Mr. Shakur responded with the furious, personal diss “Hit ’Em Up” in June 1996, what was once a simmering competition between the hip-hop vanguard on the East and West Coasts became a boiling feud, with each side relying on support from sworn enemies in the gang underworld for protection and street credibility.Those rising tensions began to boil over as players from each side prepared to travel to Las Vegas to watch Mr. Tyson fight Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.Not long before the fight, a brawl at the Lakewood Mall in Southern California set off a sequence of retaliation.Denvonta Lee, who said he was an affiliate of Compton’s South Side Crips, told the Las Vegas grand jury this summer that Mr. Davis — who called himself “the five-star general” of the local Crip set — had given a local football player $4,000 to shop for clothes before heading to college and told other gang members to accompany him to the mall.There, the group of young Crips collided with a Death Row-affiliated group of Mob Piru Bloods, their nearby rivals, resulting in a struggle over a Death Row chain. “That’s like taking somebody’s crown,” Mr. Lee testified. “It means something.” Within 24 hours, he added, “a war” had broken out locally. “There was shootings everywhere,” he said.One of the participants in the mall fight, witnesses said, was Orlando Anderson, a nephew of Mr. Davis’s known as Baby Lane. That September, Mr. Anderson traveled to Las Vegas with his uncle and other Crips for a weekend of boxing, gambling and revelry.The heavyweight fight ended in less than two minutes with a first-round Tyson knockout. Some ticket holders hadn’t even made it to their seats before it was over.As those gathered plotted their next moves for the evening, Mr. Anderson, brushing off the need for backup, found himself alone near the MGM hotel elevators and face to face with Mr. Shakur and his entourage of Bloods, including the same man whose Death Row chain had been targeted at the mall in California.In a scuffle that was captured by security cameras at about 9 p.m. that night, the group began to punch and kick Mr. Anderson, who declined to cooperate with the police and hotel security after his assailants scattered.Now, it was Mr. Anderson who was looking to exact revenge. “He wasn’t coming back to Compton with nothing being done,” Lee told the grand jury.A Fatal EncounterMr. Davis, a successful drug dealer and “shot caller” for the Crips at the time of Mr. Shakur’s death, wrote in a 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that on the night of the shooting he obtained a Glock pistol from a drug associate from Harlem before setting out with Mr. Anderson to find Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight.A childhood friend of Mr. Knight’s — the two played Pop Warner football together — Mr. Davis had found himself enmeshed throughout the 1990s in the growing gangster rap nightlife scene, but his relationship with Death Row soured as the label became more closely associated with the Bloods. Mr. Davis instead aligned himself with their cross-country rivals at Bad Boy, supplying his Crip soldiers as West Coast security for the label’s artists and executives, in exchange for access to concerts and parties.Following a failed stakeout targeting Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight at Club 662, the white Cadillac that Mr. Davis and Mr. Anderson were riding in came upon Mr. Shakur’s BMW by chance, spotting him as he leaned out from the passenger side.“If Pac had not been hanging out of the window, we would have never seen them,” Mr. Davis wrote. “Like two rams locking horns, Suge and I looked each other dead in the eye.”The police displayed a graphic showing who they believe was in the white Cadillac that opened fire on Mr. Shakur, and where they sat.Las Vegas Metropolitan PoliceAccording to witness testimony and law enforcement accounts, Terrence Brown was driving the white Cadillac that night; Mr. Davis rode in the front passenger seat, with Mr. Anderson behind him and Deandrae Smith, known as Big Dre, also sitting in the back. (Mr. Davis is the only person in the vehicle who is still alive, the police said.)In describing the shooting, Mr. Davis wrote in his memoir that he had tossed the Glock into the back seat before the encounter at the traffic light. While he has sometimes refused to say who fired the shots that night, he told law enforcement officials in interviews about 15 years ago that it had been Mr. Anderson.But new testimony in the case suggests a different version of events.Mr. Lee, the grand jury witness, was Mr. Smith’s roommate at the time, and told the court in July that Mr. Smith had admitted at the time that he fired the shots that killed Mr. Shakur and injured Mr. Knight. “Orlando didn’t have a clear shot,” he said, adding, “Dre said, ‘Hey, give me the pistol,’ got the pistol, boom, did his thing.”In the aftermath, however, speculation spread in Compton and beyond that Mr. Anderson had pulled the trigger as retribution for his beating at the MGM. Mr. Smith let Mr. Anderson have the “glory,” Mr. Lee testified. “He didn’t want to take the credit for Orlando.”The indictment of Mr. Davis does not identify the shooter, stating that Mr. Davis provided the gun to Mr. Smith “and/or” Mr. Anderson “with the intent that said co-conspirators commit said crime.” Mr. Kading, the former Los Angeles detective, said in an interview that he believed that the “overriding evidence is Keffe D’s own admissions within his law enforcement interviews that he handed the gun to Orlando Anderson and Orlando Anderson pulled the trigger.”Mr. Anderson, his friend said, often stopped short of claiming the murder. “‘You all crazy, man, don’t believe everything you hear,’” Mr. Lee recalled him saying.Sharing His StoryImmediately after the killing, as a related gang war broke out in Compton, the police there arranged what Robert Ladd, a former Compton Police Department detective, described to the grand jury as a “massive multi-gang search warrant,” arresting known gang members to try to reduce the violence in the streets and searching the homes of Mr. Davis and the others from the white Cadillac.But the initial investigation stalled, with the police blaming a lack of cooperation from witnesses. It was revived in 2006 when the Los Angeles Police Department opened a task force into the still-unsolved 1997 killing of the Notorious B.I.G. in a shooting long thought to be related to Mr. Shakur’s death.It was during that inquiry that Mr. Kading, the Los Angeles police detective, persuaded Mr. Davis to speak with him after dangling the threat of a drug trafficking prosecution.In 2008, Mr. Davis agreed to what is called a proffer agreement, in which Mr. Kading promised to not prosecute Mr. Davis using what he told him about Tupac and Biggie, so long as nothing he said proved to be a lie.Mr. Kading taped Mr. Davis’s interview, and after retiring from the Police Department, the detective used the contents of the confession in a 2011 book called “Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations.” In 2015, the recording was included in a documentary based on the book.Mr. Davis was irritated by Mr. Kading’s disclosures. Eager to share his story after recovering from colon cancer, he began talking publicly about the case. It was a risky step. Although Mr. Davis — who has spent a quarter of his life in prison, partly on drug trafficking charges — would have been protected from prosecution for what he told Mr. Kading during their meeting, his later public disclosures were not protected, legal experts said.Mr. Davis gave his first public interview on the subject of Mr. Shakur’s death for a 2018 docu-series called “Death Row Chronicles.”“He was trying to word things careful enough to walk a tightrope between taking credit, but not getting arrested,” said Mike Dorsey, the director of “Murder Rap,” who consulted on “Death Row Chronicles.” He said Mr. Davis arrived with a lawyer.After the series aired without leading to charges, Mr. Davis wrote about the case in his memoir; his interviews on the subject, including with prominent YouTubers, grew “looser and looser,” Mr. Dorsey said.Police officials and prosecutors in Las Vegas were watching Mr. Davis’s interviews closely.“Since 2019, he has appeared at least eight separate times in promotion of this book and repeated various versions of these events, all of which he acknowledges that he is in fact the person that ordered the death of Mr. Shakur,” Marc DiGiacomo, a prosecutor on the case, said in court on Friday.In his memoir, Mr. Davis at times softened toward Mr. Shakur and his family, writing that he had a “deep sense of remorse” for the pain his death caused.Still, he held firm that revenge was necessary for the beating of his nephew, going as far as to say that for some of the Crips involved, the killing earned them “some stripes.”“But it generated too much attention,” Mr. Davis went on, “and put us under a microscope by law enforcement that would not cease and eventually brought us down. It was a big-time loss for everybody involved.”Lynnette Curtis More

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      Review: U2 Was in Las Vegas Limbo on Sphere’s Opening Night

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      In the inaugural show at Sphere, a $2.3 billion venue, a band unafraid of pomp and spectacle was sometimes out-pomped and out-spectacled.Perhaps the true gift of Las Vegas is how it renders the extraordinary as mundane. A place where the simulacrum of glamour available to everyone ensures no one gets the real thing. A city responsible for billions of dollars of commerce that has the texture of a Fisher-Price play set. A hub for some of the country’s most beloved performers that blurs the lines between superstar D.J.s, cheeky magicians and bona fide vocal heroes.And so there was Bono on Friday night, onstage, tantalizingly close, freakishly accessible and, in some moments, perhaps just a tad lost. His band, U2, was inaugurating Sphere, a hyperstimulating new performance venue in which the whole exterior is a screen, and essentially the whole interior as well. Friday’s concert was the first of a 25-show residency, titled U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, that runs through the end of the year.Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, no band played with the aesthetic of grandiosity more than U2, and no band made a philosophy of futurist communication so central to its visual presentation. So the choice of U2 to show off what Sphere was capable of made sense — a messianic band for a messianic venue.For two hours, the group — Bono, the Edge on guitar, Adam Clayton on bass and Bram van den Berg, filling in for Larry Mullen Jr., on drums — wrestled with a venue equally as obsessed with hugeness, pomp and spectacle as U2 is. The setting was lavish, and the gestures were often colossal. And yet for all the vividness of the setting, there was still something not quite complete about this performance, which at times was winningly small, at others winningly huge, and at still others a futile ramble.For this show, U2 leaned heavily on its 1991 album “Achtung Baby,” from the tail end of its commercial high point — an album that found the band, which excelled at earthen anthems, reaching for more ambitious and unexpected sounds. But playing it in full (though not in order) meant peaks and valleys. Meshed in vocal harmony on “Mysterious Ways,” Bono and the Edge sounded vibrant. Bono, who throughout the night performed his signature contortions that recall a person who just received an electric shock, was largely delivering his pleading howls with commitment, at least in the show’s first half. Throughout, Clayton was dutiful and stoic, and van den Berg brought a raw fervor that Mullen doesn’t quite approach.But some of this era’s indelible songs were, here, something less than that: Both the signature ballad “One” and the dreamily tragic “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” felt tentative and less invested than usual. (The same went for the curiously dry version of “Desire” that appeared later in the show.) And a batch of “Achtung Baby” songs that appeared just after the show’s midpoint, including “So Cruel,” “Acrobat” and “Love Is Blindness,” verged on grim and asphyxiating, rendering the huge room inert.From left, the Edge, Bono, Bram van den Berg (filling in for Larry Mullen Jr.) and Adam Clayton. The venue’s stage itself is strangely vulnerable, and the band at times felt tantalizingly close, our critic writes.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live NationThere were a few lovely flourishes where U2 referred to other musicians — sprinkles of “Purple Rain” and “Love Me Tender” at the end of “One”; throaty nods to “My Way” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” late in the night.In truth, the performance peaked at the end, with a majestic run: “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “With or Without You,” “Beautiful Day.” And it was here that the band used the venue to most potent effect. Suddenly, the room was bright, as if a nightclub performance had been yanked out into nature — you could really see the audience, consisting largely of 40- and 50-somethings, including huge smatterings of loyalists in vintage U2 shirts and Vegas bros in tight Dan Flashes get-ups.It was a welcome and thoughtful recalibration of band to room, and audience to band. Just before then, during the new song “Atomic City,” the entire screen was an uncannily clear street view of Las Vegas, with the buildings being slowly dismantled through the course of the song, a clever visual gimmick. (For some parts of the show, the band hardly used the sphere at all, or only to display building-high videos of themselves.)For some parts of the show, the band hardly used the screens at all, or simply displayed building-high videos of themselves.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live NationEarlier in the set, U2 had used the screen just as aggressively but to less potent effect, making it plain how daunting a blank slate of this size can be. At one point a long rope — perhaps a nod to a magician’s endless handkerchief — was strung from the floor up to the peak of the dome, where it intersected with a balloon illustration. A young woman came onstage to walk with Bono as he, and then she, held the bottom of the rope. For a time she sat in it like a swing, awkwardly and perhaps not terribly safely. It was confusing and distracting.When the screen was full, it was often cluttered — with Barbara Kruger-esque phrases, during “The Fly,” or with digitally crisp art that could have been cooked up on an A.I. generator like Midjourney. (The illustrated endangered animals that appeared in the sky near the end of the show were an exception.) Sometimes things delved into the realm of discomfort: During “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” the screen filled with Vegas iconography and characters from films based in the city (Elvis Presley, but also Don Cheadle and Nicolas Cage). The collage streamed downward, as if it were falling behind the stage, which in turn made the stage appear as if it were tilting slightly upward, lending the whole affair the air of seasickness.Moments like these underscored that, as much as U2 was playing a concert, it was providing a soundtrack for Sphere’s technological wizardry. And also its technological quirks. The four spotlights behind the stage were mobile. A drone whizzed around, gnat-like, though it was unclear where the footage it was presumably filming was destined for. This isn’t quite a conceptual spectacle like the Zoo TV Tour, the original “Achtung Baby” showcase.Sphere is the brainchild of James Dolan, a broadly reviled New York sports and real estate magnate, who