Death Row Chronicles FULL Episode 1 - Suge Knight Partners With Dr. Dre To Change Hip Hop Forever

Death Row may be bigger than Motown, a Sony or the Warner Brothers. Death Row is going to be the biggest record company there is. The master plan was to take over the world. One of the greatest artists joined at one point and was like a comet. across the sky sex drugs violence for better for worse gangs went pop like everything we touched turned to gold next year

death

row will start printing old money you wanted one car two cars five cars you could have it the first year I made 150 Million dollars on

death

row in the 40's it was super bananas like this can't be real the more money we made the bigger it got it got more dangerous it was just a nation of blood she blew me up, I'm telling you, I didn't want to be.

All around them they want the drama that we are definitely going to bring it like only Devro could bring it. That's when I knew this is more than just music. This is dangerous when Pug died. I am out of here. I know who killed Tupac. Your core, the last living witness to Tupac's murder, is telling his story. The legacy of death row could have been greater than Jesus, but they were crucified. Suge Knight is the heart and soul of Death Row Records. In order to understand the label, you have to understand who. He's a Buck Spy Dre was in charge of the music, but Suge was the force to be reckoned with.

He put death row records on the map. How does it feel to be so feared? I don't look at his feet, it seems like he was respected. Suge Knight is a mythical figure the controversial CEO of Death Row Records the most feared figure in all of hip-hop his size was intimidating Knight had been on probation for a 1992 assault on two aspiring rappers he was a beast he was a thug good night how Don't kill me right now. I'm talking about slapping men hard. I have trouble opening my fist in their faces. Los Angeles police charged the night with assault and battery.

Suga was affiliated with Bloods Sugar. He was involved in weapons. Sugar was. involved in drugs that sugar was involved in uh he was a mediocre pimp Suge Knight goes back to jail this is like a godfather type thing the music producer is accused of running over two men and killing them in a Los Angeles parking lot this call is being recorded the second album in a row is like this I'm not a monster I'm not a really bad person who doesn't care about anyone I mean I care about my artists they treat me like family it's not just about me At one point I had 500 employees, all from the ghettos to be able to get people who come from nowhere to give them something that was the most important thing to me.

The perception that people have of sug today is very different from that of sugar. I knew years ago people believed Sugar was a gangster but Sugar Knight didn't grow up like a gangster Sugar and I grew up in the middle of Compton in a lower middle class neighborhood with working class parents. I met Suga at a party he was probably at. 14. We were about three years apart, he followed me around all the time and didn't let me dance with anyone else. Either I would date him or I wouldn't date anyone. That's how troublesome he felt. His parents were very familiar and that's it. neighborhood most black families didn't have a mother and father in the same house, of course, you have to understand that something contained was the best place in the world to grow up in an amazing place, I mean, people kept the grass mowed, people kept their cars clean and Next to you, you see people without lights, without food and people walking or at 12 in the morning, you know, high, if you're a young black man or growing up in Compton at that time, I mean drugs and gangs.

As much a part of your life as traffic lights and traffic signs. Suge has never been in a gang, but Compton was blood and growing up back then you were associated with whatever color was in your neighborhood. I grew up fast like it's practical where you're from and you. you finished your business you had to know how to fight my uncles and my father they would never gang up on the bankers but they more or less showed me the streets it was hard for me it was definitely an aggressive life and sports were you it was your getaway you played uh pop warner football in Greater Compton, I knew him since I was a kid and then we lost touch.

I fell in love with Gains Sugar. He was a good boy. He went to university. That's what good kids do. They go to university. Well, we're ready to get it going and we were able to. "I couldn't have asked for a more perfect afternoon for a college football game. If you were a good football player, you bet you had your socks on, now you're going to run to the half 45 and take a dive near the line. 48 yards." I would love to play this game. I'm just taking bets on how many guys I hurt. I enjoyed the contact.

