285 words · 1 min
The Covert War Against Rock
Alex Constantine's conspiracy book (Feral House, 2000) casts musicians' deaths, Tupac's included, as covert operations. Speculative and poorly sourced.
- Author
- Alex Constantine
- Published
- May 1, 2000, Feral House
- Full subtitle
- What You Don’t Know About the Deaths of Jim Morrison, Tupac Shakur, Michael Hutchence, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Ochs, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, John Lennon, The Notorious B.I.G.
- ISBN
- 0-922915-61-X
- Language
- English; no German edition known
Alex Constantine is an American writer who has been publishing books about alleged intelligence operations since the 1990s. The Covert War Against Rock applies that lens to popular music: the deaths of many musicians, he argues, were no accident but the work of government agencies, organized crime, or both.
About the book
What it covers
Constantine works through the cases one by one, from Brian Jones to Bob Marley, collecting inconsistencies, rumours and links between the music business, police and intelligence services. Tupac is one of the ten musicians named in the subtitle. The claim: the Las Vegas killing was less a rap feud than a covert operation in the style of COINTELPRO, the FBI program aimed at the Black Panthers and other 1960s movements. He also accuses the mainstream media of obscuring how such deaths came about.
Assessment
A conspiracy book. It raises questions fans have chewed on for years, but it offers no verifiable evidence of state involvement in Tupac’s death. A contemporary review in the US library journal Booklist found the book entertaining while pointing out errors even on well-known facts.
The state of the case cuts against the intelligence theory: in August 2026 a Las Vegas jury found former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of Tupac’s murder. Prosecutors presented the shooting as revenge for a fight at the MGM Grand. More under Compton Street Legend and the 1996 shooting.