Artist News Legal

Tupac estate will sue sex tape seller, Diddy lambastes latest Tupac shooting allegations

By | Published on Friday 7 October 2011

Tupac Shakur

Look at that, a story that we’ve been running as an ‘and finally’ gets promoted to the Pop Courts section simply through the threat of legal action. That’s the real story here I reckon.

Administrators of the Tupac Shakur estate have said they will sue any company which tries to profit from the previously reported Tupac sex tape – well, blow job tape really – which has surfaced fifteen years after the late rapper’s death. Various porn companies are reportedly interested in the short recording, which shows Shakur getting oral sex off a groupie, although one site said its offer of $150,000 had been knocked back by whoever is in possession of the tape.

But a spokesman for the Shakur estate has now said they will take legal action against anyone who sells the recording on the basis they will be profiting from the late rapper’s image without their permission. I wonder if image rights actually include the penis. Could be an interesting case. The spokesman for the estate didn’t go into any details, saying simply: “We will sue anyone who tries to sell a Tupac tape”.

Elsewhere in Tupac news, Sean ‘Diddy-whatnot’ Combs has hit out at the latest person to accuse him of involvement in the 1996 shooting of Shakur. A new book by Greg Kading, who for three years headed the LAPD unit looking into the death of rival rapper the Notorious BIG a year after Shakur’s murder, says he is convinced the Diddy ordered the shooting of Tupac, and that then Death Row Records chief Suge Knight subsequently ordered the shooting of Diddy associate Biggie the following year in revenge.

It’s not an especially original theory regarding who was responsible for the two unsolved murders which, arguably, together constitute hip hop’s darkest era, but Kading says he’s had confirmation of these allegations from two witnesses, the gunman who he alleges Combs hired to kill Tupac, and an ex-girlfriend of Knight. Quite how reliable those witnesses are, and indeed, given just how much the LAPD bungled their investigation into Biggie’s shooting, how reliable Kading is too, is debatable, though Combs is adamant the former cop turned author is talking bollocks.

Says the Diddy man to Allhiphop.com: “The story is pure fiction and completely ridiculous”.



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