I enjoyed hitting. Here is the center. He backs off the draw, but lines up right on the 40-yard line and falls forward. to 41. the entry made by Marion Knight, a 6-2, 260 pound senior, he is a leader on the team and the guys respect him last year, we were very close to winning it, we did it, we just dedicated it to ourselves and to our fans. and we went out and worked as hard as we could to win it, we knew we could beat him all the time, he was one of those defensive linemen that was pretty, he was pretty aggressive, his whole mentality years later in the record business came from playing football you know what I'm going to go out and get one way or another the athlete was an important part of my life because of his discipline and he supports you in how to respect people and they receive respect.

Sports also taught you that if someone is trying to hit you you knock them down, you knock them down there was a time when I was having a problem with a guy at school, I mentioned it casually, he flinched and he asked me if I needed help, like that I was thinking about it, I said yes. He probably could use a little help and then you know he lifted his shirt and you know I actually saw the butt of a gun and I was like oh no, no, no, no, no, I'm good in Vegas, he shook and started to exhibit behavior, uh, that was violent. he thought i was with a man one day my car pulled over me and shook me he put sugar in my gas tank he denies it but he did it i came to get my car all the windows broke once he pulled my ponytail I got down on his lap and reached behind the seat and all I could hear was this squatting scratch.

I thought: did you really cut my hair? He didn't want anyone else to like me and thought that since he liked my hair, if it was gone, no one else would like me either why I married this man I don't know but why didn't I love him, he I loved, why not be with this man, he didn't come up with being a gang member, but he glorified him. And I think if you talk to most people who really had a life on the streets, they spent most of their time trying to get off the streets. Shake spent much of his time trying to get out on the streets.

Gang life seeped into these professional sports aspirations and ended up killing him he was a senior football student was coming to an end he had an offer with the 49ers and ran into trouble ricky crockett a friend of

suge

knight

s he is In Las Vegas there is a dispute that happens they have a confrontation that gets so heated that I should pull out a gun and shoot him. I received a phone call and he told me that he shot his friend and I said that you did what is not a life threatening injury to him, fortunately it is his friend who refuses to cooperate with police.

It was kind of a slap on the wrist for that, they put him on probation, I think he had like five years of probation for that, he lost that contract with the 49ers because they didn't want to deal with the violence that they dropped him on, football gave you He said it and my father told me that you never give up if you get hit you grow back growing up in Compton used against your eyes every day I couldn't continue playing football but I knew the direction I wanted to go I chose to beat my own boss and enter the music after the incident in Las Vegas, the 49ers withdrew their offer, so Suga and I returned to California and at that time Compton was crazy.

The police arrested these people between 15 and 30 years old for selling rock cocaine in the '80s. Los Angeles was weird. in the sense that it was very segregated, there was a group of white police officers patrolling black neighborhoods and there was a lot of distrust because of crack. You have police brutality on Monday, police brutality on Tuesday, police brutality on Thursday, police brutality on Saturday was a constant condition. You had a generation that was tired of pissing in your face and telling you that it was raining and that it was like it wasn't raining. Hip hop really is almost like a response to the failures of the police in Los Angeles.

You know, I mean, it's our soundtrack. You know, it's what Chuck called Black America CNN. These guys who have been through this every day had no voice, but now you have someone who can speak for you and that was nwa, the police who come straight from the underground. Young black men. males are a target right now, so for the season it's not rabbit seed in duck season, this young black male season, that's what it is now. I'm a teenager with some gold and a pager searching my car. product, everyone in the ghetto was starving, the streets were starting, so when rap came out, it was a new drug but it was legal, we started nwa, it was just selling some records from the trunk and making some money, we didn't start from fashion.

We just made hop music popular, that's how it works in the city of Compton. Boy Suge had a lot of friends from Compton and other places that were getting into the rap business and he's doing fine. You know, maybe he can make money in that business. he meets bobby brown at an after party, he stopped a crazy fan from beating up bobby brown and from there, boom, he's bobby's bodyguard, bobby brown wants to go on tour on my prerogative tour, he owes them some money and they had a valid contract. They were out there, they were about to kill the body, so we won't be able to do a tour because Bobby is afraid that these guys are going to try to kill him, so I confronted the guys, I dealt with the guys and I was aggressive.