spent $2.3 billion bringing the space to life. It looks prescient, a glimpse of what even ordinary architecture might resemble a few decades hence. The entire outside surface is an LED screen — always on, and always changing (though it repeats). Watching it from the windows of a landing airplane, say, or a taxicab the night before this show, you might have seen it as a pumpkin, or a yellow emoji face, or a moist eye, or an ocean with creatures swimming through it.Impressively detailed and lightly shocking, Sphere registers in intensity if not scale — at 366 feet, it is not even one of the 40 tallest buildings in Las Vegas. But on some level, its power is grounded simply in the novelty of the shape, even in a town that already has a pyramid and a palace and a castle. (Dolan has already indicated plans to build similar structures in other cities.)The entire exterior of Sphere is a video screen, and essentially the entire interior as well.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesBut inside it is, simply, a concert venue, albeit one with distinct advantages and challenges. In dry stretches, when the space between the band and the huge screen and the crowd was palpable, the result paralleled the airy emptiness of a corporate convention gig. In a stadium show, you can almost obscure a low-enthusiasm performance — here there was nowhere to hide.That’s because, despite the visual ambition the space demands, little of that burden falls on the band itself, which is largely confined to the size of stage one might find in any regional theater across the country (augmented by a Brian Eno-inspired turntable structure, though it wasn’t used terribly effectively). It is a strangely vulnerable and inelegant setup for what is essentially a sinecure gig for a still-craved band.At the end of the night, Bono began cataloging his thanks. “I’ll tell you who’s one hard worker — Jim Dolan,” Bono said. “You’re one mad bastard.” He also thanked Irving and Jeffrey Azoff, Michael Rapino, Guy Oseary, Jimmy Iovine and other executives. Earlier, he’d acknowledged some special guests: Paul McCartney, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg. (Also in the audience, though not acknowledged: Flavor Flav.)It was a folksy way to spotlight the sheer extent of the labor, visible and invisible, that had just been performed. And it also highlighted the tension that remained, even at the end of the night, unresolved: Was this a big show or a small one? Was it selling intimacy or grandeur? Was it extraordinarily mundane, or mundanely extraordinary? More

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      How Tupac Shakur Remained a Defining Rap Figure After His Death

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      A star during his lifetime, he became an almost mythical figure in the decades since his 1996 killing.Tupac Shakur has been dead for longer than the 25 years he lived. During his lifetime, he rose to levels of stardom matched by few other rappers, rocketing quickly from a Digital Underground backup dancer to a chart-topper and movie star, all while courting controversy with law enforcement and presidential administrations. In the decades since his 1996 murder in Las Vegas, he has endured as one of the genre’s defining figures, in no small part because of the mystery surrounding his death.The Friday arrest of Duane Keith Davis in connection with Shakur’s killing — he was indicted on a murder charge — is a step in solving one of hip-hop’s greatest tragedies and longest mysteries. Nearly two years before his death, Shakur had been ambushed and shot in New York. The assault instigated a visceral feud between Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., a New York rapper who was slain nearly six months after Shakur, forever linking the rivals and the coastal feud that hung over ’90s hip-hop.Shakur’s breadth as a rapper included enduring anthems like “Dear Mama,” “Keep Ya Head Up” and “California Love,” while also featuring songs laced with misogyny and vengeance. He poignantly rapped about social activism and the oppression of Black Americans, which helps his music resonate just as strong today as it did in the ’90s.“His death caused people to really magnify what he was doing musically and when they saw it, they were like, ‘Oh my Lord,’” said Greg Mack, a radio programmer who helped bring hip-hop music into the mainstream on the West Coast. “We didn’t know that’s who we had.”Shakur at the MTV Video Music Awards just days before his death in 1996. ReutersPart of Shakur’s staying power is because his murder investigation stayed open longer than he lived, allowing fans to offer up theories about what may have happened. Almost immediately after his Sept. 13, 1996, death was announced, rumors circulated that Shakur was actually alive and well, recording in solitude on some far-off island. These wild theories continued with regularity over the years.