death row can be bigger than motown a sony or 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 came together at one time and it was like a comet streaking across the sky sex drugs violence for better for worse gang banging went pop like everything we touched turned to gold next year death row gonna start printing out old money you wanted a car two cars five cars you could have it the very first year i generated 150 million dollars death row 40s was super bananas like this can't be real the more money we made the bigger that we got it became more dangerous it was just a blood nation she exploited me i'm telling you i didn't want to be around him they want the drama we're going to definitely bring it like only devro could bring it that's when i knew this is more than just music this is dangerous [Music] when pug died i'm gonna get the out of here i know who killed tupac your core the last living eyewitness to tupac's murder is telling his story legacy of death row could have been bigger than jesus but they crucified himself [Music] suge knight is a heart and soul of death row records to be able to understand the label you have to understand who he is snoop to buck dre were 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 [Music] i don't look at his feet i look that 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's a beast he was a bully good night how you doing don't kill me all right now i'm talking about slap men hard i'm trouble to open fist across their face police in los angeles charging night with assault and battery suga was affiliated with bloods sugar was involved in guns sugar was involved in drugs sugar was involved in uh he was a half-assed pimp suge knight goes back to jail this is like some godfather type stuff the music producer is accused of running down two men and killing them in a los angeles parking lot [Music] this call is being recorded the second record straight is like this i'm not a monster i'm not this really bad person who don't care about nobody i mean i care about my artists i'm treated like family it ain't just about me at one time i had 500 employees everybody from the ghettos to be able to get people that come from nothing to give them something that was the most important thing to me the perception that people have of sug today suge is a lot different than the sugar i met years ago people believe sugar was a gangster but sugar knight did not grow up as a gangster sugar and i grew up in the middle of compton in a lower middle class neighborhood with working-class parents [Music] i met suga at a party i was probably about 14. we were about three years apart he kind of followed me the whole time and wouldn't let me dance with anybody else i either was gonna date him or date nobody that's how he felt trouble his parents they were very family oriented and in that neighborhood most black families didn't have a mother and father in the same house of course you gotta understand something content was the best place in the world to grow up in an amazing place i mean people kept their grass cut people kept their cars clean and next to you know you seeing people with no lights no food and people walking around or 12 o'clock in the morning you know on crack [Music] if you're a young black guy or growing up in compton at that time i mean drugs and gangs were as much a part of your life as stoplights and street signs [Music] suge's 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 hands-on where you from and you ended your business you had to know how to fight my uncles and my father they would never gang bankers but pretty much taught me the streets it was hard on me it was definitely aggressive living and sports was your was your getaway played uh pop warner football at greater compton which uh i knew him since he was a kid and then we lost contact i fell in with gains sugar was a good kid went to college that's what good kids do go to college well we're ready to get it underway and we couldn't have asked for a more perfect afternoon for a college football game could we he was a good football player sure got his socks in there sets up now he's going to run it up the middle 45 and dives near the 48-yard line i'd love to play the game i just give myself bets how many dudes i was hurt i did enjoy the contact i did enjoy hitting here's the snap he drops back on the draw but he runs into alignment right at the 40-yard line and falls forward to the 41. the tackle made by marion knight a 6-2 260 pound senior he's a leader on the team and guys respecting him last year we was that close to winning it we did we just we just dedicated it to ourselves and to our fans and 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 they were pretty he was pretty aggressive his whole mentality years later in the record business all came from playing football you know i'm gonna go out and get this one way or the other sportsman was a major part of my life for his discipline and supports you how to respect people and they get respect sports also taught you that if somebody's trying to knock you down you knock them down it was a time where i was having an issue with a guy at the school i casually mentioned it shook and he asked me did i need i need any help so i was i was thinking about it i said yeah i probably could use some help and then you know he raised his shirt and you know i actually saw a butt of a gun and i said oh no no no no not that no i'm good in vegas shook started showing a behavior uh that was violent he thought that i was with some man one day my car stopped on me and shook put