They made that guy apologize. to bobby, so the word trap says you know I was a stand-up guy, I think along the way they taught him everything about the music industry and he was fascinated, they took me on tour and I learned on tour how each person works who writes songs are making money as they released in the late '80s, he started managing, eventually managed to jodeci mary j blige dlc, but chocolate was his first success story that started it all. I wanted Suga to be my manager because you really want to see me win. mario chocolate johnson wrote some of ice ice baby's lyrics for vanilla ice it wasn't until they received awards and when chocolate says hey i worked on that chart topping rapper vanilla ice his debut single ice ice baby went to number one this week my album it was selling over a million copies a week the biggest selling record in history double platinum platinum followed and i thought oh my god if there was a problem i'll solve it watch the hook while my dj spins it whenever i want.

The lawyers tried to give me a contract to ride ghosts for a hundred thousand. He was going to take it because he didn't know that a hundred thousand for a man from the ghetto sounds good and Suge ran away because of what they were doing, he said no. I'm not signing this as a ghostwriter, okay, stop, I'm telling you I have to worry about this, it's worth a lot of money. I didn't start with what I have a record of. I started out wanting to give him orders to make sure he got decent record deals. You know, I want to make sure they get published.

I'm going to make sure they do it. I saw on that occasion that the more intimidating it seemed, the more mythical it became and that Vanilla Ice story instantly became urban. legend and scroll death row

chronicles

singing four take one according to vanilla ice cream sugar began to appear wherever villis was along with a group of huge bodyguards and vanilla said they were bigger than his bodyguards the next time he shook he appears without notice just to let vanilla ice, I know you have that control. Wow, this guy knows where I am at all times. How do you know where I am?

You know what's going on here. Those lights had security. They wanted to get aggressive and I was aggressive. They assured it. I looked like Tarzan acting like James Suge, he turned my lights out to the balcony, he made me look over the edge, he showed me how high up there it was when I liked it, I said Sugar hung it over the railing, he needed to wear a diaper on that. The day she drafted a document and did it well, she signed that document. If you don't sign, you're going to court, the courtship left alive. That never happened.

The most threatening thing about that whole night that he suggested was that we could be here for 15 minutes or we could be here all night, it wasn't a push, a shove, a lack of respect or anything, so once I explained that it was a robbery, we started our robbery and we are not going to allow it, everyone did the right thing. I'm there so I know it killed that whole urban legendthat never happened. I remember talking to Suga and I said, do you know why don't you clean up that story so people don't think you're a gangster?

And I really think he enjoyed the people. Thinking that he was a gangster because that increased his reputation. Vanilla is saying that they hung him from a balcony. He drastically

change

d Sugar's life because he put him in that door and suddenly people who weren't returning his phone calls start returning his phone. I called, I wanted it to be known that I cared about my artist and that I was going to make sure they were digested. She knew what he was doing. Sugar already had a plan for where she was going and what she wanted to do, and that was bullying. the game he had a plan his plan was to take over hip-hop it's easy to eat at wa and we're cooling off here at this party right now you know my dad was one of the hardest working events in my life but my dad didn't have time to work together, you could work your whole life and make a little money or you could be an entrepreneur, you'd be your own boss, I said.

Look man, what I'm going to do had the vision to become something bigger than he was. and he saw dre as his way of doing it. My name is Dr. Dre. I do most of the music for nwa, you know, between 1987 when Ruthless Records was created. Incorporated until 1991, Dr Dre had produced around 15 million in album sales, NWA's album made its way to number one on the album charts. I am expressing with all my abilities and now I live in correctional facilities because some do not agree with how I do this, I meditate as if the genius of a Buddhist dre arises from the ability to recognize a good rhythm on the microphone, become physical , do a job in wa, it's lynching, I'm the kind of person that I can get with anyone in the studio and make a hit record with them, if they have any kind of talent, I can get it out of them.

Drake, he knows what some are hot, he listens to some and he tells you it's fire, he'll burn you, dre, he was hot, but. he was not happy with the reading logs. You can ask any Ruthless Records artist if he's happy. I bet you they say no. I'm the general manager of Ruthless Records. I'm an easy personal manager when Eze started expanding into different areas of business I found my duties diversifying when they first put the whole cutthroat thing together. I was easily going to put up the money. Jade was going to make the beats. They were going to be

partners

as time went on and the pie got bigger.

