MTV Video Music Awards 1996: "Believe in Death Row East"

Original: Short interview · MTV · at the MTV Video Music Awards · Radio City Music Hall, New York · September 4, 1996 by its content (transmitted only as “MTV Music Awards”)

When and where

This short statement survives only under the heading “MTV Music Awards,” with no date and no reporter’s name. Its content clearly fits the MTV Video Music Awards on September 4, 1996, at Radio City Music Hall in New York: Tupac talks about New York while in New York, his “homeboy” Snoop Dogg has just beaten a murder charge (February 1996), and he names Nas, who only became a target in the summer of 1996. That night Tupac and Snoop presented the award for Best Hard Rock Video together. It was Tupac’s last major public appearance.

September 1996

Death Row was at its peak: All Eyez on Me had entered the chart at No. 1 in February and stayed on it ever since. Dr. Dre had left the label in March. With Death Row East, Suge Knight now wanted an East Coast branch, to be run in part by Eric B. Showing up in New York in the middle of the Bad Boy feud was a statement in itself.

What Tupac said

Asked what to expect from Death Row East, Tupac answered with a question of his own, did the reporter believe in God? When he said yes:

“If you believe in God, believe in Death Row East.” Tupac Shakur to MTV, September 1996

What followed was a long monologue. Death Row would run the same play in the East as in the West: turn weaknesses into strengths, help talented people get paid, business over show. The label had outsold Bad Boy, LaFace and every other Black label in a single year, even though he was a convict and his friend had just come off a murder case. That, he said, proved it was pure talent.

Anyone talking about an East Coast-West Coast war, Tupac claimed, was only sowing confusion. In the same breath he went hard at Bad Boy and Nas and declared that Death Row was coming to New York to install a “new government” that would feed everyone in the city:

“This ain’t no game.” Tupac Shakur to MTV, September 1996

Why it matters

This is one of the last recordings of Tupac in public, combative, confident, full of plans. It also shows the contradiction that defined his final months: he preached business and community while fueling the feud. According to Nas’s later account, the two met in Bryant Park shortly after the show and settled their differences. Death Row East never happened. Three days after the awards, on September 7, 1996, Tupac was shot in Las Vegas; he died on September 13.

Read more: Hot 97, 1996 · KMEL, April 1996