sugar down my gas tank he denies it but he did it i come to get my car back all the windows busted out of it one time he pulled my ponytail down to his lap and reached behind the seat and all i could hear is this crash scratch crouch i'm like did you just really cut my hair he didn't want nobody else to like me and he thought that since he liked my hair that if it was gone nobody else would like me either why i got married to this man i don't know but why not i loved him he loved me why not be with this man he didn't come up being a gangbanger but he glorified it and i think if you talk to most people who really had a street life they spent most of their time trying to get out of the street shook spent a lot of his time trying to get in the streets gang life leaked into this pro sports aspirations and it wound up killing it he was a senior football season was coming to an end he had an offer with the 49ers and he ran into a problem [Music] ricky crockett a friend of suge knights he's in las vegas there's a dispute that happens they have a confrontation that gets so heated that should pulls out a gun and shoots him i get a phone call and he said he shot his friend and i'm like you did what it's not a life-threatening injury thankfully it's his friend who refuses to cooperate with the police he kind of slap on the wrist for it he was put on probation for i think he had like five year probation for that he lost that contract with the 49ers because they didn't want to deal with the violence they dropped him football told you and my father told me that you never quit if you get hit you get back up growing up in compton used against the eyes every day i couldn't keep playing football but i knew what direction i wanted to go i chose to beat my own boss and get into the music after the incident in vegas the 49ers took back their offer so suga and i moved back to california and at that time compton was crazy the police arrested these people ages 15 through 30 for selling rock cocaine in the 80s los angeles was weird in that it was very segregated you had a group of white cops who were patrolling black neighborhoods and it 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 an ongoing condition you had a generation man that they were fed up pissing your face and telling you it was raining and it was like that ain't rain hip hop really is almost like a response to the failures of police in la you know i mean it's our soundtrack you know it's what chuck d called black america cnn these guys who have gone through this every day didn't have a voice but now you have somebody that can speak for you and that was nwa the police coming straight from the underground young people young black males is a target right now so for season it ain't rabbit seed in the duck season this young black male season that's what it is right now i'm a teenager with a little bit of gold and a pager searching my car looking for the product everybody in the ghetto was starving the streets were starting so when the rap came along that was a new drug but it was legal we started nwa it was just sell a few records out of the trunk and make some money we didn't start hip-hop music we just got it popular that's the way it goes in the city of compton boy suge had a lot of friends from compton and elsewhere who were getting involved in the rap business and he's okay you know maybe i can make money in that business he meets bobby brown in an after party he kept bobby brown from getting like hit by a crazy fan and from there boom he's bobby's bodyguard bobby brown want to go on tour on my prerogative tour owes them guys some money and they had a contract going by they were out there they were about to kill the body so we're not gonna be able to tour because bobby's scared of these guys trying 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 around that you know i was a stand-up guy i think along the way he was being taught all about the music industry and he was fascinated they took me on tour and i learned on tour how every person who's writing songs is getting beat out their money like they publish in the late 80s he started managing eventually he managed jodeci mary j blige dlc but chocolate was his first success story that began everything i wanted suga to be my manager because you really want to see me win mario chocolate johnson he wrote some of the lyrics on ice ice baby for vanilla ice it wasn't until they were getting awards and when chocolate goes hey i worked on that chart topping rapper vanilla ice his debut single ice ice baby went to number one this week my record was selling over a million copies a week fastest selling record in history double platinum platinum kept going i was like oh my god if there was a problem yo i'll solve it check out the hook while my dj revolved it when i like attorneys they tried to give me a contract for ghost riding for a hundred thousand i was gonna take it because i didn't know you know hundred thousand to a man from the ghetto sounds good and suge got away for what they were doing said no you ain't signing this as a ghost writer all right stop i tell you i need to worry about this is worth a lot of money i didn't start off what i have a record i started off wanting to give her orders to make sure they get decent record deals you know i want to make sure they get the publishing i'm going to make sure that they do shook saw in that an opportunity the more intimidating he seemed the more mythical he became and that vanilla ice story became an instant urban legend and roll death row chronicles singing four take one