Jerry intervened. and he blew his breath to the side and said look, I mean, you can be

partners

, you don't need dre and they left you as an employee, they didn't pay him, but we were supposed to do it and I'm the kind of person that I don't even want to. more or less than what i'm supposed to get i can't allow that i can't i can't be around tell us a little about what else michelle can think of well, i must tell you that she is the super hype album titled michelle came out, of course, and his gimmick is the way he talks, waves when he was dating drake, he was actually excited, ruthless at that time, me andre, you fought, you fought like you're supposed to for a while. there, but he told me not where he was.

Not all I want to do is live my life, earn my money, earn the money I'm supposed to earn. dre and doc were broke, that is, even the little money they got. It was a lot, I mean, Dre had a mansion in Calabasas that was empty, no furniture, like you knew if there was a fire, it would go out because there was nothing to burn. One thing Sug was always smart about was that he aligned himself with a big star every move he made, you can see it, Bobby Brown Doc should have wanted to start a label with Doc and Doc thought it was a good idea at first but they both eventually They realized they needed dr dre and so in 1991 they set their sights.

Trying to convince Dr. Dre to come with them, Sugar began to gently rule Dre when we were still with Ruthless, he was really plotting, he was seeing us before we saw him, he may be an idiot, but no It's stupid. I worked on Ruthless and Jerry. Heller, who is my cousin, and Suge started coming to the studio where we were recording. The next thing we know, Dre talks less easily and goes to the studio less and spends more time with Suge. I would wonder everything from why he appears everywhere. that we're at, you know, these beautiful pool parties, easy and sold out, and the suggestion would be close, why is he in the videos, he was always in the background, she exposed me, I'm telling you no I wanted to be around him, Dre wanted me to review his contracts, so I want to talk to Jerry and I told him: listen to whatever he signs.

He and Tyler have a copy. They kept telling Dre that he couldn't get his contract and some of his guys were ruthless. searches the law office with bates and demanded the contracts trey's contract michele's contract the dlc contract and terrorized this guy the guy peed his pants he's a great lawyer but he went totally gangster she came to our house and He had a meeting with Dre and he told him He said we'd get two cents for each record, like two cents, and Dray was furious. He reviews my contracts. Indeed, it wasn't worth the paper they were written on, you know?

And um, that was it for me, so I said, dre, look and these. they're going back over the spilled milk I had a vision of this you had a vision let's start with the fresh sugar he was aggressive and he really seemed like a go-getter to me you know what I'm saying and he was making things happen that's the only thing that really matters to me It's going into the studio to make music if you're going to help me with that so let's move on

suge

broke the chains his unorthodox way of getting a deal was innovative how did he go from being a bodyguard to running his own label it's called street a street instinct never It was for the little man it was always for the big guy you don't rob the person who sells drugs on the street you rob the person who has the drug addict called easy and he said look man, let's crush this see you in the studio alone You and I will talk about it you know and discover these are different

chronicles

two out of ten easy brand appears in this office inside the studio that is to say, hey, what is being soundproofed, hey, where is the fear, a beating occurred even after that beating, easy is hard, easy, easy, he grew up and the company is a real street guy, he still won't hire them because he knows what he's giving up.

He supposedly hands her a piece of paper without saying anything else about what's on it and tells her that this is where we'll go next if you don't sign it and that it's easy the suburban mother's address wherever he moved her, that terrorized him and as Jerry Heller later said that, under severe psychological pressure, he signs the pitches, Sugar was one of us, you wouldn't recognize him, CEO, you wouldn't know him, no tie behind any desk, he was a bully like all the Otherwise, gangsterism is not even a word, but me. I will say that now he himself took the gangster to a different level.

If they don't treat you well at the place, you won't stay there. You know, that's all. I guess they didn't respect my talent so now you're suffering the consequences suge gentleman free dr dre and doc from their contracts with ruthless records and i don't really give him away shug knew getting that paper signed easy was his chance he knew he knew which was like he had this huge talent dr dre, his main ghostwriter at doc, he knew this was his chance and he was going to get in there by any means necessary and get it done, and he sent out the word that suge was not one to be trifled with, I should try to do it.