(In one 2011 example, hackers gained access to the PBS website and wrote that Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. were living together in a small New Zealand town. The story spread quickly on social media even after PBS removed it.)Shakur often prophesied an early death in lyrics and interviews. He recorded a trove of music during his lifetime, and much of that material saw the light of day after his death. Over the course of a decade, Shakur’s estate released several albums that culminated with 2006’s “Pac’s Life.”His posthumous output extends beyond his own albums. A holographic image of Shakur memorably performed at 2012’s Coachella festival. Kendrick Lamar used excerpts from a rare 1994 Shakur interview for the two to engage in a conversation on his influential album “To Pimp a Butterfly.” In June, Shakur received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Actors including Anthony Mackie and Demetrius Shipp Jr. have portrayed him in films.More than a dozen documentaries, plays and books have been shot, acted and written to display and dissect Shakur’s short life, including 2003’s “Tupac: Resurrection,” which earned an Academy Award nomination for best documentary feature.This year, the director Allen Hughes released “Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur,” a five-part docuseries that examines Shakur’s relationship with his mother, Afeni Shakur. (Tupac Shakur once assaulted Hughes for firing him from the movie “Menace II Society.”) Next month, Staci Robinson, who knew Shakur in high school, will publish the first estate-approved biography on Shakur, a book she worked on for more than 20 years.“Tupac Shakur no longer belongs to Tupac Shakur,” Neil Strauss of The New York Times wrote in 2001. “Soon he won’t even belong to Afeni Shakur. He will belong to playwrights, filmmakers, novelists, television executives and other modern-day mythmakers. ” That prediction has largely rung true. More

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      Duane Keith Davis Is Charged With Murder in Tupac Shakur Case

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      The man, a former gang leader named Duane Keith Davis, has said the four shots that killed the rapper in 1996 came from the vehicle he was riding in.Officers said the investigation into the killing was reinvigorated in 2018 after the self-described gang member, Duane Keith Davis, admitted to multiple media outlets that he was involved.Getty Images/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesMore than 25 years after the killing of Tupac Shakur became a defining tragedy in hip-hop, a self-described gang member who has repeatedly proclaimed that he participated in the drive-by shooting was indicted on a murder charge, Las Vegas prosecutors said on Friday, reviving a blockbuster investigation that had long stalled.The man, Duane Keith Davis, has said in interviews and a memoir that he was in the front passenger seat of the white Cadillac that pulled up near the vehicle holding Mr. Shakur after a 1996 prizefight between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon in Las Vegas.The 25-year-old rapper was shot four times and died in a hospital less than a week later.A grand jury in Clark County indicted Mr. Davis on one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon, plus a gang enhancement, a prosecutor said in court on Friday. Mr. Davis, whose arrest was earlier reported by The Associated Press, is in custody without bail.Despite plentiful speculation, evidence and reporting across nearly three decades, no charges had ever been filed in the shooting of Mr. Shakur, who was one of the most popular artists of the 1990s, with tracks that brought poetic gravitas to confrontational gangster rap. But talk of the case was revived in July, when the Las Vegas police executed a search warrant at a home in Henderson, Nev., connected to Mr. Davis.Sheriff Kevin McMahill, who leads the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, at a Friday news conference about Duane Keith Davis’s indictment.John Locher/Associated PressMarc DiGiacomo, a chief deputy district attorney in Clark County, said in court on Friday that Mr. Davis was the “on-ground, on-site commander” who “ordered the death” of Mr. Shakur and the attempted murder of Marion Knight, the rap mogul known as Suge, who was driving the car holding the rapper.It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Davis had a lawyer.In his 2019 memoir, Mr. Davis, who goes by the name Keffe D, recounted a gang dispute that escalated after Mr. Shakur and his associates beat up Mr. Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson, following the boxing match at the MGM Grand hotel.“Them jumping on my nephew gave us the ultimate green light to do something,” Mr. Davis said in the memoir, “Compton Street Legend.” “Tupac chose the wrong game to play.”According to a copy of the indictment filed in Clark County District Court, prosecutors accused Mr. Davis of obtaining a gun “for the purpose of seeking retribution against” Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight, and of handing off the weapon either to his nephew or someone else in the Cadillac with “the intent that this crime be committed.” Mr. Davis is the only person in the car who is still alive.Mr. DiGiacomo acknowledged in court that the broad outlines of what had occurred that night were known to the police as far back as 1996.