according to vanilla ice sugar started showing up wherever villis was along with a group of huge bodyguards and vanilla said they were bigger than his bodyguards the next time shook shows up without any warning just to let vanilla ice know he's got that control wow this guy knows where i'm at at all times how does he know where i'm at you know what's going on here that lights had security they wanted to get aggressive and i was aggressive they secured it to me looked like tarzan by acting like james suge took my lights out to the balcony he had me look over the edge show me how high i was up there when i like said that sugar hung him over the bannister i needed to wear a diaper on that day she got a paper written up and made well ice signed that paper if you don't sign you're gonna woo the woo walked away alive that never happened [Music] the most threatening thing of that whole night that suge said was we could be here for 15 minutes or we could be here all night it wasn't not one shove push no disrespect or nothing so once i explained to him it was flat out stealing start our robbery and we're not going for it they all did the right thing i'm there so i know killed all of that urban legend never happened [Music] i can recall talking to suga and said you know why don't you clean that story up so people don't think you are a gangster and really i think he enjoyed people thinking he was a gangster because it added to his reputation vanilla is saying that he got hung over a balcony it changed sugar's life drastically because it put him in that door and all of a sudden people who would not return his phone calls start returning his phone call i wanted that to be known that i cared about my artist and i was going to make sure they get digested she knew what he was doing sugar already had a blueprint for where he was going and what he wanted to do and that was to bully the game he had a plan his plan was to take over hip-hop it's easy eating in wa and we're cooling out here at this party right now you know [Music] my father was one of the hardest working event ever been in my life but my father didn't have time to work together you could work all your life and get a little bit money or you could be a businessman entrepreneur you'd be your own boss i said look man i'm gonna do had a vision to become something bigger than he was and he saw dre as his way to do that yo my name is dr dre i do most of the music for nwa produce you know between 1987 when ruthless records was incorporated through 1991 dr dre had produced about 15 million in album sales nwa's album blasted its way to number one on the album charts [Music] i'm expressing with my full capabilities and now i'm living in correctional facilities cause some don't agree with how i do this i get straight meditate like a buddhist dre's genius came from the ability to recognize a good beat on the mic getting physical doing a job at wa is the lynch mob i'm the type of person i can get anybody in the studio and make a hit record off of them if they have any kind of talent i can pull it out of them drake he knows what some is hot he hears some and he tell you it's fire it'll burn the out of you dre he was hot but he was unhappy with perusal's records you can ask any artist on ruthless records if they're happy i bet you they say no i'm the general manager of ruthless records i'm easy ease personal manager as eze started to expand into different areas of the business i found my duties becoming more diversified when they first put the whole ruthless thing together easy was going to put the money up jade was going to make the beats they were gonna be partners as time went on and the pie got bigger jerry stepped in and pulled air to the side and was like look i mean you can be partners you don't need dre and they left you as an employee he wasn't getting paid but we were supposed to and i'm the type of person i don't want no more no less than what i'm supposed to get i can't have that i can't i can't be around tell us a little bit about what else is coming up with michelle well i gotta tell you she's got the super hype album coming out entitled michelle of course and her gimmick is the way she talks say hi when i was dating drake i was actually excited ruthless at the time andre and i you struggled you struggled like you're supposed to for a while there but he he told me not where he had i didn't only thing i want to do is live my life make my money make the money i'm supposed to make dre and doc they were broke i mean even the little money they got was a lot i mean dre had a mansion in calabasas that was empty like devoid of furniture like you know if there was a fire it would go out because there was nothing to burn [Music] one thing sug was always smart about was he aligned himself with a big star in every move he made you can see it bobby brown d.