Destroy my record company with the help of others, dre, so right now we are putting everything back together and we will finally get out. You know,

full

y loaded. Easy, I was angry, I should have taken dre. It was a lot of money, energy and work, it was that easy. starting ruthlessly and achieving success, you know, it was, you know, an easy thing, he wanted to kill sug himself, he just wanted to kill suge and jerry talked him out of it, that meat drew very severe lines far beyond ll and kumodi and all the old school, 80s, you know, the battle ends for the first time, the meat created an environment that was dangerous and I think it was partly rooted in some gang, it was always a gang background because the easy affiliation guarantees consanguineous affiliation and I'm sitting there saying wow. this is really crazy, i think the guy is a big serious gangster, jerry was hot, he was scared, jerry's response was to hire a former israeli special forces guy named klein, who helped organize a defense against suge and his boys, Mike Klein was a very tough, tough, bad guy, let's just say I'm proficient in self defense and that kind of stuff, the story I heard was that Klein told that he was going to cut him up into small pieces and put him in trash cans in all the city.

That's a myth. All I can tell you is that we came to an agreement that no one would come to the office without an appointment. I have guns all over this house. You know this art form isn't worth it. My family and I were murdered. They all had weapons. We had. shotguns in the corner we had oozing guns our secretaries had guns i didn't look at how dangerous it was i thought it was gangster hell it was like the movies it was like a modern um scarface eze took me to the bedroom in norwalk open in the closet and there were automatic weapons in a rack and you have to wonder why you show your weapons to a journalist.

You know there's a chance I'm going to go back to the source and I'm going to write about this, so either you hope I write about this or you hope I don't write about this but I'll spread the word that you've got weapons and you're ready for battle. Izzy was not the type of person to take a beating and not respond in some way, I can assure you that Izzy was small in stature but with a lot of guts, I suggest they tell you it easy, if you don't sign these papers we are going to beat you to death.

In pulp, you know it was like that. it was ruthless extortion i filed a lawsuit to rescind the releases and get damages for the loss of dray solo recording services where i control everyone getting great deals and being taken care of and having the opportunity to start a record label but at the same time still I have to give a lot of credit to a guy named Dick Griffey who sold all of our records. Dick Griffey started mentoring and suggesting a lot for the business, how to be in the record industry and how to own his own record label, that's how he started. solar office building we had a studio we had a rehearsal room we had some writers rooms and other things I was the president of solar records we agreed to let we should move doc and dre and all the people who were going to make up Death World Records to the third floor where they could start recording, making records, as far as I knew, the guys seemed to have no money, I mean literally, there were times when Dick and I would pay the lease payments on Shak's car, which people don't do.

I realize we had some financial struggles. I had other jobs, so that's what led to us not knowing that I worked and that I was having a baby at the time, so that was hard. Are you ready? Hello, my name is David Kenner and I'm Excuse me, I'm the death row attorney and the artists and directors of it. David Kenner was a criminal defense attorney. He dealt with a lot of mafia cases and big drug dealer cases and all that. They reach a point where they need a financial partner through his Attorney David Kenner Suge contacted Michael Harris, also known as Harry.

Oh, Michael Harris was a major drug dealer, not the kind you know, I have dimes, no, he's the guy who would deal directly with Noriega and he was in prison at the time of this call. is from a federal prison i sold drugs at a young age when i was young i saw him as an old man a community i felt didn't have many opportunities kenner brought insurance she didn't mislead me because of my request after being told who she was involved with for the Dr. dre suge was introduced to harry oh, they had their meetings in the prison where he was being held he obtained the funds in a prison visiting room there is nothing more gangster than that we decided to establish a company that I founded, you know, an investment of 1.5 million until I brought death row into the equation on paper as a company, there was no such thing as death row.