“What was lacking was admissible evidence to establish this chain of events,” the prosecutor said, noting that Mr. Davis then began to describe his role publicly. “He admitted within that book that he did acquire the firearm with the intent to go hunt down Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight.”At a news conference on Friday, the Las Vegas police confirmed that Mr. Davis’s own words reinvigorated their case, starting with a television appearance he made in 2018. “We knew at this time that this was likely our last time to take a run at this case,” Lt. Jason Johansson of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said.Mr. Davis had avoided directly naming the person who opened fire in recent interviews. But in a taped confession released by a former Los Angeles Police Department detective who investigated Mr. Shakur’s murder, Mr. Davis told the police that it had been Mr. Anderson, his nephew, who was known as Baby Lane.Mr. Anderson was questioned by officers investigating Mr. Shakur’s death but was killed in a shooting in 1998.In his memoir, Mr. Davis, who has also been known as Keefe D, said that after the shooting, the men abandoned the car and walked back to the hotel, picking the vehicle up the next day and taking it back to California. It was cleaned and painted before it was returned to the rental agency days later, Mr. Davis said. By that point it was “too late for any forensics to be accurate and reliable,” he noted.Duane Keith Davis wrote in his memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that “Tupac chose the wrong game to play.”Immediately after Mr. Shakur’s death, there was a flurry of activity in the investigation. More than 20 people were arrested in connection with shootings that the police said were suspected to be related gang attacks.But as the years went on without any charges, Shakur’s killing — and the death of the Notorious B.I.G., his friend turned rival, six months later — fueled conspiracy theories and accusations that the police had not worked hard enough to bring his killers to justice. The Las Vegas police have cited a lack of cooperation from people close to Mr. Shakur as a reason for the stalled investigation.The killings became the subjects of books, podcasts, TV series and films, further elevating Mr. Shakur — known for albums such as “Me Against the World,” on which he rapped about a life imperiled by violence, and “All Eyez on Me,” one of the genre’s first double albums — to a mythic role in hip-hop.The investigation into the death of the Notorious B.I.G. was revived by the Los Angeles Police Department in the mid-2000s, ultimately leading to a re-examination of the Shakur killing. Greg Kading, one of the detectives involved in the inquiry, later wrote a book that detailed how investigators convinced Mr. Davis to cooperate with them through a proffer agreement, meaning he could not be charged with a crime based on any incriminating statements he might make in those interviews.“I sang because they promised I would not be prosecuted,” Mr. Davis wrote in his memoir.On the night of the shooting, Mr. Shakur had been traveling in a BMW driven by Mr. Knight toward a postfight after-party at Club 662, a new venue backed by their record label, Death Row Records.Mr. Davis, a self-described member of the Crips, wrote in his memoir that he, Mr. Anderson and others had armed themselves and waited in the nightclub parking lot, hoping to confront Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight, who were associated with the Bloods, about the earlier violence.When the rapper failed to materialize, Mr. Davis said, the group waiting for him left for its hotel, only to encounter Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight talking to fans at a red light. “As they sat in traffic, we slowly rolled past the long line of luxury cars they had in their caravan, looking into each one until we pulled up to the front vehicle and found who we were seeking,” Mr. Davis wrote.Mr. Davis said Mr. Shakur’s crew had committed “the ultimate disrespect when they kicked and beat down my nephew” — an attack thought to be retribution for an earlier robbery of one of Mr. Shakur’s friends. In his memoir, Davis described the “strict code” of the streets that its participants “live, kill and die by.”“Tupac’s and Biggie’s deaths were direct results of that code violation and the explosive consequences when the powerful worlds of the streets, entertainment and crooked-ass law enforcement collide,” he wrote.Mr. Davis added that he had been considered a “prime suspect” in both killings, and called writing about the events for his book “therapeutic.”Sitting for an interview with a rap chronicler known as DJ Vlad this year, Mr. Davis was asked whether he was concerned that his disclosures could lead to a prosecution. Mr. Davis, who was incarcerated for roughly 15 years, in part because of federal drug charges, said he was not scared of prison.“They want to put me in jail for life?” he said. “That’s just something I got to do.”Joseph B. Treaster More

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      Usher to Headline 2024 Super Bowl Halftime Show in Las Vegas