o. c should have wanted to start a label with doc and doc thought this was a good idea at first but they both ultimately realized that they needed dr dre and so in 1991 they set their sights on trying to convince dr dre to come with them sugar started ruling finessing dre when we were still with ruthless he was really plotting he was seeing us before we were seeing him he he may be an idiot but he's not stupid i worked at ruthless and jerry heller who's my cousin and uh suge started coming to the studio where we were recording the next thing we know um dre is speaking to easy less and going to the studio less spending more time with suge [Music] i would question everything from why does he show up everywhere that we're at you know easy and drained up these beautiful pool parties and suge would be around why is he at the videos he was just kind of always in the background she exposed me i'm telling you i didn't want to be around him dre wanted me to go through his contracts so i want to talk to jerry and i said listen anything he signs he and tyler have a copy of it they kept telling dre he cannot get his contract suge and some of his guys went to ruthless records lawyers office with ball bats and demanded the contracts trey's contract michele's contract dlc's contract and and terrified this guy the guy peed his pants he's a big time lawyer but he got totally gangster [Music] she came to our home and had a meeting with dre and he told him that we would get like two cents on every record like two pennies and dray was furious check my contracts out sure enough it wasn't worth the paper they were written you know and um that was that for me so i said dre look and these are going back over spilled milk i got a vision out of this you got a vision let's just start fresh sugar he was aggressive and he really seemed like a go-getter to me you know what i'm saying and it was making things happen that's all i really care about is getting in the studio making music if you're going to help me with that so be it let's keep it moving suge broke the he broke the chains his unorthodox way of getting a deal was groundbreaking how did she go from being a bodyguard to running his own label it's called a street a street instinct he never went for the little man he always went for the big guy you don't rob the person who's who's selling the dope on the street you rob the person who's who has the dope dre called easy and said look man let's squash this meet me at the studio just me and you we'll talk it over you know and and figure this out it's different chronicles two out of ten [Music] mark easy shows up to this office within the studio that is hey what's going soundproof hey where's dread a beat down ensued even after that beat down easy is tough easy ease grew up and company's a real dude from the streets he still won't sign them because he knows what he's giving up suge allegedly hands him a piece of paper without saying anything else about what's on it and says this is where we're going next if you don't sign it and it's easy's mother's address in the suburbs wherever he moved her that terrified him and as jerry heller later said under severe psychological duress he signs the releases [Music] sugar was one of us he wouldn't know ceo he wouldn't know no tie behind no desk he was a thug just like everybody else gangsterism ain't even a word but i'm gonna say that right now he took gangster to a different level [Music] if you're not getting treated right in the place you're not gonna stay there you know that's all that was i guess they didn't respect my talent so now they're suffering the consequences suge knight extricates dr dre and doc from their contracts with ruthless records and i really don't give away shug knew that getting easy to sign that paper was his shot he knew it he knew he was like he had this marquee talent dr dre his main ghost writer in doc he knew it was his shot and he was going to go in there by any means necessary and get to get it done and it sent the word out that suge was not someone to be toyed with should try to destroy my record company with the help of others dre so right now we're getting everything back together and we finally come out you know [Music] fully loaded easy was pissed off it should for taking dre it was much money and energy and work that easy put into starting ruthless and making a success you know like that it was you know kind of gone easy wanted to kill sug himself he just wanted to kill suge and jerry talked him out of it that beef drew very severe lines way beyond ll and kumodi and all the old school 80s you know battle wraps for the first time the beef created an environment which was dangerous and i think it was rooted partly in some gang it was always a gang undertone because the easy affiliation ensures blood affiliation and i'm sitting there going wow this is really some crazy [Music] i think the guy is a serious major gangster jerry was well he was freaked out jerry's response was to hire an ex-israeli special forces dude named klein who uh helped organize a defense against suge and his guys mike klein was a very tough hard bad ass guy let's say that i'm proficient in self-defense and and that kind of stuff the story i heard was klein told suge he was going to cut him up in little pieces and put him in dumpsters all around the city that's a myth all i can tell you is we reached an understanding that nobody was coming to the office without an appointment i have guns all around this house you know this art form isn't worth me and my family getting killed everyone had guns we had shotguns in the corner we had oozies 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 day um scarface eze took me into the bedroom in norwalk opened up the closet and there were automatic weapons on a shelf and you gotta ask yourself why why are you showing a reporter your guns you know that there's a chance i'm going back to the source and i'm going to write about this so either you're hoping i write about this or you're hoping that i won't write about this but i'll put out the word that you've got guns and you're ready for battle izzy was not the type of guy that would take a beating and not respond in some way that i can assure you izzy was small in stature but a lot in guts suge told easy if you don't sign these papers