I actually set up df entertainment as a parent company, turned death row into a subsidiary, so there were 100 owners across in my trust the name death brother who came up with what I did over the years a lot of people started saying oh I started I started to know I started it because of my situation I feel like in the future death row could be a sony or atlantic or warner brothers, but the first step, you know, you have to make people know death row, michael harris said we have to do this big, you know, we have to put death row on the map and he said we're going to do chases.

Beverly's elegant restaurantHills let me see someone if the DLC on the Death Row Wreckage clause will be the record company of 2000. Put your hands together, come on, make some noise. I remember mom and dad were there and a lot of people. from the neighborhood are sitting at Jason's, we're in Beverly Hills, you know, most of whom had never left the neighborhood, they invited a sort of who's who of the industry and we decided that we would actually do the invitations, it was like a dream . having a black owned label like what a black owned label just didn't exist before should andrei is going to be the label of the future jeffrey was an artist label where the artist is always right in a situation where we give a home and have open arms to artists Sugar's master plan was to have the most talented roster of artists and become the biggest record label on the planet, the most powerful record label I have ever seen in my life and I mean death.

Row Death Row Death Row that's what's going on Death Row Records the label started with uh dr dre who was going to do his own thing and with a lot of help from Suge Knight and Harry O and various people and we got it all together afterwards. The party at Jason's announcing the founding of Death Row Records are now officially in business and within a week after the deal with Hario was made, the red carpet rolled out, Dre was able to walk in with a wish list from the team that They got you. they know like a new vocal booth, they got microphone upgrades, tell me what you got, like 48 tracks and stuff, now 56 tracks, just an infusion of capital that they desperately needed, which Hario provided without any questions asked.

Perio was still behind bars when he was helping suggest. This label took off and he and Suge spoke almost every day. In fact, they hired me as head engineer for Solar Records one day. I'm in the studio and I'm repairing something. Harry calls and I answer the phone. He said I had to run out and get some parts and he says well how much is that? It'll be about a thousand I said I got it no no no let me call you back about 20 minutes later this guy comes up and hands me a bag and he has about 30 thousand dollars and I told him but I only needed a thousand, there was a time when I got a hundred thousand dollars and there wasn't a bill bigger than 20.

Death Throat was never really organized, for example, making sure that we had an accounting department that It was a real accounting department that kept track of money. I like businesses that don't exist. business plan there are no policies or procedures in reality they are just flying by the seat of their pants who are they waiting for, of course, yes, everyone waiting for today's programs, I'm waiting for it too, it's true, I don't know what time it is . You'll probably get here a little later if you shook it said 10am. m. was the meeting, you won't see him until 7 p.m. m. at eight o'clock, kick him shooting like she was on time for the meeting she was never alone, he was always there.

I'd say three to five guys with him, Suge asked me to bring all the Bloods, how many of those can I get? We started recruiting guys from the neighborhood, mafia power rules, it was just a nation of blood. Suge Knight knew she could pay them to be hers. security and basically carry out any type of extortion or aggression that he wanted and spread fear to the people he wanted to intimidate. There was a phone on death row at the time and that phone was strictly during the period when the phone rings and no one answers. It's just for sugar to respond to death or the chronicles three bakers takes a mark one day shake comes into the studio and one of the stanley brothers is on the phone and says who are you he says I'm here you know to see dre my friend the ex

change

s said i don't know who you are hang up the phone his answer is not for you dr dre this is not joe make him have to climb the target okay now i have to show them who i'm sug come back with his gun he put the gun to the man's head guy said mother i told you to hang up the phone i hang up the phone he gets angry he goes from zero to 100 real fast charges in the big old studio or working on the tracks suge says take off all your clothes he said i'm not going to take off my clothes so i should shoot a bullet in his ear every time he was anything aggressive it was definitely for a reason the Stanley brothers were talking to everyone in the studio he had to show those guys how to respect people, sugar says you know he really could, yeah, I'm not going to do that, but I have your driver's license, if you tell anyone what happened, then it will be your ass, it will be your mother's ass.

I'm going to get your dad, he puts on his clothes, goes down the stairs, walks towards Hollywood Boulevard, stops a police car and says I just got mugged in this building where all the criminal problems started.