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      “It’s an honor of a lifetime to finally check a Super Bowl performance off my bucket list,” the eight-time Grammy winner said.Usher Raymond, the eight-time Grammy-winning singer known as Usher, will headline the halftime show of Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, the National Football League, Roc Nation and Apple Music announced on Sunday. It comes in the second year of the league’s multiyear deal with Apple Music and will be Usher’s first time starring in the show.“It’s an honor of a lifetime to finally check a Super Bowl performance off my bucket list,” Raymond said in a statement. “I can’t wait to bring the world a show unlike anything else they’ve seen from me before. Thank you to the fans and everyone who made this opportunity happen. I’ll see you real soon.”Raymond, 44, performed at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2011 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, as a complement to the lead act, the Black Eyed Peas. Raymond had been rumored as a potential candidate for this year’s halftime production after he extended his residency of shows in Las Vegas, which began in July 2022. His participation comes amid the N.F.L.’s partnership with Jay-Z’s sports and entertainment agency Roc Nation, which was signed in 2019 to boost the quality of its halftime shows.“Beyond his flawless singing and exceptional choreography, Usher bares his soul,” Jay-Z said in a statement. “I can’t wait to see the magic,” he added.Raymond’s performance follows Rihanna, who performed last year in Glendale, Ariz., making her pregnancy public from the sky-high Super Bowl stage, and catching the attention of fans on social media. In February 2022 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., as a nostalgic nod to the Super Bowl’s return to the region, the Los Angeles rap icons Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar performed at the halftime show, along with Eminem, Mary J. Blige and the special guest, 50 Cent.Raymond, a 23-time Grammy nominee, won his first Grammy in 2001 in the category best male R&B vocal performance for the song “U Remind Me.” His popularity rose in 2004 when he released the album Confessions. His most recent Grammy win came in 2013 for the song, “Climax.” Raymond, who has served as a coach for the game show The Voice and appeared in handful of movies, is currently performing concerts in Paris.The Super Bowl will take place on Feb. 11, 2024, and be hosted for the first time in Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium, the $2-billion jet-black venue built by the Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis ahead of the team’s move to the city after the 2019 season.The N.F.L. had long shunned Las Vegas as a market and its association with gambling until 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited sports betting. Since then, Las Vegas has hosted the draft and the league’s annual all-star game, the Pro Bowl, but has also struggled with a string of high-profile arrests of players in the city. More

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      Las Vegas Police Search Home in Investigation of Tupac Shakur’s Murder

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      Nearly three decades after the rapper was killed in a drive-by shooting after leaving a boxing match, the police said that they had searched a home in Henderson, Nev.The Las Vegas police have executed a search warrant in connection with the fatal drive-by shooting of the rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996, the department said Tuesday, reinvigorating the investigation into the unsolved death of a mythic figure in hip-hop.Shakur, who sold millions of albums and had reached No. 1 on the charts, was shot as he was leaving a Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon prizefight in Las Vegas when a Cadillac pulled up alongside the BMW he was riding in. He died less than a week later at the age of 25.The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that it had served the search warrant in Henderson, Nev., a city outside of Las Vegas, on Monday. It declined to comment further.Shakur’s “All Eyez on Me” was one of the first double albums in hip-hop. He began acting onscreen in the early ’90s, starring as the male lead opposite Janet Jackson in John Singleton’s 1993 romantic drama “Poetic Justice.” When he died, the critic Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times that he had “described gangsterism as a vicious cycle, a grimly inevitable response to racism, ghetto poverty and police brutality.”His murder has been the speculation of books, documentaries, television series and films. For some, the failure to charge anyone for Shakur’s killing — as well as for the fatal shooting of the Notorious B.I.G. six months later — became signs of institutional failure, prompting calls for the police to revisit the case.Shakur, who was one of the most popular rappers in the world when he was killed, saw his legend grow after his death, as dozens of posthumous albums, books, documentaries and films were released. There was even a concert featuring a Tupac Shakur hologram. In 2017 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.Part of the investigation over the years has included a brawl involving Shakur and his entourage at the MGM Grand hotel after the boxing match. But in more than 25 years, no arrests have been made. The police department has cited a lack of cooperation from people close to Shakur as a reason for the stalled investigation. More