we're going to beat you to a pulp you know it was it was extortion ruthless filed a lawsuit to rescind the releases and to get damages for the loss of dray's recording services only where i control everybody getting great deals and getting taken care of and getting the opportunity is to start a record label but at the same time i still have to give a lot of credit to a guy named dick griffey who all sold our records dick griffey started mentoring sug a lot for the business how to be in the record industry and how to own your own record label so that's how it started [Music] the solar office building we had a studio we had a rehearsal room we had some writer's rooms and other things i was the president of solar records we agreed to let should move doc and dre and kind of all the all the folks who were going to make up death world records into the third floor where they could start recording making records as far as i could tell the guys seemed to have no money i mean literally there were times when dick and i would pay the lease payments on shook's car what people don't realize is we had some financial struggles i had other jobs so that's what carried us that people don't know i worked and i was having a baby at the time so it was tough are you ready hi my name is david kenner and i'm excuse me i'm the attorney for death row and it's artists and principals david kenner was a criminal attorney he did a lot of like mafia cases and big drug dealer case and all that stuff they reach a point where they need a financial partner through his attorney david kenner suge is put in touch with michael harris aka harry oh michael harris was a major drug dealer not the kind that you know i got dimes no he's the guy that would deal directly with noriega and he was in prison at the time this call is from a federal prison i sold drugs at an early age as a youngster i saw it as an elder a community that i felt that didn't have a lot of opportunities kenner brought sure didn't deceive me due to my request after being told that she was involved with by dr dre suge was introduced to harry oh they had their meetings at the prison where he was being held he got the funding in a prison visiting room it doesn't get more gangster than that we decided to set up a company i put up you know 1. 5 million investment until i brought death row into the equation on paper as a company there was no death row i actually set up df entertainment as a parent company it made death row a subsidiary and so there was 100 ownership through my trust the name death bro who came up with it 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 in the future death row can be a sony or atlantic or warner brothers but the first step you know you got to get people to know death row michael harris said we got to do this big you know we got to put death row on the map and he said we're going to do chases jason's was a swanky beverly hills restaurant let me see somebody should the dlc around the clause death row wreckage is going to be the record company of the 2000.
put your hand together come on make some noise i remember mom and dad were there and a lot of the people from the hood are sitting in jason's we're in beverly hills you know most of whom had never left the hood [Music] they invited sort of a who's who of the industry and we decided we would actually do the uh invitations in [Music] it was like a dream to have a black owned label like what is a black owned label just didn't exist before it should [Music] andrei 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 master plan was to have the most talented roster of artists and to become the biggest record label on the planet the most powerful record label to come out into the market that i've ever seen in my life and i mean death row death row death row that's what's happening [Music] 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 a number of people and we got it all together [Music] after the party at jason's announcing the founding of death row records now they're officially set up in business and within the week of the hario deal being made red carpet gets rolled out dre was able to come in with a wish list of equipment they got you know like a new vocal booth they got upgrades on the microphones tell me what you got like 48 tracks and stuff now 56 tracks just an infusion of capital they desperately needed that hario provided without any questions perio was still behind bars when he was helping sug get this label off the ground and so he and suge talked almost every day i was actually brought in as the chief engineer for solar records one day i'm in the studio and i'm actually repairing something harry calls and i answer the phone and i said i gotta run out and get some parts and he goes well how much is that and that's just gonna be about a grand 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 it's got about 30 grand and i said but i only needed a thousand [Music] there's a time that i got a hundred thousand dollars and there wasn't a bill bigger than a 20. death throat was never really organized for example making sure we had an accounting department that was a real accounting department that would keep track of money i like the businesses there's no business plan there's no policies and procedures it's really they're just flying by the seat of their pants who y'all waiting on sure yeah everybody waiting on shows today i'm waiting on him too that's right i don't know what time he's due up here probably a little bit later if shook said 10 a. m was the meeting you won't see him until about 7 p.
